A construção da hidrelétrica Candonga e a desconstrução de modos de vida: memórias e histórias de trabalhadores em Nova Soberbo/MG

Abstract

This research study examines the construction process of the Candonga hydroelectric dam, currently called Risoleta Neves, located between the municipalities of Santa Cruz do Escalvado and Rio Doce, in the Atlantic Rainforest Zone of the state of Minas Gerais, so as to understand the fabric of hegemony surrounding this project. Its guiding principle is the investigation of how the workers from São Sebastião do Soberbo, a rural district submerged by the dam, rebuild their lives amid feelings of loss, new production conditions and sociability. The methodology focuses on the historical logic proposed by Edward Thompson in order to highlight the real formative movements of consciousness. In this sense, the study aims to endorse the values of dispossessed workers, especially those who have an alternative definition of property, which was conceived by means of a lived social process that expresses customs, practices and expectations. Therefore, it employs oral sources, newspapers, documents produced by the companies of the Candonga Consortium, Environmental Impact Assessments, Environmental Impact Reports, photographs, etc. By means of the concepts encompassed by Marxism, the study endeavors to critique capitalism in its current format, on the premise of its historicity, its systemic origin, its unifying logic and its social roots, whose meaning has become an important identifier due to the bias of the worker s experience.