Hydroelectric power plants, human rights and alienation of the territory in the Brazilian Amazon: the case study of UHE Tabajara - Rondônia

Abstract

The hydroelectric megaprojects in the Brazilian Amazon cause major socio-environmental impacts and systematic violations of the Human Rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The numerous dams built have a historical of fragmentation of traditional territories and social exclusion. In this text, one more of these projects is analyzed, which is being formulated, the Tabajara Hydroelectric Power Plant. Thus, this study problematizes the hydroelectric planning in the Brazilian Amazon, linked to what qualifies as alienation of the territory. Posteriorly, the analysis unfolds in the corporate use of the territory for capital and in the alienation of the territory for the affected social groups, reaching the human rights and the ways of life of the affected communities. It is concluded that the great projects in the region establish scales of political dominance over natural resources and territories, so that the corporate use of regional space at the scale of capital and state is emphasized, while, equally, there is the alienation of the territories of the most vulnerable social groups, in which the sense and destination of the place is affected by the logic of hydroelectric capital, constituting forms of domination and social expropriation.