Acelerações em escala regional: A transformação do vale do Rio Doce, ca. 1880-1980

Abstract

The article presents a longue durée perspective on the Doce river valley and analyzes acceleration processes on a scale of human experience and agency. It focuses on four moments which are representative of perceptions and appropriations of the region in the context of global changes in resource demand and transport technologies. The concept of “imaginary landscapes” accounts for the interrelation between spatial imagination and material transformation. Represented as a frontier of civilization in the 1880s, around 1910 the valley became associated with Brazil's future as an industrial nation and supplier of iron ore. The spatial ideologies of territorial development and those that saw the region as a transport corridor were in conflict, which became particularly visible in the wake of the Second World War and the foundation of the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce. During the 1970s, slurry pipelines extended the territorial reach of the mining frontier. This acceleration is one historical dimension of the 2015 Mariana dam disaster.