Contaminated histories: environmental alliances of the fishing and quilombola communities against the slow violence of oil in Baía de Todos os Santos

Abstract

Based on two spill situations that occurred in 2018, the article presents the slow violence of oil in Baía de Todos os Santos. With it, I intend to contribute to anthropological approaches on environmental perceptions and impacts in the long term from three dimensions of analysis. In the first, I show the forms of production of the slow violence of oil, linked to the mechanisms of denial of its reality by Petrobras and the State. In the second, I describe how the fishing and quilombola communities of the region oppose it, articulating their rights in the judicial sphere and in the public debate through the intersection of the environmental, racial, gender, and climate agendas. And finally, I reveal the ways in which the slow violence of oil is inscribed in the coastal environments of the Baía de Todos os Santos, stimulating a look at the production of landscapes and habitabilities in the long term.

Keywords:
slow violence; oil; environmental perceptions and impacts; fishing and quilombola communities