“Pelourinho tecnológico”: a expansão do Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara (CLA) no contexto do Novo Imperialismo

Abstract

The Alcântara Launch Center (CLA) expansion project was part of the process of productive restructuring of global capital and, therefore, of interests outside the Brazilian Space Program (PEB), especially the US. The CLA's expansion policy has resulted in the deepening of local territorial conflicts and directly affects the remaining quilombola communities of Alcântara, constituting a true “Technological Pillory”. To understand this process, the clashes between national sovereignty and imperialism and the insertion of PEB into the orbit of neoliberal capitalism were initially presented. The mediatic power of the State's speech and ideological challenges were problematized in the construction of an alleged “consensus”, supported by institutional propaganda to define the CLA's expansion and commercial opening strategies, as well as the counterpoint of the quilombola resistance media. In assessing the resistance of quilombola communities, the Brazilian State model and its institutional instruments were analyzed: Interministerial Executive Group for Sustainable Development of Alcântara (GEI-Alcântara) and Development Committee of the Brazilian Space Program (CDPEB). A dialectical amalgam of “mediation structures”, mediating agents and institutional instruments was observed against the manifestations and direct actions of quilombola communities against the expansion of the CLA in their ethnic territories.