Since 1988, local activists have paralyzed
several attempts to construct a dam
at Altamira on the Xingu River in the
Amazon region of Brazil. Men and
women have worked together in the social
movement opposing the dam; but of particular
interest to us is the mobilization of
women in defence of their rights. Rural,
urban, and indigenous women organized
for more than a decade to stop this energy
mega-project. They opposed the dam due
to its social., economic, and environmental
impacts on local communities, and
because it would be the first hydroelectric
installation in Brazil to be privatized.
The recently awakened global interest
in water is related to world market pressures
on this resource. In the 1990s, international
agencies started to define the
concept of a global water crisis with the
goal of "water for ail by 2020." Water has
become a central issue for the UN and
financial and economic agencies such as
the international Monetary Fund (IMF),
and the World Trade Organization
(WTO). The World Bank has been the
principal financier of large hydroelectricity,
mining, and infrastructure projects in
the Amazon. And the Bank's financing
accounts for a significant portion of
Brazil's external debt. Water, therefore, is
Indigenous peoples from Brazil at the Social Forum of the Americas. Quito, July 2004.
a key item for Brazilian policies in terms
of the international economy, and government
discourse has sought to justify the
need for energy mega-projects and to
exploit forest resources to pay off the
external debt.
The Frontier of Resources and Large
Damsin the Amazon
The traditional model of territorial
occupation in the Amazon has been
through its rivers. Throughout history, the
rivers played a fundamental role in the
structuring of social and economic life in
the region. The rivers defined the models
of land occupation, the use of resources,
the processes of exportation, and the formation
of an economy based on the
exploitation of natural resources.
Halfway through the last century, this
model of occupation started to change
with pro-development state policies that
involved the unification of all Brazilian
regions. To achieve this, the state
employed a strategy of large highway construction,
and one of the highways built in
the 1970s was the Transamazonica.
Thousands of peasants left the northeastern
and southern states of the country and
moved into the region where this highway
meets the Xingu River. Parcels of land
were distributed by lottery. Families built a
strong social and economic organization to
cope with both the absence of state services
and the frequent violent conflicts of
the 1970s and 1980s.
The Movement for the Advancement
of the Transamazonica and the Xingu
(MDTX) was born in the 1990s with significant
participation by small family
farmers and their organizations. Other
workers, students, clergy, and women's
organizations joined them. They came
together in response to immediate needs
in the struggle for land and land claims as
well as for neighbourhood roads, maintenance
of the Transamazonica, the export
of local products and the organization of
services such as transportation, schools,
water supply, and low-cost or free medical
clinics and pharmacies. The Movement
grew with its use of more consistent
forms of communication. At first, through
the unions and later finding new means of
expression through associations, cooperatives,
and political parties. MDTX is
made up of 113 organizations. It opposes
the economic model of large privatized
projects and special economic enclaves
and instead proposes one of development
based on debate and the collective struggle
of earlier decades.
FALL/WINTER 200i/5 WOMEN & ENVIRONMENTS www, we I mag, com
BeLo Monte: The First of the Xingu
River Dams
In 1915 the Brazilian stale-run company
Eletronorte proposed construction of
several dams on the Xingu River, including
the Krariio (later called Belo Monte),
and the Babaquara. In 1980 Eletronorte
carried out studies on the Hydroelectric
Complex of Altamira, comprised of these
two dams which would flood 8,(X)0 square
kilometres of land. The Conference of
Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu. meeting
in 1988 in Altamira, united dozens of
indigenous nations. There, the India
Tuira nation became a symbol of
struggle against the dam construction
by confronting a
principal of Eletronorte
with a dagger — a gesture
that expressed the position
of the indigenous
peoples who demanded
that the Xingu River be
free of dams.
The project was
recently reformulated and
updated. Now on the agenda
is a complex of five hydroelectric
dams with the potential to affect
by Hooding at least 100,000 people in
three municipalities, as well as 8.000 people
in indigenous settlements.
The place where Eletronorte plans its
largest construction is at the Large Turn
of the Xingu. This is a mythical place
filled with symbolism and significance in
the culture of the peoples of the forest.
The construction will profoundly alter the
natural course of the river. The company
has tried to discredit arguments that speak
to the social and cultural effects of their
projects. Meanwhile. 14 rural-urban
towns and three mining settlements occupy
the area to be flooded.
Eletrobras is the company responsible
for supplying energy in Brazil. It estimates
that in the long run, dozens of
hydroelectric dams will be constructed in
the Amazon Region to take advantage of
the potential of its rivers. The Araguaia
and Tocantins rivers present an alternative
to the national energy crisis, with 14
hydroelectric dams that could generate
20,000 megawatts of energy. In opposition,
the Forum Carajas network, together
with the National Movement of Those
Affected by Dams (MAB), the Western
Amazon Forum (FAOR), the International
Rivers Network, and other NGOs. are
promoting the "Water Without Dams"
campaign, which intends to publicize
information about the impact of the proposed
dams.
Eletrobras is taking up the Beio Monte
project again, with the dam planned to
begin operation in 2008, thereby heading
off the next potential national energy shortage.
The government's decision to be only
a minority player in the dam, which would
have significant private capital involvement,
is a setback to environmental organizations.
The major corporations in the
energy sector originate in rich countries
and have set their sights on the big business
of energy markets, and with this development
surely come openings for new interests
in the region's water and natural
springs. Indeed, a representative of the
World Bank confirmed in a March 2004
presentation in Brussels that the Bank's
interest in financing large dams has to do
with both resources: water and energy.
The effects of the Xingu complex that
worry the local population are similar to
those observed when the Tucurui dam, the
fourth largest hydroelectric dam in the
world, was built. Its construction brought
changes in the water quality of the river
and its tributaries, as well as in the
dynamics of waterfalls and the size of
lakes, islands, and small waterways.
In opposition to the dam, the local
population affirmed their rights to maintain
their traditions: to use the river for
fishing, irrigation, navigation, bathing, rituals,
and as sacred places, as well as to
preserve niches of reproduction for fauna
and flora. To them, river pollution signifies
the end of a diversity of forms of
work and health care. For them, water is
interiorized as an element of identity
with the land and with the dimensions
of life. All of this forms
part of the arguments that the
women of Altamira articulate
in their struggle
against the construction
of large hydroelectric
dams on the Xingu
River. Their position is
shared by a number of
groups, both urban and
rural, and by indigenous
peoples — but is not supported
by the political and economic
elite of the region, who associate
the dams with notions of progress, modernization,
and development.
The Movement of Women of the
Country and of the City believe that energy
generation through the "privatization of the
river," as the process is called in Altamira.
could have many negative consequences:
• The usurping of the rights of local
communities to use the material and
symbolic services provided by the
river — even the supply of potable
water can be affected by alternative
uses making women's lives more difficult
as they search for cleaner or safer
drinking water elsewhere.
• Dam construction indicates the transfer
of rights from the communities
who have lived in the area for centuries
to private companies.
• Appropriation of the Xingu River for
economic purposes will significantly
affect the knowledge and practices of
fishing, the "igapos," the river basin,
the fauna and flora, as well as knowledge
about biodiversity.
10 WOMEN & ENVIRONMENTS www.weimag.com FALL/WINTER 200V5
• As the river forms part of water courses
that cross through difterent municipalities
and states, it also forms part of
diverse cultural systems, ways of management,
and expectations of different
social uses. Eletronortc has systematically
ignored these realities.
• Despite its construction being initiated
by Eletronorte. the public company.
the dam would be handed over to the
private sector. Local stakeholders
would be vulnerable to those businesses
that have interests in other products
and services associated with the river:
this has been the case with the subsidized
energy provided to the region's
multinational producers of aluminum.
• Global policies fail to recognize that
advantages to private interests can
result in negative impacts on the host
country. The external debt increases
for the country in exchange for benefits
for transnational companies that
not only promote a socially non-progressive
form of modernization, but
create conditions that heighten the
potential for future contlicts.
Water and Free Trade
There is recognition t)f a world water
crisis in the arguments put forward by
multilateral agencies and the World Bank.
The Bank and some multi and bi-lateral
agencies propose that the privatization of
water and water services is a solution to
the growing global water crisis. In the late
lySOs and through the 1990s, the Bank
stopped financing large dam projects as a
result of pressure from social and environmental
movements. Belo Monte, on
the Xingu River, was one of the projects
in Bra/.il paralyzed by this lack of funding.
However, there have been changes
since then. The Bank is now in agreement
with the Report of the World Commission
on Dams and with the Johannesburg
Summit (2002). whose recommendations
include giving incentives to private-sector
services provision and to the prioritizing
of large infrastructure projects. In Brazil.
the tendency is to libcrali/c the business
of bydroelectricity within the objectives
of GATT. This confirms the anxieties of
the Mtivement of Women because the
damming of rivers serves the interests of
the global energy market.
In the case of the Brazilian market, the
interest of the large water-sector corporations
is already clear. In cities such as
Manaus-Ama/onia. the state allowed the
public water and sewage systems to be
privatized. The company. Aguas de
Amazonas is a Suez-based company that
has not complied with its obligations in
the three years of its contract. As a result.
the legislature has proposed a judicial
action to stop a 31.5% rate increase and to
annul the contract, as Aguas de Amazonas
has failed to fulfill almost every clause of
its contract
Hydroelectricity is not an exactly
direct path to the privatization of water,
but the association between hydroelectric
power generation and the "privatization of
the river" is articulated by the movement
opposed to construction of the Xingu
River facility. Their oppositit)n is based on
the experience of groups dealing with the
impact of the construction of the dam at
Tncurui. These groups are still active after
more than 15 years of struggle.
Women's Rights and Proposed Actions
"Fhe women of the .social movemenfs
question the market perspective within
which certain companies seek to appropriate
the p(nential of the rivers of the
Ama/.on. The women propose national
policies that will ensure:
• A transparent and egalitarian system
that considers access to water to be a
citizen's right and therefore guiirantees
the right of everyone, including
women, to potable water and sanitation.
• A Xingu River free of dams and free of
negotiation or privatization contracts.
• Opportunities for work and income for
women, which are not assured by the
model of concentrated economic activity
of a single large company.
• A model that is able to encourage
development appropriate for the
Transamazonica and the Xingu. while
preserving nature and production.
• The transfer of negotiations underway
on the Free Trade Area of the
Americas and the WTO commercial
accords, as well as their relationship
with the construction of hydroelectric
complexes on the Xingu River and
other rivers, to larger public and international
forums.
The latest decisions of the Brazilian
government in May 2004 confirm the
intent to build Belo Monte, although with
less power, and with attempts to mitigate
the social and environmental impacts.
However, the state company is maintaining
its minority role in the dam, thus permitting
the significant involvement of private
capital.
The women's movement in Altamira
held many public protests, calling on a
general mobilization art>und a citizens'
campaign in favour of rivers without
dams. Clearly, the debate about water and
the dangers of privatization through construction
of a large hydroelectric project
on the Xingu River is associated with the
struggles for better health and sanitation,
as well as the democratization of the use
of the river.
The Altamira women continue to promote
this debate and hope to influence the
dam project and the private uses of the
Ama/.onian rivers during a time of
increasing globalization, and the ascendancy
of neo-liberal interests in Brazil
and in the rest of the world.
SS
Note: This article is based on research hy
Edna Castro of The Federal Univershx of
Para, with the collaboration of Jacqueline
Friere and the support of Graciela
Rodri'i-itez of the Fqiiit Institute and the
Brazilian Network for the Intei^ration of
Peoples (REBRIP). We thank the
Movement of Women of the Country and
of the City of the Transamazonica and the
Xingu River, the Movement of Women
Against Violence and the Associations of
Indigenous Women for their support of
our research.
Edna Ramos de Castro is a sociologist affiliated
with the Centre for Advanced Amazon Studies
(Nucleo de Altos Esudios Amazonicos) at the
Federal University of Para, Brazil.
Blanka Bracic has a degree in civil engineering
and recently defended a toaster of Arts thesis
in Hispanic literature.
FALLAVINTER20Di/5 WOMEN & ENVIRONMENTS www. we( mag. com 11
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