Before the Flood: The Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil

by Jacob Blanc

In Before the Flood Jacob Blanc traces the protest movements of rural Brazilians living in the shadow of the Itaipu dam—the largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, local communities facing displacement took a stand against the military officials overseeing the dam's construction, and in the context of an emerging national fight for democracy, they elevated their struggle for land into a referendum on the dictatorship itself. Unlike the broader campaign against military rule, however, the conflict at Itaipu was premised on issues that long predated the official start of access to land, the defense of rural and indigenous livelihoods, and political rights in the countryside. In their efforts against Itaipu and through conflicts among themselves, title-owning farmers, landless peasants, and the Avá-Guarani Indians articulated a rural-based vision for democracy. Through interviews and archival research—including declassified military documents and the first-ever access to the Itaipu Binational Corporation— Before the Flood challenges the primacy of urban-focused narratives and unearths the rural experiences of dictatorship and democracy in Brazil.

320 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2019

Reviews

[Brumaire Bodbyl-Mast · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting look into a relatively overlooked factor of the Brazilian military dictatorship: its response to rural populations, especially when they challenge its prestige on a national and international stage. The Itaipu dam generates about 20% of Brazilian electricity, and 75% of Paraguayan, both massive numbers for one such infrastructural project. The dam was built in collaboration between the two whilst they were both under separate military dictators. The lands which the the Itaipu’s reservoir flooded were lush and storied, and were home to three main groups which Blanc discusses: the landed, mostly Euro-descended farmers, the landless, of diverse backgrounds, and the Ava-Guarani, the local indigenous group. He defines the three in their relation to their land, positing and interesting land/legitimacy dialectic, that is, the farther from a standard, liberal ideal of a relation to the land, the less legitimate their ideas become in the eyes of the general public and especially media and elites. Resistance to the dam was different between the three groups, though it occasionally overlapped. Here the legitimacy model proves especially interesting, as each protest movement receives differing degrees of national attention. First, the landed peasants with a relatively simple demand for compensation, then, the indigenous who attempt to work out their own relationship with the state and the land, and finally the landless, who want full on land reform, or even potentially communal ownership. All of these protests also have particular relationships with the then-ongoing process Abertura, with unsurprisingly the landed farmers getting the best experience. In fact, a journalist covering them gets arrested turns into a central part of Abertura protests- though he seemed to have been imprisoned for upsetting local elites rather than the dictatorship. Overall, an interesting read, with a fairly diverse round of chapters. Admittedly the timeline can be confusing as well.