“The Doce River is basically the mother of Tumiritinga": the meanings at stake in the Doce River Valley and the limits of the institutional treatment of the ”Samarco Case”

After three years of discussions, the renegotiation of the agreements signed in the “Samarco Case” to repair the Doce River basin was signed in October 2024. But little is known about what the communities affected by the failure of the Fundão dam think, how they live in each affected region, what they make of their losses locally and what they demand in terms of reparation. The aim of this article is to investigate the meanings of the losses and the demands for reparations in the middle part of the Doce River, also known as the Doce River Valley. To this end, the research, which is qualitative and ethnographic, used semi-structured interviews and participant observation in Tumiritinga and Galileia, two riverside towns in the region. Listening attentively to the accounts and the experience of following daily life on the banks of the Doce River allowed us to glimpse other meanings for the river, for the losses and for reparations, far removed from those considered institutionally. Something that reveals the cosmological conflict underway in the Doce River basin and exacerbates the difficulties of dealing with the disaster-crime, even after the renegotiation disregarded the local meanings expressed by the river dwellers.

Keywords:
Samarco Disaster; Conflict Management; Mid Doce River