Engaging the Brazilian state: the Belo Monte dam and the struggle for political voice

Abstract

This contribution uses the case of Brazil's largest infrastructure project, the Belo Monte hydroelectric facility, to examine the challenges and opportunities for resistance and claims-making in the face of contemporary development projects. It shows that the confluence of the privatized nature of hydroelectric projects and the government's purported commitment to democratic, participatory development has impacts. I argue that this context, on the one hand, contributes to the fracturing of civil society. On the other hand, it presents opportunities for the creation of surprising alliances among diverse resistance groups and the state. I further argue that direct acts of resistance in this context can encourage the state to work for the public good.

Keywords:

• Brazil
• participation
• development
• hydroelectric dams

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Rebecca Tarlau and Anthony Pahnke for the invitation to submit a manuscript for this special collection and for providing thoughtful comments on this research. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers of this contribution.

ORCID

Peter Taylor Klein http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2711-6666

Notes

¹Author's translation.

²Author's translation.

³Author's translation.

⁴I recorded nearly 1000 pages of fieldnotes from over 150 events and interviews. I recorded some of the meetings I attended and some interviews when appropriate. In many cases, however, recording was not permitted or possible. In those cases, I took handwritten notes and typed longer field notes later. I also collected hundreds of documents, flyers and other printed materials from the groups I studied.

⁵Personal names, with the exception of public figures, are pseudonyms.

⁶The structure of fishermen unions in Brazil is similar to that of Brazilian rural workers’ unions. Local fishermen unions, colônias dos pescadores, operate at the municipal level. They respond to the state-level organization, the federação, which is overseen by a country-wide organization, the Confederação Nacional de Pescadores e Aquicultores (CNPA). This system of unions, which is designed to defend the rights and interests of fishermen, has been federally regulated since the 1970s and was officially sanctioned in 2008. The founder of Altamira's colônia explained that in the early 1990s, he began noticing that fishermen in other municipalities ‘had some power because they had a colônia’. Thus, he founded the colônia in 1997 in order to ‘fight for the dignity that the fishermen deserve’.

Additional information

Funding

Thanks go to the National Science Foundation and the IIE's Fulbright Program for funding.

Peter Taylor Klein is an assistant professor of sociology and environmental and urban studies at Bard College. Broadly, his work focuses on development, associational life, relations between the state and civil society, and environmental conflicts in both Brazil and the United States. This paper is part of a larger project that examines local contestations around the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric facility in the Brazilian Amazon, analyzing citizen demands and state responses in the context of a rapidly changing social and environmental landscape. He is also a co-author of The civic imagination: Making a difference in American political life.