Brumadinho was not an accident, it's a crime!

How can Vale place a cafeteria, administration offices, and infirmary right next to the dam, and no regulatory body intervenes? Brumadinho wasn't an accident, it's a crime!

I returned to Brumadinho this Saturday.

A painful retrospective of another crime committed by mining companies, in Mariana, came to mind.

I saw the site of the dam breach in Córrego do Feijão.

How does a mining company place its cafeteria, administrative area, and infirmary right next to a dam?

I couldn't understand how they did that and how no regulatory body did anything about it.

How could there be, after what we experienced in Bento Rodrigues (Mariana), again, no evacuation plan and no sirens sounded?

When, after the initial shock in Mariana, we continued to denounce, question, and demand punishment for those responsible, we were called radicals, isolated, and no one listened to us!

No one listened to the victims!

We were accused of preventing Samarco from resuming operations and held responsible for "generating unemployment."

We were accused of "caring more about the victims than the jobs."

We were few enough to say that Samarco was criminal in its official activities.

After the selfie craze, many politicians succumbed to the economic and political power wielded by mining companies.

Mining companies don't have a plan for preserving life, but they do have a plan for controlling the aftermath of the crimes they commit.

1. They are the ones who control the information about missing persons and those affected.

Control is fundamental for them to build the idea that the impact is less than the reality, and thus also to control public outcry.

They make it seem like a natural process in the face of "an accident." It's not. Compare the numbers released each day.

2. The mining company continues to control the area of ​​the breach and the remaining unbroken dams, even though its inability to do so has been proven. The government will depend on this information to act.

3. They control the situation to ensure that solidarity does not become something more dangerous for them. To achieve this, they rely on the entire system that revolves around their economic interests, with ramifications in various branches of government.

4. They dispute the narrative of what happened, its consequences, and the future. They have the expertise and economic power to do so.

They put people who work in this field into action, even when they don't present themselves as representatives of the mining company.

5. They act to isolate, discredit, and criminalize popular, community, and religious leaders who refuse to be corrupted and work in service of this system.

6. They operate within the Legislative Branch to prevent it from voting on bills that go against their interests. In a Brazilian mining state, a congressman presented the most radical bill of all, knowing it wouldn't be approved. It was all pre-arranged.

I've learned my lesson: they don't care about people's lives.

That's why the sirens don't sound, the dams break, and they don't calculate what the tailings will hit and destroy.

There is no evacuation plan or plan to assist those affected.

Those who support people are the Public Authorities and this fabulous network of solidarity that forms without anyone making an official call.

These were the people in an extraordinary network of solidarity that I saw today in Brumadinho helping others.

I hugged people I didn't know, I heard stories of suffering from many families. It will be a long fight!