A BRASKEM PASSOU POR AQUI: A catástrofe de Maceió | Documentário completo de Carlos Pronzato

Braskem was here: the catastrophe of Maceió This company, that today practically dominates the city of Maceió is the biggest producer of chlorine-soda of the plastic raw material and we know that it has assembled a parallel government It is no longer the governor, mayor, city councillors, house representatives who legislate or define the destinies of this city of Maceió it is Braskem it is from this company where the orders of those who govern Maceió come from Braskem was born in the middle of the dictatorship period in Brazil when the “Economic Miracle” was an important phenomenon The construction

of Brazil as a power It was essential, in this process of the Economic Miracle the so-called import substitution So, there were many resources for financing industries all around Brazil and also in the Northeast region that would substitute chemical elements that Brazil was importing So Braskem is born in this scenario, the dictatorship scenario It was in the middle of the dictatorship Rock Salt starts to settle around here I still talk about Braskem as Rock Salt because it was when I started studying this It started to settle around 1975 still during the military regime The first mayor

election was in 1985 ten years later, when Rock Salt was already big and when all the urban restructuring of the city to receive the chloro-alcohol chemical complex had already been done Braskem arrived in the state of Alagoas in the 70’s From then on, during its forty years here many environmental crimes took place such as the chloride-soda leak and the cylinder explosion in the countryside, in the town of Paulo Jacinto The problems began in the installation There were accidents The Chemical Sector Workers' Union itself has even made an inventory of the accidents that have occurred At

least two dozen accidents occurred since 1977 Was there already a city there? There was already a city There is a wonderful thesis that was turned into a book by Professor Maria do Carmo Vieira whose title is Only dust comes from here It was the residents saying that they were afraid that Rock Salt would explode and they would disappear But they said: ‘Only dust comes from here” In the middle of a State of exception in the middle of a dictatorship it was concluded that the best place to establish Rock salt Chemical Industries S/A would be exactly

to the south of the city of Maceió an ecological sanctuary between the sea and the lagoon canals and they decided to establish it there The industry was established there in the waterfront of the Pontal Beach a beautiful beach and the industry there On the front side there is the beach and in the back you have the Mundaú Lagoon an ecological sanctuary that the government at the time decreed would become an industrial area Can you imagine that? An ecological sanctuary The environmental issue was not discussed at the time The environmental issue was not a central element

of the planning there was no such debate There were personalities intellectual people who had opinions who knew about the topic but institutions and mechanisms did not exist I can’t tell whether Braskem could have been established in another place from the point of view of the extracting of the raw material it wanted I really do not have that knowledge Maybe... But in terms of urbanism, no… So for Braskem to work viability is necessary and viability did exist Why? First, because of the large federal resources Second, because of the federal, state and regional tax benefits that subsidized

this company The third important point is that the rock salt mine was underground where the factory was located Another important point is that the port of export was in front of the factory and the labour force was very cheap Indeed there was a process if we can talk about a natural process of urbanization of city growth to that side The two best hotels in the city, in 1975, were there the Beira Mar and the Luxor, you get it? [Federal Bank] Caixa Econômica, for example was thinking of a real estate bank there for the construction of

middle-class housing and, suddenly when the industry is established there it stops the whole process and that’s when the occupation and verticalization to this side begins The idea of Braskem was bought by the society of Maceió Why? Because people believed that with the industrialization and with the diversification of the economy economic opportunities would come for the society and for them too, of course It has been a long process, as we see more than forty years of salt extraction that evidently, to perpetuate itself had the authorizations of the various municipal, state, and national bodies Rock salt, who

settled here in Maceió almost fifty years ago in fact, should never have been established in this area it is an urban area in the middle of the coast Unfortunately, at the time we did not have environmental bodies to stop the establishment of this company Unfortunately, it happened and for all these years it has extracted our riches exploited the rocks salt and reversed all into profits So the profits are private and the losses, the damage are collective We are on top of a sedimentary basin which thousands of years ago was sea bottom and then when this

water receded in the ice age probably it left some salt water basins and these salt water basins were evaporating and the salt was left under them Later, this salt was being buried by layers of sedimentary rocks and the burial was causing the salt to become more and more fossilized Rock salt are evaporite deposits in this case we have the main target mineral here the Halite, which is a sodium chloride It is extracted and what is the purpose of this salt? If you have chlorine, you can make plastic you can make soda which I think are

two of the main materials – Caustic soda? – Caustic soda, yes. That’s what it is They are the main production targets here at Braskem at Pontal do Trapiche Many years ago, in the 60s in the late 60s Petrobras was looking for oil in this area here at the lagoon shore All this drama we are living in this moment in Maceió has a casual origin Back at the dawn of the chemical industry we had, as a casual fact the discovery of salt crystals on the tip of a drilling rig that was working for Petrobras This was

in the decade of 1940 So, Petrobras was prospecting for oil in the region of the lagoon ecosystem in Maceió and while drilling in a certain location that today would be in Mutange on the edge of the lagoon it discovered salt crystals on the tip of one of the rigs And then it was realized that at a certain depth there was certainly a deposit of rock salt Braskem’s environmental crime was set right in the beginning of its operation At the time, José Geraldo Marques who was the person in the lead of the environmental agency did not

give Braskem the authorization to install itself here in this region because it is a region of sandbanks of mangroves very environmentally sensitive But the governor at the time Divaldo Suruagy, on his own ignored the Secretary of Environment and simply authorized the installation In the process of installation of the company in the moment of deciding the area to be installed, the plant there were local voices that opposed to it Including the Ecologist, Professor, Doctor José Geraldo Marques who is a very respected figure internationally and was a pioneer in the management of the agency at the time

the Environment Coordination and he opposed to it even though he had a position of trust in the government he had the courage he did not omit himself and he exposed exactly his technical vision from the point of view of the sustainability of this installation Professor José Marques was the guy that, back then would not sign the authorization for Braskem to be established and he was called crazy and was kicked out of Alagoas This guy would come to retire at Unicamp highly respected, and would come back to finish his life and when he arrives here, the

crime is installed In the way it is being proposed this has a potential to damage the environment from the moment of its implementation until the future when we presented a document where the danger of subsidence was relevant Not just one subsidence, but several Braskem is the main culprit but all the governors since the beginning of the installation were guilty, omissive, and who knows what else because they all profited from the situations that were provided by the company Here in the Mundaú Lagoon we have most of the mines that are in subsidence The one that affects

us the most now is mine number six which is located behind SINTEAL the former SINTEAL The history of our fight has begun in 1965 with the Primary School Teachers Association APA, later APAL and in 1988 it was created the union the Class Representative Union It is not only the loss of the physical patrimony but of our history our memories, our lives Here we had the interdiction of several social equipment the VLT station the Environmental Institute several schools the field of one of the traditional teams here the CSA field was interdicted SINTEAL a lot of social,

cultural, social equipment was lost because of this environmental disaster Our company used to transport nineteen thousand people across three municipalities Rio Largo, Satubá and Maceió Unfortunately, because of Braskem’s environmental crime these people are no longer transported in the time we used to travel In an hour and ten minutes we used to transport nineteen thousand people and today we transport three thousand so these people were harmed by this company that, unfortunately, cut our railway line We work with shellfish so we catch Sururu in the lagoon and there is a lot of Sururu dying because of Braskem’s

products The white Sururu, like this is no good this here goes to the bush If you cook it, it all melts, it rots So, those of us who work with shellfish lose a lot What’s the difference? Which is the good one? This one here is the good one. Look at the colour of this one it is black just like the other but look at the difference with the product white and black this is the bad one, this is the good one We are losing access to the Lake and this is very damaging for us fishermen

leaving our place of work to go to the pond The mining company wants to take this from us it is expelling us expelling us from our habitat and our work which is the lagoon The big concern was Pontal da Barra and not these neighbourhoods here, you see? The big problem that we thought was the bomb and that everybody thought and that geologists, biologists, said "This is going to explode at any moment and it will take Pontal da Barra with it" Thank God it didn't happen but on the other hand it happened to our neighbourhoods because

our soil today is like Swiss cheese There are thirty-five mines to date and within these mines admissible, safe would be more or less fifty-five meters I did this calculation That decrease in depth, of nine hundred and fifty thousand meters And the distance, in my calculations the safe distance would be one hundred meters from one mine to another So, by reducing the distance between the mines the size of the pillars were being reduced and the pillars were being put under high pressure And then these pillars are mounted on top of the salt layer Some have already

merged into one another there is no longer individuality they have merged and we are each day having more subsidence What is subsidence? It's the sinking of the edge of the lagoon transforming those who used to live here those who are still here into hostages of time What used to be subsistence because this is where people made their living through Sururu today is actually an imminent danger of death We can't manage to sleep at night we're afraid The houses here are all cracked in a matter of moments this lagoon can fill up, collapse and many people

will be affected, you know because if you look from one side to the other anywhere here the houses are all cracked And my wife's situation, she can't stand running if a tragedy happens, I'll have to stay with her the two of us will die because I won't leave her behind Unlike the tragedies that we see around us this is a tragedy that drags on slowly The collapse hasn't happened yet the "sync roll" hasn't happened So everything is still in process Here was a small grocery store, Jorge's store This little grocery store has been here in

this place for twenty-five years Over there is the Braskem monitoring system and an antenna to transmit the signal About fifty-five thousand people had to leave their homes Why? Because we had a geological problem in a specific place in the neighborhood and a multinational company starts mining without any inspection I mean, the Environmental Institute, which is an ironic part of this whole story that should be doing the inspection Professor José Marques used to say "if we want to name the people responsible for this crime..." "...the first one, Braskem, but there will also be the IMA, the

Environmental Institute" They exploit the volume of these mines, without any security measures so that mines meet other mines and this can never happen and it culminates in February of 2018 with the heavy rains in Maceió Craters appeared in the streets cracked houses and on the third of March of 2018 one afternoon at two and a half o'clock, at two in the afternoon without rain, that day it wasn't raining and then there was an earthquake March 3rd, 2018 was when this tremor happened and we were all at home, it started to shake This phenomenon lasted about

three seconds On the day of the tremor, in 2018 my daughter lived up here She said the tremor was horrible that people from the buildings came down crying because it was an earthquake I was home, I didn't live here at the bakery I lived in a building that is very close, two stories high I lived there, and I felt something different really strange, my foot shook, I said "What a strange thing" I took my son and came here to the bakery When I arrived here, my husband said "Baby, did you feel it?" And I was

at the cashier, we had a big, long cashier He said the mobile phone hit the cashier And I said: "What is it?" And we didn't understand what it really was afterwards, the media announced that it was this tremor This house here From the outside you can see how much it has cracked Because in fact the tremor made an L and it ended here It was the house that was most affected, where the tremor ended I started seeing without knowing what it was in 2010 In 2010 there were already cracked buildings and there was on the

street, on a vacant lot a huge crack, more or less one finger wide but linear, I had never seen that in my life There in Pinheiro in the residential complex Jardim Acácia, very well known This crack here, which you can see I was outlining it every day I took some paint and marked the crack here always increasing until it crossed Back here there was block nine where I lived I got married in 2016 Block fourteen, block fifteen block eight, and block seven All of these were demolished and the famous Pilar grocery store that was the

soul of the neighborhood Everybody, a reference point here, Mercadinho Pilar Unfortunately it held on as long as it could because there is no more clientele here for it So, besides closing its doors unfortunately, a few days ago, the owner passed away And how did all this disappear? So many people knew what was happening and what could happen in the future and did nothing This was criminal, because they knew many geologists from our university already many years ago, twenty, thirty years ago they said: "a catastrophe is going to happen, there will be soil sinking" With the

technology that Braskem possesses it is impossible to say that it was not aware that this was happening And I dare say that the government should also be aware of it The point is that at some point it was going to be inevitable and maybe it was waiting for this moment to happen for something to be done The land gives in because there was no control no technical or social monitoring A study they didn't do fundamental at the time and didn't do, was the study of the integrity of the rocks This study is common Any study

of tunnels dams, large buildings, you see has to be done because you are going to go through several layers of rock The cracks existed The city was installed on top of a totally unstable system and mining was also perpetuated over more than forty years From that main avenue up to here from that building up to here everything is damned up to the lagoon It was a real bomb that fell here How is it possible that the Pinheiro, Bebedouro and Mutange neighbourhoods were unaware that there was mining underneath their feet? In other words, there was no

communication of risk to the population Here we have Mr. Joélinton's house Mr. Joélinton's former house On the day of the tremor there he was, his wife and his daughter and they had to break the door down to get out At that moment they didn't know what was happening nobody knew The first resident of the neighbourhood to have to leave the building because his house his residence This house will be the focus of studies for a long time stil because when the CPRM is there to do their field research they spend a good part of it

here because it is one of the faults that pass under here It comes from out front cuts underneath the house which it will hit even the set of pots through there This lineament this fissure lineation the fracturing does not suggest a deep process It's not possible that the bricklaying is bad and it repeats itself here in that building in the other and in the other It is some event in depth that generated these cracks over a period of years I know people who for more than fifteen years were repairing those cracks in the houses and

they kept opening obviously because the fault was active The CPRM [Company of Research on Mineral Resources] people were always studying here until the result came from the CPRM side saying that Braskem was the cause On May 8th, 2019 it then, in a dense report presented in the auditorium of the Federal Justice she puts the responsibility points directly, the responsibility for the issue of criminal exploitation of rock salt here, under our soils Two hypotheses, more... obvious, more consistent were that the "oquedades" were associated with the salt mines and that the geological fault that was also identified

by the geological service it was reactivated by the mining process making it clear, then that the cause of the subsidence of the process of falling soil of the instability of the soil was related to the action of mining It was not a process that we can blame on nature Because the geological fault, I always tell the students it was already here when we arrived so we need to respect nature Even when the studies were released the company did not agree it refuted the conclusions of the Brazilian Mining Company, CPRM and continued this conduct of not

taking responsibility To date, no director no Braskem CEO has gone to jail Nobody knows how this criminal case is proceeding Fifty-seven thousand residents are directly affected We are not talking about five thousand, no and even if it were and even if it were you don't have a company director in jail a person from the National Mining Agency who was an accomplice in all of this because they didn't carry out adequate inspections for forty-four years IMA, the Institute for the Environment of the State of Alagoas, itself did not do what it should have done and you

don't have a criminal record of this situation We are not even knowing if it exists From here you can already get an idea of the damage This was caused by the earthquake Here, just to give you an idea this whole part of the house on the left side here, on our side it collapsed completely only this side was left high In this case it caved in Look at the slab It got all twisted, crooked, you know I've lost a lot of weight my hair has fallen a lot I no longer have my full head of

hair My mouth tastes sour, my stomach hurts, I have blisters on my feet I mean, there is the question of health, do you understand? Which is, I think for me is the worst because it knocks you down, it knocks you down You lose the meaning of life because this here for me was the realization of a dream it was my future I mean, you lose your ground your safe haven. Do you get it? It is very tense to talk about Braskem because it destroyed many people I saw people commit suicide because of it I didn't

see it, we heard about people who committed suicide who even died of heart attacks because they were too worried afraid of what was going to happen where they were going to go if they were going to get the money or not You see people falling into depression because of a situation Braskem caused I lost a client; he was a very elderly man He came every day to buy bread and then he said "I will not leave my house, I will not leave my house" "My wife died here, I will stay here until I die and

so on" And then the day that Braskem went there to seal it he got sick, had a heart failure, and died Nine people took their lives because they could not bear to see the destruction of their memories, their affections in this criminally destroyed region This here was the civil defence who put it in Look here, it gave way – Where? – Look here, you can see a hole here Here right in the corner This was one of the hardest hits, this is where the tremor ended And they told me to leave Pinheiro but where would

I go without money? A roof and four walls in which I used to hang my hammock and doze off after lunch that was my home, sir So, it is crumbling, cracking, falling going down to the bottom of the well I will return to the old Belo Horizonte Street if anyone knows, then tell me In February of 2019 we initially gathered three Photographers Me, Arthur Celso, Jorge Vieira and João Facchinetti We started making weekly visits here to the region In the case, at the time, it was only the Pinheiro neighbourhood and we started to register it,

photographically making some videos and this later generated an itinerant exhibition here in downtown Maceió and also the mini-documentary called "Pinheiro, a neighbourhood of cracked lives" The photography of the Rupture Project [Projeto Ruptura] wants to show this to the world it wants to show this reality to show solidarity to the residents, the former residents to the population that is affected not only in these five neighbourhoods today, but throughout Maceió which will be affected, which is being affected We can't stand this kind of situation anymore even because those who are outside of the... because you know, there's

the situation of those who are on the map and those who are off the map of eviction or monitoring In my case, I live here but my building is off the map but we have no way of negotiating the flat We can't rent a flat, we can't leave So, we are also hostages of a neighbourhood that is abandoned It's a ghost neighbourhood, it has only become a transport corridor And more and more, this house is going to give in At some point it's going to give in – Right now, it's giving in too, right? –

Right now, yes At this moment we are here in a dangerous place because nobody knows what can happen And here I used to work like this selling at Cepa I used to sell at Cepa, selling Flau – Used to sell what? – I used to sell Flau – Frau? – Yes, Flau – What is Flau? – Flau is an ice cream a lollypop Then I sold it there at Cepa with the people who study, the students and then the crack started We had to leave our houses, I left I had six animals in my... –

They were rescued – They were I took four home I have been a resident of the Bebedouro neighbourhood for 30 years and I feed these animals that have been abandoned by their tutors because of the situation that is happening in the neighbourhood because of Braskem's criminal mining We come from Prado, we take transport so as not to leave the cats abandoned here we have also noticed that the number of cats here has decreased more as if they had been poisoned or taken to a shelter, we don't know Braskem installed some poison boxes some time ago

in each feeding ground for these animals These poison boxes are poisons for rodents We question this situation because why fight rodents in a neighbourhood where there are no residents, right? And also because the animals the cats that live on these streets they can eat this poison eat the rats that perhaps eat this poison and get poisoned too Nothing like this has ever been seen at least by the people of our community that brings back memories as catastrophic as this one So, we already live in a sub-human way because we're from the outskirts And today we

live being treated in a totally inhumane way Mosquitoes, rats, insects There are too many insects, look. See? Insect After what happened did it increase? Man, there wasn't, to tell you the truth there wasn't that much, that many bugs But now it's unbearable you have a small child you risk catching dengue fever And you see, the sewers are all over they're coming out into the street, they're all clogged the people are knocking down the houses it falls into the sewers, it gets all clogged You can see the houses here, can't you? Everything here was beautiful, look

Every afternoon we used to sit here having ice-cream, eating popcorn look, lad, how the state of things is today And here, when it's festival time like São João is coming if it was, if everything was normal there would already be a tent set up here and there would be some stalls there because here, when it was festival time everything was closed, everything closed There were lots of people in the street, really lots of people This girl with the hammer, why is she holding the hammer? They pull out bricks to resell Yes, to resell because most

of the people are working like this most of them used to work here because there was a little market where they used to work delivering water doing something like this now that everyone is unemployed they make bricks and sell them to other people The street here used to be very busy now, nowadays, you can't come here after five o'clock you don't walk here anymore Today, you walk through the neighbourhood and the feeling is one of war Really the only thing that can be compared to the appearance of the neighbourhoods affected by Braskem by this environmental

crime of Braskem the only thing that can be compared is really a war The situation here, you can see here it looks like a war in Iraq Bebedouro, it's over, it doesn't exist anymore What was it like here before? What was it like? It was everything, there was a market, everything Nowadays there is nothing, the grocery store is leaving If you film it from the air and compare it with an image from Syria maybe people won't be able to separate what happened to Pinheiro, Bebedouro, Bom Parto, Mutange such is the devastation The Mutange neighbourhood is

a neighbourhood that no longer exists on the map of Maceió One hundred percent was relocated, displaced from here because it is one of the main neighbourhoods that are at risk of some geological event deepening and putting people's lives at risk. We have a residence the determination of the Public Prosecutor's Office is that Braskem comes through Diagonal which is a third-party company and seal your residence This barrier that is now this way, broken is because the population as part of, and in the eagerness to to get an extra income they come, break, and start mining bricks

to be sold elsewhere It's because I'm unemployed, because I used to work at the grocery store and Braskem took it away, I'm unemployed because the people left What am I doing? I take the bricks from the old houses and reuse them to sell so that I can have an income to feed my family because the situation is very complicated Usually the conflict is for those who don't want to leave In our case, we really wanted to leave We really wanted to get out Because we know that we can no longer live here There is no

condition anymore – Have you found a place? – Yes we're already moving to a house in another neighbourhood – in the upper part as well – Renting? That's right, renting paid by Braskem When the first one leaves, and then he's going to get paid a process of emptying and shredding of the social fabric of the neighbourhoods began In other words, they are uninhabitable today regardless of whether you want to stay or not So this condition was created so that even those who didn't want to leave were forced to leave These buildings without a roof, without

a resident over time, they can serve as shelter for the proliferation of vectors of other diseases And then we begin to have another environmental problem which is precisely epidemics dengue fever, problems with rats In other words, vectors that can proliferate generating another environmental problem So, to ensure sanitation we recommend the demolition of these buildings I am resisting. I will only leave here in the last case And what would that last case be? The last case, like you asked me this girl here will leave we will be practically alone then it will be difficult because there

are only criminals Here nobody can open the gate for anything Trust in God that this is the situation we are living in And if Braskem comes by and says something I won't accept it A programme of financial compensation and relocation of these people was established so that they could leave this area of risk And then all this is monitored by the Civil Defence and accompanied, today by the Integrated Management Office of the Maceió Municipal Government by the Justice agencies and executed by Braskem While the euphemism is employed the company talks about financial compensation it must

be made very clear that this is a euphemism translating to minimally compensate the damage caused to the family to the people who were born in these neighbourhoods We are going away, leaving everything behind trying to start over, trying to start over Because, despite all of Braskem's compensation plan the moral damage is very, very big especially for those who are older, like my mother For me it is easy to start over But for her and for the elderly who are going to stay those who have already left here it is more difficult – Your neighbour as

well – Yes, my neighbour, Mrs. Geni she doesn't want to go there But it's a neighbourhood that no longer has housing conditions because of the evictions which are already very widespread here The abandonment, the danger, the houses are open there's no security at night a lot of insects are getting into the house a lot of cockroaches, scorpions, mosquitoes I won't leave. If I don't succeed, I won't leave I'm not committing any crime My house is not about to fall down Nobody can force me to leave Unless my residence was putting me at risk if it

had huge cracks If it had a deep sinking, serious things Then it would be acceptable If, suddenly, one of these houses these people, one of these residences we perceive, as has already happened the imminence of a collapse we will act according to the legal prerogative that the Civil Defence has to remove that person For now, while there is none, we allow their revolt that situation, to be assisted, for example by the GGI [Integrated Management Office], by the Judiciary so that the negotiation with Braskem may soon be effective What would you do in the future I

don't know, let's suppose nothing sinks, everything is fine could you come back here? I'm not going back, no because from the moment we leave from the moment we sign the document that releases the house we can't go back we can't go back anymore It becomes Braskem's property Every agreement, in quotes, that is made the person first accepts to leave they seal it, offer a support for the person to leave a so-called social rent But the person can only do this if they hand over the document And then Braskem becomes the owner of their property their

estate Legally, what is happening is a big mistake because Braskem, under the pretext of indemnifying is buying that region It' s a legal interpretation, there can be another one But in principle, that's what we can see This is very regrettable because they are houses, they are constructions that have much more than a number a financial evaluation there is the construction, and they keep memories Here we can no longer bury our dead Here, we, our history, right? There are no more The references of our friends we also don’t have them here in this neighbourhood either because

everyone is gone Braskem stole my house, my place I can no longer go by there because I always think "Hey, this was my place in Maceió" "and now it's property, Braskem's property" Look at the floor Everything, you know Look at this Here, the situation in Bebedouro You see? There are few people here on the street, but they're about to leave That's it. There are still people living here because there are cars, there are people Because they are waiting for their money there are people that have been here for two years that haven't received a pittance

Regardless of "ah, it's paying compensation" "it will allow us to buy another house" I won’t… How do I say this it will never compensate the relationship the home that we've had in that neighbourhood since we were children, get it? It will never compensate The company doesn't have to simply pay the amount the moral damages, material damages but everything that it entailed and harmed us not only now, but over time in other neighbourhoods that we will start again because it's a 13-year history in a neighbourhood sunk together with the crack of Braskem Braskem's assistance has been

zero until today I have never received any assistance from Braskem for relocation, for support to the point that I am trying to get back on my feet in another location and win new clients and move on with my life Very complicated we, to gain the confidence of our customers it took an average of 2 years and I'm afraid that in the future in another neighbourhood I will go through the same problem But we are hoping that everything will be alright Then I got another shop in another neighbourhood and I will have to start again from

scratch there I will have to try to win back the customers that every neighbourhood already has their bakery I will have to try to get other people's customers for myself which I already had for many years So, for us to arrive in a certain place where there is already a consolidated market for us to get in and try to place it it is a little difficult, because we will have to try to win over the public that does not know us yet And I was affected because I used to sell green beans here at the

houses both here and at the lighthouse and now I can't sell anymore because there are no more residents for me to sell to This was because of it, it wasn't because of us We lived here some are 50 years old, others 40 years old but we lived here This here was our experience Some worked with wagons others with Sururu this was our life, and it ended with our lives This is a lack of respect Public Prosecutor's Office you have to defend us residents There are more than 50,000 people being victimised and only a few here

fighting for the rights of those who are at home accommodated We cannot stop our fight So we are here claiming our rights our compensation, and also asking that when the Public Prosecutor's Office talks to Braskem, invite us because we are the people who have been harmed Justice! Justice! Nothing is being done I spent a month calling Braskem all I heard was "Call the Civil Defence" I called the Civil Defence the Civil Defence referred me back to Braskem a game of interest where we are the ping pong balls Out with Braskem! Out with Braskem! We went

to the streets several times we put 5 thousand people here in Fernandes Lima in a certain occasion, we closed it and the movement had all its body of residents always very engaged in this situation But as the residents leave for other neighbourhoods you lose this power of unity This situation of de-territorializing people brings about a great disunity and Braskem has worked on this crime in a very intelligent way, obviously and they take it away and try to solve the problem of the person individually because then you take away this mobilization Because when everyone is feeling

the same way the same callus in the foot, everyone stands together If I've already solved my problem I can settle down and not be in the fight anymore With the compensation still not concluded many families are in court fighting for fair compensation as I said, it was an agreement without any participation by the affected population the affected populations not to mention that Braskem only benefits during this whole process because Braskem does not admit guilt in this agreement even though we know that it is the criminal one, right? We are living an environmental crime And always,

also, we make a point of emphasizing that we are not Mariana and Brumadinho Samarco and Vale do Rio Doce Because so many people talking about Mariana and Brumadinho forget that Mariana and Brumadinho are the victims of the crime of two mining companies, like here So, the Pinheiro’s case, no The case of Braskem's crime For the city of Maceió, this was a very serious problem because you have a land mass of approximately 10km² within a small city So, this, from the point of view of urban mobility because you are having an exodus of 57 thousand people

and a 10 km² area within the city in an area that was undergoing real estate development So, this affected the city as a whole it is impossible to imagine that this is a problem only for those who live in these neighbourhoods This is a problem for all Maceió residents I don't see this as population relocation or other concepts I see it as removals Removals are forced displacements of population with impacts on the lives the bodies, and the flesh of these people So, for me it is important to define this as removal because this is also

a political cut You can't define it as simply population mobility which has left one residence, one house to another It's a process that affects fifteen thousand families and thousands of small entrepreneurs That's another side the economy of the micro-businessman of the micro-enterprise that generates employment that serves the neighbourhood with its businesses 4,5 thousand businesses in the 4 affected neighbourhoods and 30 thousand workers who were at risk of losing their jobs 95% of the businessmen in the 4 neighbourhoods depend exclusively on their businesses It's a huge impact not to mention the condemned urban equipment that the

company will also have to reimburse the city for They are streets, roads, pavements municipal and state schools health centres that must be relocated Look at the impact of this on the life of the city In the heart of Maceió, there was as if a bomb had exploded and the evacuation, forbidden area We are before the forbidden territory And we are left with no one to turn to You denounce it in the press and there is always a note: "We are acting within absolute legality" You go to the Public Prosecutor's Office, and they say "I can't

do anything, because this agreement is bilateral" Wait a minute, bilateral with whom? The Public Prosecutor's Office and Braskem What about us? And the businesspeople and the population, and the residents we have not been heard at any point up to the present time They find themselves in a situation of a forced migration process People go through a process of displacement without the choice of having a place to go and without the option to remain in their homes Today people die due to psychological reasons every day because those who have not left are faced with a situation

like this practically an Iraq of life The destruction present Then comes insecurity Then come the outbreaks of disease because the government is not present Braskem started with the small ones and starting with the small ones that have less notion of law less technical assistance they were closing small deals and created numbers favourable statistics When you go to the Public Prosecutor's Office and they're like "No..." "...ninety percent of the companies are accepting the agreements" But, three years later, everyone is already broke everyone is already bankrupt on the verge of business bankruptcy or sometimes death The tendency,

and this is a business strategy of Braskem is to starve you so that when you are already starving they can save you with any crumb Now, you say: "You may accept. You may not accept" But how can you not accept in front of a situation like this? You can't not accept If you don't accept, how will you be? Many people have already left already left their properties how are you going to go back to your properties? Many of them have even destroyed their properties under the orientation of Braskem itself They destroyed them, because Braskem said

"No, you can remove the roof tiles, you can remove the doors..." "...you can remove the windows" and people did How are these people going to come back, are they going to regress? So they were completely unaware left alone, left to their own devices without any bargaining power So for me this is not an agreement For me this is not a negotiation for me this is an imposition for me this is an adhesion agreement either you adhere or you don't adhere and you will lose your property And we never thought this would happen here If you

could choose, would you leave this place? Never, never So there are properties here that you would never rent with one thousand reais and the families had to pay part of these rents outside because they only received one thousand reais The money is deposited in an account but in fact the public prosecutor’s offices and public defenders the signatories of this agreement gave it total freedom to pay when it wanted So, that was one point it pays whenever it wants, within a period that makes no difference in theory two years, but it can be extended for longer

Braskem. It moves forward, Braskem. It does it according to the space that it finds to do what it does So, if it finds this space, it will advance and may advance to the point of saying that it will not pay anything anymore and we need to have the controlling agencies on our side which were constitutionally created for this There was no way to make an agreement and hear four and a half thousand people it would take, you know, some five years You file a lawsuit so that the judge finds liability and, consequently, order compensation to

be paid Every collective action is like that Society did not participate in this term of agreement what is called a term of agreement because it is not really a term of agreement it is a term of adhesion because Braskem was given the prerogative to define its criteria how much it should pay for the relocation of each family how much it wants to pay for rental assistance how much it wants to pay for moral damages and how much it wants to pay for each property It is said that the agreement was signed behind closed doors But

we know that an agreement of this magnitude, of this complexity is not made without hearing the population In fact, the population was not invited to sit at the table, to sign the agreement but certainly during the course of 2019 to 2020 several meetings were held both with the technical team and with the leaders of the associations as well as with the target audience itself A catastrophe that involves fifteen thousand properties and more than, almost sixty thousand people directly besides the secondary effect because who is, for example, in the Pitanguinha neighbourhood which is in the neighbourhood

next to the Pinheiro neighbourhood has already been affected Condemned from a real estate point of view. At least Because people will say: "Look..." "I don't want to sell. I don't want to buy a property there. It's too close" The people who will never be affected panicked because they see that they are three, five hundred meters away from the area that I outlined myself and that the civil defence also outlined So these people who are outside the affected area are so desperate And I made this map. So people have to be compensated too Because all the

properties that are outside the affected area are totally devalued Your property that was worth, I don't know, 500,000 reals now it's only worth 100,000, 200,000 at the most So what? So what? How long on average do these processes last? This process takes ten to twenty years There was the Palace 2 case in Rio de Janeiro I don't know if you know it In 1998, I think. I was entering the Public Prosecutor’s Office Twenty-two years ago That Palace 2 building, in Barra da Tijuca it collapsed To this day, they haven't been compensated There is a large

contingent, today, of lawyers working in these negotiations, isn't there? Some are even questioned from an ethical standpoint Many lawyers also come from outside and there ends up creating a very complicated internal market dispute And what the Bar Association has asked of these professionals is common sense The situation is a different one it is a situation that needs to be observed from the human point of view The prosecutors gave five per cent judicial fees in the agreement for the lawyers to receive money They would get paid for their service But in fact they dismantled the social

movements because we were trying to act as a group And then, with the arrival of dozens, hundreds or thousands of lawyers each one wanting to earn their share they acted in any way they could, without understanding the social and economic problem that was being caused because what mattered was to get the money right out of their pockets The more people who made a deal, the better And in this, a consolidated formation of business law or the right of informal businessmen was trampled upon We currently have more than six thousand proposals that were submitted by Braskem

Recently, we have the data of only twenty, around twenty rejected proposals Several businessmen have also already received their respective compensation To say that ninety-nine percent accepted Of course they will accept, who is going to stay here, doing what? Nobody, that's logical It calls my attention and makes me nauseous when I see an authority come on television and say that ninety-nine percent of the people are accepting this agreement But of course you will accept it But that's not the concept, that's another concept You have to do a satisfaction survey with each resident to know whether or

not they are satisfied with this term of agreement that was forced down their throats The amount discussed was in the legal framework and that did not include any opinion from the population A bipartite alliance between the State and companies however good it may be did not listen to the population, does not know the demands of the population So our struggle at the moment must focus on this the formation of a tripartite commission to review the agreement that was made Braskem offered us a miserable compensation which I can't even pay the employees who had to leave

the company because I didn't sell the company. I didn't fire the employees It was Braskem that got me fired from the pizzeria Água na Boca It was Braskem that kicked the employees out It is responsible for these debts It is also important to point out that what is unfortunately presented by the State and Judiciary institutions as an agreement, as a rescue to the affected populations is widely denounced by the affected residents as an unfair agreement Since the beginning, the tone that the authorities gave to this problem was to hide That of silencing, of not trying

to let it reach the public So, when the State Public Prosecutor’s Office heard about the first reports from CPRM that Braskem could be one of the responsibles for this problem here because of the earthquake of 2018, in March of 2018 it decreed judicial secrecy for a problem that is of profound public interest And it was only at the end of 2018, therefore, practically nine months after the problem that the SOS Pinheiro movement began to be created and shed light on the problem And then they took away the secrecy of justice After a lot of pressure,

obviously, it couldn't be different the State Prosecutor's Office the Federal Prosecutor's Office the Public Defender's Office got involved And what really scared all the residents the entities in the neighborhood the businessmen, everyone is that when the agreement was announced the agreement ended up being very generous to the criminal company and very unfavourable to the residents It's obvious that if you do a survey of one here and there you'll find people who are very happy with their lives The agreement, for example, was an agreement, at first of a single cut so what was proposed to the

Mutange resident was proposed to the Bebedouro resident to the Pinheiro resident indistinctly the person had to accept to leave and then enter into a negotiation process It is obvious that the entities shouted against this and are still shouting and denouncing that how can entities entities that should defend the people, be the voice of the people end up presenting a proposal that benefits the company that generated the crime more than the person affected by the crime? The Public Prosecutor's Office and the Public Defender's Office made great progress in reaching an agreement with Braskem, that was ratified

by the courts but there is nothing good that cannot be improved This agreement was signed at the end of 2019 and a lot of water has passed under the bridge until then This term of agreement, in my view, is a historic term of agreement considering that it is a preventive environmental guardianship The participation of the city hall itself in the agreement which as far as I understand was excluded from the negotiation Just imagine the city, which is the main injured party the tax issue, the environmental issue, the issue of public transport was excluded An agreement

made unilaterally could never be validated by the Justice but it was and we didn't manage, until today in all the attempts that the association of businessmen made with the public ministries we never managed a direct confrontation with Braskem because what the mining company says always counts never what we said No one was invited If we had been invited we would have made an excellent contribution This term of agreement would never have come out this way And I'm going to stress a clear detail here more than the population needed an agreement you can research this the

person who most needed an agreement was Braskem Because Braskem needs to be sold to save the rest of Odebrecht's companies And it, without having pointed out those liabilities there was not the attractiveness of international investors for it LyondellBasell gave up buying Braskem because of the Alagoas problem because it didn't know the size of the hole the size of the liability that was behind that issue Right now, Braskem is going through a sale process Novonor, which is the former Odebrecht, is being sold And it is not known the future destination of the relationships that Braskem has

signed with these movements the future of these agreements whether or not they will be taken over by the new investor Our idea is to change the City’s Master Plan It is to participate in the environmental discussion so that that region can be used based on criteria previously discussed with society If not, we will continue admitting mining? Within the city? Are we going to keep admitting potentially polluting activities in the city? After all this damage of billions and billions reais? We agreed that the future City’s Master Plan is a collective plan and by being collective it

incorporates the technical vision and also the community vision So, there is no way to make a future plan from my perspective, for the area if I don't know, first, what the geological future of that area will be It is very premature, when they ask us "What do you think should be done in the area?" we can't answer, because if we don't know how this will turn out how can we make any conjecture about what will happen here, in this area? And where are those tons of debris, of rubble of the houses that will be torn

down going to? All the residues there is also already an action for the processing of this residues These residues will be ground, we can say so The residues will be ground and will work as material for the asphalt base within the city All the material will be left to the City Hall The least Braskem can do is turn that area over to the city government to make a park I have already done the math. I am from the real estate market Braskem is getting three kilometres of lake shore and around three hundred hectares in urban

area, in one of the best neighbourhoods actually one of the best regions of Maceió In future value, in present value if it did a planned neighborhood it would make forty billion reais It is spending it is accruing, ten billion reais to solve the problem of the neighbourhoods A relevant fact on the stock exchange but potentially it will make forty billion reais when the land issue is stabilized It may take ten years, fifteen years but for a company which is on the stock market this becomes an asset It is not a loss The loss is to

pay the companies because it is not going to own any brand or any property. And that is why it is not paying Braskem has always practiced the good neighbour policy It has always treated the press well It manipulates the media showing out there that everything is fine here Showing that it is the big company that collaborates with the State with the municipality, with the public power And we, the victims, are left at the mercy of this company Braskem has a very strong presence in the economy Not only in the economy, but we all know the

very strong presence in the media in politics, with the State Government, with the City Hall And everyone was afraid, very afraid Everyone had their backs to the wall when discussing this issue of Braskem I don't know why, popularly I don't know why, but only now Globo comes to make this little six-minute television report It should be done in a broader way Could it be because it is in Maceió? Not in Rio de Janeiro, not in São Paulo? If it was in São Paulo it would be longer, of course nowadays, with communication everything is very fast

But maybe it is because the company is very powerful This isolation bubble is the result of Braskem's economic power The banks depend on the sale of Braskem for Odebrecht to pay the banks and the banks are the ones controlling these chess pieces together with the federal government through Petrobras So, if this problem erupted with the dimension that it really has first, the loss, which would be visible would be much bigger than ten billion much bigger Then, the legal instability would again prevent the sale So, the interests that are behind the billionaire interests that are behind

this problem prevent us from having the proper visibility. I have no doubt It is impressive I don’t understand why the world is not here yet Because this is something never seen before in the world This is a problem that effectively needs to leave the State of Alagoas The country and the world must see the dimension of this environmental problem that Maceió is living This problem must today, 2021 no longer reach another neighborhood in Maceió This is already a consensus with all the technicians, in the face of everything we have studied including everything I have studied

and come to conclude The fact is that we have Maceió under a state of emergency formally recognized. The federal government knows that it is the only Brazilian capital that has in its heart an area in public calamity and that this has to have serious solutions At the right time, the decisions have to be taken consistently so that we don't keep living with this fear, with this uncertainty and with the criminal misuse of Maceió's soil Ultimately, what we have to think about is what can we do from now on so that this never happens again? And

what to do so that more rights are not vilified by these companies? The issue is in a really conscious mining environmentally... linked to the Sustainable Development Goals which the world needs to comply with by 2030 So, I emphasize, mining must exist, of course but with special attention to society, to the people who are the ones who pay the taxes so that mining can happen The chemical industry operates everywhere in the world every country in the world has it, but under control, strict control What happened here was a predatory aspect of the process It is a

process of physical, symbolic, emotional, political urbanistic, environmental violence and all the adjectives you can think of If this has brought economic salvation to the state of Alagoas we have to discuss it I would have to have the numbers which are always very hard to get to know who it was worth for Who benefited? Who lost? Who won? This is the question we always ask: "who lost and who won?" In the first quarter of 2021 Braskem made an all-time record profit while 90% of the companies in the five boroughs are going broke without receiving compensation That's

where Braskem's profit is What I felt the most was when in the year 2018 there was a big meeting at CREA [Engineering and Architecture Regional Council] Right after the earthquake we had a huge meeting at CREA There were five speakers Professor Abel Galindo and four others The other four saying Braskem was a saint who had nothing to do with it and Professor Abel Galindo saying it was a demon, it was the devil that it had everything to do with it That revolted me when I saw people who I know have knowledge qualified geologists mining engineers

knowing that the company does have something to do with the problem saying that it has nothing to do with it Then when it is already taken care of, ten billion reais as compensation for everything. Ten billion A very big impact It is the biggest social and environmental crime in urban area in the world It should have national and international impact The world needs to know the monstrosity that is happening in Maceió, Alagoas Whoever is not on the side of the victims is on the side of the crime and of the criminal Braskem In these graffiti,

I think this phrase ‘Braskem bought Maceió’ is not even that true because it did not buy only Maceió It bought Maceió, it bought the state of Alagoas it bought the State Legislature, the City Council the State Government the Federal Senate and the Presidency of the Republic Because in the face of the biggest technological and environmental disaster underway in the world, in an urban area none of these authorities are giving it due importance