5 Minutes: The aftermath of Brazil's worst environmental crime

5 Minutes is the first chapter of an ongoing investigative documentary project that denounces the environmental injustices carried out by mining corporations around the world. This work focuses on the aftermath of the biggest ecological disaster in Brazil’s history: the Samarco mine tailing breach.

The activity of mining comes with severe degradations to the environment and to the local communities. One of its sequels are the tailings dam which are basically a reservoir that holds all the waste created through the mining process. In Latin America, very often such dams are built at a low-cost capacity which generates a higher chance of collapsing and repeating devastations like the one in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019)

João Eletério is a poet and a farmer who lives in Biboca, Minas Gerais. He recalls what living by the Doce river used to be like, back when he could still make a living selling fish. The community, as João used to know, doesn’t exist anymore. Almost 7 years after the biggest ecological disaster in Brazil’s history, many are still traumatised by this man-made catastrophe.

Carla stands on top of a mound of dry toxic mud, exactly where she used to live with her family before the collapse of the Fundão dam. She holds a painting that shows what her town used to look like before her livelihood was disrupted by the environmental crime. She chose to be portrayed wearing a shirt that states: “collect moments, not things”.

This photograph was taken in September of 2021 and it shows a horse lying dead in a stream of water in Paracatu, Minas Gerais. The area was one of the most impacted by the Samarco mine tailings disaster. The town of Paracatu was mostly buried by the toxic mudflows unleashed with the dam rupture. The negative impacts on the environment – such as water contamination and water shortage – are still felt today, almost 7 years after the collapse.

Joelma, a farmer and resident of Governador Valadares, is determined to show the negative impacts of the environmental crime by holding in each of her hands the earth pre and post the dam collapse. The soil was turned into a rock solid of toxic mud.

The straight rust-red line was left by the mudflow on the Paracatu church’s walls both inside and outside. This sacred place only opens on special religious occasions. A glimmer of sunlight reflects off of the dark stained walls of the church on a day that the community demonstrates their hope and resilience in spite of the neglect they face from the mining companies who destroyed their livelihood.

The image depicts one of the rooms in the public school of Paracatu, a town that remains partially buried under the toxic mine waste. On the wall, a manifestation addressed to one of the mining companies responsible for the crime: “Give our lives back, Samarco”.

Joelma is a farmer who lives in Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais. She is entering the Doce River which is considered to be heavily contaminated after the Samarco mine tailings dam collapse. Almost 6 years after the disaster, Joelma has no alternative to consuming contaminated water from the river.

This photo is a digital manipulation that aims to visually represent the mud-line left by the toxic sludge after the dam breach. According to studies carried out by the SOS Atlantic Forest Foundation, the mud waste released by the dam rupture removed a total of 324 hectares of Atlantic Forest areas, a biome that concentrates 60% of the species of the Brazilian fauna and flora that are currently threatened with extinction.

5 Minutes is the first chapter of an ongoing investigative documentary project that denounces the environmental injustices carried out by mining corporations around the world. This work focuses on the aftermath of the biggest ecological disaster in Brazil’s history: the Samarco mine tailing breach.

In November 2015, the ‘Fundão’ tailings dam, run by the mining companies Samarco, Vale and BHP Billiton, collapsed in the state of Minas Gerais. The rupturing of the dam triggered a relentless wave of sludge that engulfed everything standing in its way. The rust-red plume of mud containing toxic mining waste left a path of destruction from the village of Bento Rodrigues down the Doce River all the way to the coast, decimating an area the size of Portugal.

Careless practices of growing the economy create a culture that places little to no importance on the well-being of the citizens, to the point that preventable catastrophic disasters take place. Almost 8 years have passed since the Samarco mine tailings dam collapsed and no individual or corporation was held responsible, the long-term damages to the environment have not yet been seriously addressed and hundreds of thousands of victims are still waiting for reparations whilst living in temporary housing. This was not the first avoidable environmental crime directly caused by humans and will not be the last. Legacies of colonial hegemony go beyond the violent mineral extraction, amplifying existing environmental injustices.

Adopting an experimental narrative, this work intends to materialise the socio-environmental impacts caused by the mining activity which are often imperceptible to the human eye. 5 Minutes is an attempt to structure evidence via a collaborative practice with the people impacted, people who had no more than 5 minutes to legally address the crimes committed by the mining industry against their lives and their lands.