O território do caulim na Paraíba: degradação do trabalho, da natureza e da vida

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to understand the contradictions that articulate the work process in kaolin mining and the degradation of life in Paraíba. Kaolin is a non-metallic ore, considered a clay mineral, used as raw material for the manufacture of various consumer products in the pharmaceutical industry, construction, and general consumer products such as porcelain. In the state of Paraíba, its exploitation is concentrated in the Seridó region of Paraíba, mainly in five municipalities that make up what we call, in this research, the Kaolin Territory. From an economic point of view, this territory contributes only to 1.63% to Paraíba's mining production value (ANM, 2019). However, spatially, it can be considered the largest mining agglomeration in the state, concentrating 24.5% of all extractive industries in Paraíba (IBGE, 2023) and 18.21% of the jobs generated by the mineral sector (ME, 2020b). The data reveal the presence and participation of mining in the territorial dynamics of the region and its footprints throughout its history. The marks of mining are visible in the landscapes and local communities, witnesses to the harsh working conditions and high levels of degradation of human and environmental health in the studied territory. Life expectancy at birth is lower than in the rest of the state and below the Brazilian average. Deforestation and degradation of vegetation cover, the deposition of mineral waste piles together with the depletion of resources contribute to soil kaolinization and the acceleration of desertification in the region. To analyze these processes articulately, we rely on contributions from Labor Geography and Political Ecology. Our approach is therefore historical materialist and dialectical, with the methodological triad of labor-nature-health categories. The starting hypothesis is that, in the Kaolin Territory, there is a causal relationship between low life expectancy at birth and the working and production conditions of mineral extraction. The research results allow us to show how the degradation of living conditions, human and non-human, in the Kaolin Territory results from the dynamics of the prevailing societal structure anchored in commodity production, surplus-value extraction, and capital valorization, imposing on the societal metabolism of labor the elements of its logic. Thus, kaolin/commodity gains centrality at the expense of all forms of life expression. Surplus-value extraction and accumulation through spoliation were the strategies identified in the process of mineral capital valorization in the region. The thesis shows how the spatial dynamics of kaolin mining impose its necrosocial metabolism on labor and nature, bringing serious impacts on the health of mining and prospector communities and their territories of life and reproduction, determining their own existence.