Subcontracting and the Omitted Social Dimensions of Large Development Projects: Household Survival at the Carajás Mines in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Carajais is a $3 billion open-pit mining project built in early 1980s on remote Amazon rain forest mountains in Brazilian state of Pare. In an already oversupplied world market for iron, massive project was promoted by Brazil and World Bank on three grounds: as a quick remedy to country's mounting debt problems, as a showpiece and magnet for boosting development in a remote area of uninhabited rain forest, and as a critical endeavor if Brazilian state-owned firm Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) was to retain its dominance as leading iron exporter in world.1 Gold, copper, nickel, manganese, tin, and bauxite were also discovered nearby, and mining, railroad, and port projects were planned from outset as part of an enormous regional development project called Greater Carajais Program (PGC), covering an area of eastern Amazon larger than France and Britain combined. To boost investment in region, Brazilian government established tax holidays and other incentives for private, export-oriented production in mining, metallurgy, ranching, and large-scale palm, rice, and soybean plantations. Anthony B. Anderson recently called PGC the most ambitious development scheme yet conceived for a humid tropical region of which the cornerstone . . . is so-called Iron Ore project.2 The potential environmental effects of project and its inevitable disturbance of indigenous populations drew worldwide attention and protests at World Bank in Washington. Following denouncements from international environmental and indigenous rights groups that called project potentially one of five worst environmental disasters in history, strict ecological and territorial safeguards were imposed. Since then, CVRD and World Bank have show-