Usina Hidrelétrica de Itumbiara: entre anúncios de progresso e frustração de expectativas na fronteira Sul Goiano -Triângulo Mineiro (1974-2018)

Abstract

This thesis discusses the construction of the Itumbiara Hydroelectric Powerplant, built on the border between the South of Goiás State (Brazil) and the Triângulo Mineiro (Minas Gerais State, Brazil), as part of the advance of capitalist production relations. It had as main agent the Brazilian State, commanded by a civil-military dictatorship. Itumbiara was the largest hydropower project in the Furnas System and played a central role in the reconfiguration of Brazil's interregional and international division of labor between the 1960s and 1970s. Such a reconfiguration would determine, for example, that regions such as the South of the State of Goiás (Brazil) to take on the role of suppliers of agricultural products to the international market - the expedient chosen as a way to obtain foreign exchange for the country. In the discussion of this process, this research structured an analysis not only circumscribed to the construction of the Itumbiara Hydropower but also a developmental project in which the realization of "great works" sought to be legitimized for supposedly to provide progress and development to regions considered as backward. In the case of the Itumbiara region, it was specifically sought to demonstrate how the progress of this process was received and interpreted by several subjects: "barrageiros" workers (term used to denim hydroelectric powerplant workers), inhabitants that were expropriated and local dominant groups. Finally, what we could perceive from the evidence analyzed is that decades later all the progress signaled as a justification for the implementation of the hydroelectric plant did not materialize, frustrating the expectations generated in the region of Itumbiara, which still had to deal with significant impacts socio-environmental.