Towards an Environmental Political Economy of Industrial Mining in the Legal Amazon (1964 - 1997)

Abstract

Through a narrative review of specialized literature, this study aims to organize a chronology of industrial mining as a development project for the Brazilian Amazon, focusing on the period from 1964 to 1997 and including antecedents from the 1940s. Preliminary findings indicate that the institutionalization of industrial mining in the Legal Amazon was driven by regulatory milestones and large-scale mining projects, enabled by state decisions aligned with an occupation and integration logic subordinated to national and international capital interests. The historical analysis shows how, in the post-war context, Amazonian mineral deposits were deemed strategic for national security, although they coexisted with foreign corporate partnerships. During the military dictatorship, this ambivalence intensified: the rhetoric of “integration to avoid surrender” was coupled with major infrastructure projects and the opening of the region to private, particularly mining, capital, consolidating a selective territorialization process supported by normative exception regimes. Examples include Polamazônia, the ban on artisanal mining, and the implementation of the Grande Carajás Project. The creation of RENCA, overlapping Indigenous territories, illustrates the systematic erasure of local populations and knowledge. In the 1990s, social and political responses, including Indigenous land demarcation, the establishment of Conservation Units, and global environmental governance efforts (Rio-92), reveal that the Amazon territory is also a space for disputes and resistance. Recognizing the structural inequalities generated by this mining model is crucial to profoundly rethinking the region’s future, requiring the strengthening of territorial rights, the acknowledgement of traditional knowledge, and the pursuit of more equitable socio-environmental relations.