Agrofuel expansion and black resistance in Brazil: Energy landscapes as materialized unequal power relations

Abstract

In recent years, energy crops have become one of the most important strategies towards a sustainable economy in order to avoid the use of fossil fuels. In a way, Brazil can be seen as a pioneer since already during the oil crisis of the 1970s sugarcane ethanol was promoted there through extensive state programs. The associated expansion of sugarcane and other energy crops, though, is largely driven by large-scale agro-industrial enterprises, with the result that indigenous groups and quilombos are increasingly displaced. Understanding landscape as a materialization of power relations, we analyze socioeconomic dynamics in the municipality of Pompéu in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais as case study region. Doing so, we show that landscapes in general and energy landscapes more specifically represent the arena of socio-political negotiation on development pathways and models in their specific regional and historical context. Unequal power relations result in practical, symbolic, and discursive dominance of the most powerful land use, economic logic, and social life by delegitimizing, marginalizing, and disregarding alternative ideas. These processes are embedded in postcolonial entanglements and constitute (energy) landscapes within a globalizing world.