Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Tragedy in Mariana: A city and hundreds of lives under the mud

 

 “I wish I had got the photos of family memories and from when we were younger”. More than the house or her clothes, what Drielly Silva, 18, regrets most is losing his photo album. And yet it, along with the life history of another 600 people in the small suburb of Bento Rodrigues (MG), is buried under a sea of mud in what is the biggest human and environmental tragedy in the history of Brazil.

Written by: Diego Cruz – PSTU.

 

Late afternoon on Thursday, 5 November, 2 dams burst at an iron ore mine, releasing 55 billion litres of waste. Without any emergency plans by the Mining firm Samarco, the residents of the suburb were taken by surprise by the destructive flash flood. “When I saw all of that water coming down, I panicked”, remembers Drielly. She and her neighbours managed to climb a truck which was passing at that moment. Not everyone managed, however: her cousin of 5 was drowned by the avalanche of mud, and her uncle is one of the many people missing.

Officially, the tragedy has left 7 people dead and 12 missing. However this number is likely to be higher, while the mining firm does everything it can to hide the facts. “At first, they said nobody was working when the dam burst, but later on they admitted there was”, relates Valério Vieira, of Metabase Inconfidentes (The Trade Union that represents miners in MG). The Union demanded a list of the workers who were at the dam when it burst, but Samarco as thus far refused. 

Upon closing this article, the toxic mud had spread to the sea of Espírito Santo. On its journey of 700 kilometres, across The Sweet River, a trail of death and destruction and has been left in its wake. An environmental crime, which has permanently scarred nature, and the lives of hundreds of residents for whom Bento Rodrigues will be nothing more than a memory. 

Lives Buried

The thin corridors are filled with children; the sound of the TV mixes with the sound of conversation and the noise from the kitchen. It is lunchtime in one of the B&Bs that is providing shelter for the stranded residents of Bento Rodrigues. Used to a life in the country, houses with gardens and life, the residents of the suburb buried by Samarco are suriving in tiny bedrooms.

My house had cabbage patches, mango, orange and banana trees, it had everything”, laments Benedita Gonçalves, 76; most of her life was lived in her 7 room house. With a fragile appearance, she speaks with a trembling voice. “When the dam burst, I was getting ready to go to church, my grandchildren pulled and dragged me out of the house, we never looked back”, she tells us.

Used to life in the countryside, Benedita misses her chickens and her dogs. Shy, she says she is illiterate and apologises for using ‘incorrect words’. Her eyes begin to tear up: “When I see anyone, my eyes fill with tears”, she tries to change subject, laughing, not wanting to notice she was crying.

Marias das Graças, 57, also worked in the fields. “I gave my life to get my house e now I have lost it, and after we will go to live in a place and it will not be like it was before”, she says. Maria was told about the burst dam by a call from her daughter’s boyfriend. She says she will miss her neighbours and friends. “We were all united, there were our brothers and sisters of the church (evangelical), and we would meet every day”, she remembers.

She will miss Maria das Graças Celestina, her neighbour. “Anything that she had to do, she would call me”, she recalls. Maria das Graças Celestina is one of the first victims to lose their life in Bento Rodrigues. “Her body has not yet been found, it is an immense sadness. Her son had just gotten married”, she mourns.

Marlene Ezequiel Serra, 54, was born in the small, but moved to Mariana upon getting married. Now retired, and with her husband incapacitated by a stroke, she returned to Bento Rodrigues to dedicate herself to looking after her husband. Sat on the bed of the B&B, she calls her husband to sit by her side. “It was a very relaxed life, especially for him, we didn’t need to ever leave the house”, she recalls, while holding her husband’s hands.

There was a time, a few years ago, when they said that the dam was cracked, and everyone ran into the church”, she remembers. However, as nothing happened, everyone went back to their houses. Samarco, in the meantime, would always say to the residents that ‘there is no risk’. “But we were scared”, Marlene admits.

Now, with nothing and confined to the small bedrooms of the B&B for the whole day, the residents can only hope. Drielly’s dream, to study chemical engineering, will have to be suspended. While Benedita has more modest hopes, but is unsure on if she will achieve them. “I want a better life than I have here, at least for the last years of my life”. 

 

Bento Rodrigues

A scene of death and destruction

The suburb of Bento Rodrigues, 35 kilometres from the centre of Mariana, was a town surrounded by fields, waterfalls and farmland, fed by the Gualaxo river. Its natural beauty would attract visitors. The town became increasingly known for one specialty: A jam of biquinho chillies. A small town made up of simple people who lived as a community.

Now, Bento Rodrigues no longer exists. A flood of waste from the burst dam buried the 200 houses that made up the town. The tragedy, caused by the Samarco mining company, transformed the small town into a mountain of mud and wreckage.

  

A jouney into hell

The team from Opinião Socialista* visited the suburb after the police barrier, blocking access to the area, was finished. However, in spite of all the stories we had heard about the size of the tragedy, nothing could have prepared us for the painful and shocking images that awaited us.

The town is accessible only by car, and, after a certain point, only by foot. The mud, covered by a silvery blue film of iron ore, is treacherous. Some areas are relatively solid, while others are soggy and it is easy to get sucked under. Huge reddish holes are spread across the land. Reports say that the bodied found after the tragedy were in decaying states. While the voluntary workers who were rescuing animals claim that, as they pulled animals from the mud, skin would come off. It is not a surprise, as one of the products used in mining is sodium hydroxide.

The Gualaxo River, which ran by the outskirts of the small town, has been transformed into a small stream of reddish brown liquid, which is possible to cross by foot. The margins, however, have become 2 steep ravines which need to be climbed before getting to the centre of the town.

Going past the bank, the centre of what used to be Bento Rodrigues city reveals itself. Shattered houses, broken trees and cars covered by mud or on top of wreckage are part of what looks like a post apocalyptic movie set. A strong smell of animal corpses is mixed with the smell of wet soil everywhere.

Among destruction, toys lay on bushes or are stuck in the mud. Dogs run aimlessly and bark, as if keeping what used to be their owner’s houses. The devastation is absolute.     

In the little that was left in in the houses, there were some small surprises. A flower vase still hanging from the wall; an old portrait of a couple, also still hanging. Subtle, yet emotional signs of humanity in the midst of the barbarism cause by capitalist greed. 

 

Understand
What is the waste?

To extract the mineral, the layer of soil that sits on the surface is removed and then the rocks are dug up by the miners. The rocks are then blown up and crushed, creating a fine powder composed of silica, clay and ore.

The waste is everything that passes through this process. Much of it is water, making it wet. The mining companies dispose of the waster in valleys. Recently, there has been an increase in the production of minerals, thus an increase in waste. “All of the workers knew the dams were already at their limit”, an ex-worker of the dams told us.

After denying there was any danger with other dams, Samarco was forced to admit dams in Germano and Stantaém are at risk of breaking. In Minas Gerais, there are 450 dams. The federal department responsible for supervision, DNPM1 has just 4 employees for the entire state. In reality, the supervision can be summarized as a stamp given by the department for the bogus supervision, done by the company itself.

 

*Opinião Socialist (Socialist Opinion, in English), fortnightly publication of the PSTU-Brazil

1 National Department of Mineral Production

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