Projeto Grande Carajás: desenvolvimentismo e impactos socioambientais no Maranhão (1970-1980)

Abstract

The referred research is made from the understanding of the History of the Present Time, inserted in the time frame of the Business-Military Dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), characterized by numerous factors that deeply marked the population in the political, economic and social sphere. Among these aspects, the economic agenda of the military governments was based on a productivist model inserted in the Doctrine of National Security with the objective of developing the Amazon, making Brazil a great world power and minimizing the external debt. Thus, the project for mineral exploration, aimed at the development of the Oriental Amazon, the Grande Carajás Program, emerges as “National Salvation” amid the political destabilization and successive economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s, both in the national and global context. Therefore, the present work aims to understand how the Carajás Program crossed the national and mainly state political-economic sphere, prioritizing the study on the state of Maranhão. The importance of newspapers in this developmental process is analyzed, seeking to understand the modernizing discourse conveyed by large hegemonic groups.It is worth mentioning that this work is based on the concept of an Expanded State developed by the French philosopher Antônio Gramsci, understanding the complexity of the power disputes between Civil Society and Political Society.In addition to the problematization of the Private Devices of Hegemony and their participation in the creation of consensus based on what in fact represented the political project Grande Carajás for the population of Maranhão.