Protected Truths: Neoextractivism, Conservation, and the Rise of Posttruth Politics in Brazil

Abstract

Recent scholarship links authoritarian populism to environmental governance and changing forms of neoliberalism, yet the central role of the contradiction between territory demarcated for (neo)extractivism and territory demarcated for conservation and protection is heavily understated. This article analyzes the rise of posttruth politics in Brazil as an effort to legitimate unmitigated extractive capitalist growth through a renewed obfuscation of this inherent ecological contradiction. We first demonstrate the concealment of the contradiction through Latin America’s “post-neoliberal” period, based in a neoextractivist economic model. Following, we argue that posttruth politics represents a specific attempt to supersede the previous neoliberal consensus in the face of shrinking commodity returns. Designed to downplay, deny, and remove existing public environmental concerns, we view the posttruth of authoritarian populism as a necessarily spatial project, beyond accounts of cultural or institutional politics alone. The article thus furthers understandings of posttruth by centralizing its role in obscuring the extractivism–conservation contradiction in Brazil and beyond, and as such aligns with a critical effort to mobilize alternatives to the untenable reprimarization of Latin American societies.