The Kamakã Mongoiós are a family of the Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe people, whose mother village is located on the southern coast of Bahia state, at the foot of the Pascoal mount. A video posted on social media by the National Indigenous Union (UNI) in March 2022 shows the progress of their work in Brumadinho.

In the video, Merong explains that the retaking efforts had brought Kamakã Mongoiós from Bahia over the course of more than 40 years of conflict to live in urban settings, often in a precarious situation and without access to rights that should be guaranteed to indigenous peoples.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we demanded a guarantee of vaccines and food, and we were denied this right. So we asked the Great Spirit to guide us, and we arrived here in this territory, which was abandoned and had a spring. Some time later we discovered it belongs to Vale.

“It may be the case on paper, but the company doesn’t live here. This land is meant for us to live and plant on, and for our children to bathe in the river and get a special education. This is not just our fight. We want to protect the springs. We want to protect the territories from mining craters.”

Another video shows a ceremony held to symbolically demarcate the land. In this recording, the indigenous people appear installing a plaque naming the territory Kamakã Mongoiõ Village. “Our bodies may even serve as fertilizer for this land, but we are not leaving,” Merong said on the occasion.

The mining giant said the area is intended for environmental recovery and has come under a legal dispute. “Vale regrets the death of chief Merong and stands in solidarity with his family and the indigenous community,” the text states.

The property is in a region known as Vale do Córrego de Areias. The site is approximately 20 kilometers from the Córrego do Feijão mine, where a dam ruptured and claimed 270 lives in 2019. Among those affected by the episode is another Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe village. Located on the banks of the Paraopeba river, it was divided after the tragedy and many families ended up leaving.

Merong’s body showed signs of hanging. Born in Contagem, Minas Gerais, he was 36 years old. The Military Police were called to the scene and filed a suicide report, but people close to the chief challenge this hypothesis.

“Chief Merong was murdered. They faked suicide, but it wasn’t suicide. Merong talked to me in private for 30 minutes on February 25. He had many plans to expand our fight,” Friar Gilvander Moreira, a member of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and a friend of the chief, wrote on social media.

The Civil Police said that “no line of investigation has been ruled out” for the time being The Federal Police confirmed they are also taking part in the investigation. Their mobilization is warranted because, if Merong was indeed the victim of a crime, the jurisdiction to judge the case will have to be fixed taking into account the motives at play.

A previous decision by the Superior Court of Justice establishes that homicides involving indigenous people are discussed at state level. However, according to the Constitution, federal courts should be responsible if the crime is linked to a dispute or conflict over indigenous rights.

The indigenous leader’s death was mourned in a statement issued by national indigenous authority Funai. On her social networks, indigenous federal representative Célia Xakriabá, of the PSOL, posted a message about what had happened.

“Merong will live on in our hearts and in our fight, because the fight is all we inherit,” she wrote. Expressions of mourning were also published by various nonprofits, such as the National Confederation of Family Farmers and Family Entrepreneurs of Brazil (Conafer) and the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi).

“Despite the indications of suicide, relatives and friends are raising the suspicion of a possible murder. All possibilities need to be investigated rigorously and seriously by the public authorities. [Nonetheless,] indigenous suicides must also be seen as a process of violence against native peoples as a project of extermination,” the text released by Cimi reads.

Chief Merong belonged to the sixth generation of the Kamakã Mongoió family and spent part of his childhood in the south of Bahia. An activist, he was involved in mobilizations in various parts of Brazil and offered support to Kaingáng, Xoklengx, and Guarani groups. He was enthusiastic about reclaiming territories, believing it to be a fundamental form of resistance against the erasure of indigenous peoples.

The Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe people have been the victims of several violent actions in recent years. In December last year, chief Lucas Kariri-Sapuyá, 31, was executed in a hideout in southern Bahia.

The same happened to shaman Nega Pataxó, murdered by farmers in January this year, also on Bahian soil. Galdino, the indigenous victim of a barbaric crime that shocked Brazil in 1997, was also from the Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe people: he was burned alive in Brasília by elite youths.

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Thirty four bodies had been recovered by Saturday afternoon, said Avimar de Melo Barcelos, the mayor of the town of Brumadinho where the dam burst in the mining-heavy state of Minas Gerais. The toll was expected to rise sharply.

Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said only one-third of the roughly 300 workers at the site had been accounted for. He said a torrent of sludge tore through the mine’s offices, including a cafeteria during lunchtime.

Minas Gerais is still recovering from the collapse in November 2015 of a larger dam that killed 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. That dam, owned by the Samarco Mineração SA joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, buried a village and poured toxic waste into a major river.

Schvartsman said the dam that burst on Friday at the Feijão iron mine was being decommissioned and had a capacity of 12 million cubic meters – a fraction of the roughly 60 million cubic meters of toxic waste released by the Samarco dam break.

“The environmental impact should be much less, but the human tragedy is horrible,” he told journalists at Vale’s offices in Rio de Janeiro. He said equipment had shown the dam was stable on January 10 and it was too soon to say why it collapsed.

Television footage showed a vast swathe of thick red mud scarring the verdant hills below the mine, cutting through farms and residential areas and leveling everything in its wake.

Fire brigade spokesman Lieutenant Pedro Aihara said the torrent of mud stopped just short of the local Paraopeba river, a tributary of Brazil’s longest river, the Sao Francisco.

“Our main worry now is to quickly find out where the missing people are,” Aihara said on GloboNews cable television channel. Scores of people were trapped in nearby areas flooded by the river of sludge released by the dam failure.

Helicopters plucked people covered in mud from the disaster area, including a woman with a fractured hip who was among eight injured people taken to hospital, officials said.

The Inhotim Institute, a world-famous outdoor contemporary art museum a few miles from downtown Brumadinho, evacuated visitors and closed its doors out of precaution.

The Feijão mine is one of four in Vale’s Paraopeba complex, which includes two processing plants and produced 26 million tons of iron ore in 2017, or about 7% of Vale’s total output, according to information on the company’s website. Feijão alone produced 7.8 million tons of ore in 2017.

Brazil’s recently inaugurated President Jair Bolsonaro dispatched three ministers to survey the disaster area and visit himself the region on Saturday.

Former environmental minister and presidential candidate Marina Silva said Brazilian authorities and private miners had not learned anything from the 2015 Samarco disaster near the city of Mariana and called it unacceptable.

Operations at Samarco remain halted over new licensing, while the companies have worked to pay damages out of court, including an agreement that quashed a 20 billion reais (US$ 5.31 billion) civil lawsuit last year. Federal prosecutors suspended but have still not closed an even larger lawsuit.

“Three years after the serious environmental crime in Mariana, with investigations still ongoing and no one punished, history repeats itself as tragedy in Brumadinho,” Silva said on Twitter.

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The tragedy took place in Mariana, located in the heart of the Minas Gerais state, a region whose history was always defined by mining activities. The waste transformed the rural villages of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu into ghost towns.

Many springs were buried and the Doce River – one of the main waterways in southeastern Brazil – became a sea of mud approximately 850 kilometers wide, beginning at the eastern side of Minas Gerais and crossing all the way through Espírito Santo state until the Abrolhos island.

As result of the complete economic asymmetry between the mining industry and the region in which it operates, the most vulnerable populations are the ones who stand the costs of an environmental tragedy such as the one that took place in Mariana.

Its rural communities took on the cost of a tragedy of unknown proportions as an avalanche of mud invaded their homes, rivers, and communities.

According to the reports submitted by Samarco for the purpose of obtaining the licenses for the dams, the waste would reach 3.5 kilometers in the event of a break.

However, the distance between Mariana and Abrolhos, where the toxic mud was ultimately buried, is 850 kilometers.

Samarco continues to be omnipresent, both politically and economically, in Mariana and its surrounding cities. From the moment their mining operations were suspended in November 2015, RENOVA – a private foundation created by the same companies that causes the damage after an agreement with federal and state (Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo) governments – became the main employer in the region. It should be noted that RENOVA began operations without any prior consultation with the affected population.

RENOVA largely operates in the basin of the Doce River in order to implement reparation programs, designed behind the scenes by the companies responsible (Samarco, BHP Billiton, and Vale), as well as the state authorities involved.

The primacy of corporate interests over those of the affected population is evident within the functional structure of RENOVA. The foundation does not include in its deliberations a representative of the affected peoples, and the majority of its staff come by suggestion of the companies that sponsored RENOVA’s constitution.

In order to understand the dynamic of corporate impunity in Brazil before and after a tragedy like that of November 2015, one should look at the way whereby the mining sector finances electoral processes in all regional scales.

Samarco is the primary donor to election campaigns in Mariana and the surrounding region. As such, there is a strong political support in the local level for mining operations to be reinstated. At the state level, the corporate capture exercised by Samarco, Vale, and other mining businesses has not changed since November 2015.

Weeks after the tragedy, the creation of a Parliamentary Commission in the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais was proposed in order to investigate and determine responsibility for the Mariana disaster.

After intense lobbying by the mining sector, the Parliamentary Commission became a “Special Commission for Dams”, supposedly dedicated to the discussion of a new legal framework for the licensing and environmental audit in Minas Gerais.

In this context, the state Prosecutor’s Office elaborated on a draft law endorsed by the citizen campaign called “Mar de Lama Nunca Mais” (Sea of Mud No More). Supported by more than 56 thousand citizens, this draft law (PL 3.695/16) was submitted to the Minas Gerais Assembly with the purpose of establishing more rigorous parameters for the approval of dams within the state.

These parameters would require widespread consultation processes with the communities potentially affected, financial guarantees and insurance for compensation, and the use of safe technologies for containing waste.

If these types of safeguards had existed before November 2015, state authorities would have been able to better enforce Samarco, in order to inform the population about how to respond in case of dam collapse, or similar disasters.

The residents of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu were never informed of the potential danger of losing their homes to a dam failure, even though the company had been operating in the region for decades.

In fact, some of the people that lost their homes were former employees at Samarco or its contractors, and they also ignored the destruction that could occur after a dam break.

It should be noted that Samarco did not have alarm systems nor evacuation plans, a contributing factor in the death of nineteen people who were buried in the mud that wiped Bento Rodrigues off the map of Minas Gerais and Brazil.

One of the main causes of the Mariana tragedy was the dam design, which has been prohibited in other countries due to its high risk of failure. Known as the “upright” dam, this model has an extension of the containment barrier through several lateral steps, in which the dam grows with the same mining waste as a containment material.

Unfortunately, the preference for a cheaper – but excessively dangerous – model was aggravated by the lack of appropriate institutions, at the federal level, to supervise the dams’ operation in the country.

In 2014, the then National Department for Mineral Production (replaced by the National Agency for Mining in July 2017) supervised only 141 of the 602 mining dams in the country.

The inspection policy after the worst environmental tragedy in Brazil seems to be the obliviousness. According to a recently published report by the National Water Agency, of the 22,290 dams (both from mining and other industries) in the country, only 3,174 have their technical and legal representatives dully identified.

That is to say, there are 19,746 dams – many of which are medium or large in size – for which no one knows who should be legally accountable to those areas affected in the case of dam failure.

The aforementioned report indicates that of the 3,691 installations that have undergone a risk assessment recently, 1,091 are classified as high risk of rupture.

With regard to the potential damage to those inhabiting in the zone potentially impacted by the dams, of the 4,149 dykes examined, 2,053 present a high level of danger due to the toxic nature of the waste or the presence of entire communities or cities where waste may be discharged if the dam fails.

Given a pattern of omissions and lack of due diligence over the years, citizens have tried to influence the public debate so that more responsible construction methods and management of the dams are employed.

In the state of Minas Gerais, for example, 56,000 citizens demanded the adoption of a normative framework that would prevent future tragedies like Mariana under the draft law submitted through popular motion “Lei do Mar de Lama Nunca Mais” (Law of the Sea of Mud No More). However, a different bill is being discussed in the state’s Legislative Assembly (PL 3676/2016).

Although this second bill provides some additional requirements to the current legal framework in force, it is much more permissive than the citizen’s motion under review at the state Assembly.

It is worth remembering that since 1986, at least six mining dam ruptures have occurred in Minas Gerais, totaling 33 deaths and hundreds of thousands affected.

At the federal level, a draft of a Mining Code has been discussed for some years, the text of which was highly criticized by civil society. Not even criticisms from the citizenry, nor the trauma of Mariana, has been sufficient in preventing the toxic relationship between mining companies and the National Congress.

Seventeen of the 34 federal representatives that comprise the main committee of the House of Representatives, which deliberates on the new Mining Code, rely on the support of large mining companies to finance their electoral campaigns.

While this toxic relationship forecasts the future of mining in Brazil, 300 families in Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu remain exposed to degrading living conditions. This statistic reflects only the situation of those individuals from the two villages close to the Samarco dams.

If we examine the entire path of destruction brought about by the irresponsibility of the mining company and the state authorities, the populations of Mariana, Minas Gerais, and all of Brazil should be asking whether the inherent risks of the current mining model are ethical and environmentally acceptable.

Judging by the reactions of the Council of Mariana, the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais, and the House of Representatives of Brazil, the answer to this question is very simple: “let’s forget the tragedy of the fifth of November, 2015 and let’s celebrate the development provided by Samarco, Vale, and other companies that finance our electoral campaigns”.

Daniel Cerqueira is a Lawyer, Senior Program Officer at the Due Process for Law Foundation (DPLF). Twitter: @dlcerqueira

Letícia Aleixo is a counselor at the Human Rights Clinic of the Federal University of Minas Gerais and technical advisor to the Ford Foundation in the Samarco case.

Article originally published in GlobalAmericas http://theglobalamericans.org/

The US$ 3.8 billion deal includes the nutrients business and Bunge’s stake in Fosfertil (Fertilizantes Fosfatados S.A.), a supplier of raw materials for fertilizer manufacturing. The transaction has a net value of roughly US$ 3.5 billion and does not involve fertilizer retail or distribution businesses.

Vale will acquire Bunge’s 42.3% stake in Fosfertil, as well as its fully-owned phosphate mines and manufacturing plants in Brazil. Bunge’s annual phosphate rock production capacity and its share of Fosfertil are equivalent to approximately 3 million tons.

Bunge will retain its fertilizer retail business in Brazil and will sign a deal to supply Vale up until 2012, with a one-year extension option. Bunge will also keep its fertilizer operations in Argentina and the United States, as well as its 50% stake in the joint venture with the Office Cherifien des Phosphates (OCP), in Morocco.

“This is an appropriate moment for us to leave fertilizer manufacturing in Brazil. In order to keep growing, we would have to invest significant capital. Given the uncertainties regarding international prices and the local exchange rates, we believe that it will be better to invest in other opportunities,” said Alberto Weisser, Bunge’s CEO, in a press release.

“Besides, large global mining companies are entering the sector and diversifying their mining portfolios. We are glad that our business will be transferred to Vale, which shares with Bunge a long-term commitment with Brazil,” added Weisser.

“This operation is of utmost importance to consolidating Vale’s strategy of targeting Brazil as the leading market for its phosphate derivatives production, given the potential of local mines, as well as the expansion of projects developed abroad, such as Bayóvar and, in the future, Evate, all of which will have their output destined mainly to the Brazilian market,” claimed Roger Agnelli, the president of Vale, also in a release.

“We are glad because the purchase of these assets, combined with the various potassium projects, which involve high-quality deposits in the main locations worldwide, contributes to Vale’s fast growth strategy, enabling the establishment of a new global leader in the fertilizer industry,” stated Agnelli.

Bunge expects the transaction, which is liable to the usual closing conditions, including government approval concerning mineral concessions, to be concluded in the second quarter of 2010.

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Allegedly Lula asked officials inside his government to find a legal way to ensure the government controls Vale through Previ and BNDES Participações SA, the investment arm of Brazil's state development bank, the São Paulo-based Veja said.

Vale is the world's biggest iron-ore producer. Lula considered job cuts and trims to the company's investment plans, which were carried out by Chief Executive Officer Roger Agnelli, as unnecessary, the magazine said. Created in 1942 by the Brazilian government, Vale was privatized in 1997.

Valepar SA, the company that controls Vale, is owned by Previ, the employee pension fund of state-controlled Banco do Brasil SA; Bradespar SA, an industrial holding company; Mitsui & Co, Japan's second-largest trading company; and BNDES Participações SA.

Vale announced this week that second-quarter profits tumbled 84% versus the year earlier period as lower iron ore production and prices pushed earnings to around half of what analysts had projected.

Demand for iron ore remained weak during the quarter as the global economy struggled to recover from the 2008 financial meltdown, lumbering Vale with lower prices for its main product and fewer places to sell it.

Vale, the world's biggest iron ore producer, posted net profits of US$ 790 million compared with US$ 5.01 billion at the height of the commodities boom a year earlier, reflecting the effects of the financial crisis.

In related news, Vale reported on Friday the discovery of hydrocarbons in an exploratory block off Brazil's south-eastern coast. The hydrocarbons were located in the Vampira exploration well in the Santos Basin, Vale said.

The mining company said traces of light oil and natural gas were found in the Vampira well and that the exact volume will known after further tests. Last May the company announced the discovery of natural gas in the Panoramix well, also in the same exploratory block.

Vale has a 12.5% participation in the block's exploration consortium. Brazil's giant Petrobras has 35%, while Spain's Repsol, the block's operator, has 40% and Australia's Woodside has 12.5%.

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Interruption of production is a direct consequence of decreasing orders from China, which is the leading client of the Brazilian multinational and is also a market affected by the global crisis.

"The decision to curtail pellet production is due to the unprecedented contraction of the global demand for iron ore and pellets," informs the release by Vale, which does not announce new dismissals.

According to the company, interruption at the two plants adds up to the interruption of activities at two other of Vale's units at Port of Tubarão, since November 5, 2008.

Furthermore, it is part of a production adjustment already underway in the company, which has suspended, up until January 2009, "two pellet plants. The plants currently being kept idled involve an overall total capacity of 29.3 million metric tons of pellets per year," informs the release.

"In light of the severe global recession and the uncertainties about the future, Vale will continue to manage its production in line with its assessment of market conditions prevailing in the short-term," informs the release issued by the mining company.

Last week, Vale dismissed 1,300 employees and placed another 5,500 on leave. According to the press office at the mining company, Vale is relocating dismissed personnel to other factories.

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The Rio de Janeiro-based firm said reference prices for Asian clients are 11 to 11.5% less than those charged European clients depending on the type of iron ore that is purchased. In a statement, the Brazilian company said the talks are ongoing and there is no guarantee it will succeed.

However, if it is successful, Vale said the price hike would translate into an estimated revenue increase of less than 3% of the US$ 35.5 billion revenue Vale posted for a 12-month period that ended June 30.

For Pedro Galdi, an analyst from the SLW brokerage house, the Chinese and Japanese will have to say yes to the new prices: "They will be forced to accept because there is no abundance of iron ore in the market. It's take it or take it."

In related news the Brazilian Institute of Mining, Ibram, said on Wednesday, September 10, that mining investments in Brazil are expected to grow to US$ 57 billion in the next four years from the current 42 billion.

On the top of the list to receive investments from 2007 through 2011 is the iron ore sector, followed by nickel and aluminum, the institute said in its fifth revision in the past two years of its four-year forecast.

Brazil's Vale, the world's largest iron ore miner is the main producer on the local market, but large and small international miners are present in Brazil. Specialists in mining say most of the investments will be directed toward expanding capacity to attend to demand on the international market.

In 2006, total mineral output from Brazil amounted to around US$ 36 billion according to Ibram estimates.

Brazil accounts for about 19% of the world's iron ore, 14% of the world's aluminum, 40% of the world's manganese and 95% of the world's niobium, as well as several other minerals, according to Ibram.

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Vale, the world's largest iron ore miner, expects the huge vessels to reduce shipping costs and make its ore more competitive with nearer Australian and Indian ore for the fast-growing Chinese steel industry, already the world's largest.

"Looking at the expansion projects we have and what other players are doing, we don't see the level of ore demand will be down for the next 2-3 years," said Eduardo Bartolomeo, Vale's executive director for logistics.

Vale said it ordered 12 very large ore carriers from Jiangsu Rongsheng Heavy Industries Co Ltd, each with a capacity of 400,000 deadweight tons. Delivery of the first is expected in early 2011 and the order is due to be completed by 2012.

The carrier program adds to Vale's previously announced global investment program of US$ 59 billion for 2008-12, as it aims to boost iron ore output by 50% to 450 million tons by 2013.

Vale has said it planned to ship more than 100 million tons of iron ore to China in 2008 under term contracts, a rise of 10% from 2007. China's crude steel output this year is forecast to rise about 10% to 550 million tons.

"So what we are doing is to find that option that gets iron ore closer. What we are doing is to stimulate steelmakers to build larger ships." Bartolomeo told a media briefing, adding that Vale would outsource the operation of the fleet.

Asian steel mills' negotiations with ore miners on annual term iron ore prices in 2008 stalled over the proposed inclusion of a freight premium sought by the Australian miners to reflect the higher shipping costs to China for Brazilian ore.

Bartolomeo said the large vessels would help Vale, which shed its sea transport operations in 2001, to address logistics shortcomings and better compete with global rivals such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

The Australian companies received higher price increases than Vale in annual iron ore supply contracts with Asian steel mills for 2008.

"We're trying to correct it – not the premium, but the freight rates," Bartolomeo said. "I'm not happy with the freight levels. I don't think they represent the actual cost of transportation."

Vale, formerly Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), said the new vessels would be part of a Brazil-Asia shuttle service with 18 very large ore carriers able to haul a combined total of 7.1 million deadweight tons.

The fleet will be able to carry an estimated 30.2 million tons of iron ore per year from Brazil to Asia, equivalent to 31% of the company's shipments to China in 2007, according to Vale.

Mercopress

Brazilian mining company, Vale do Rio Doce, announced a new contract with the Shougang Group, one of the largest steel manufacturers in China. The contract foresees the delivery of 11.3 million tons of ore until 2012 and was signed yesterday (14) in Rio de Janeiro, according to information published in newspaper Gazeta Mercantil.