‘Quanto Vale a Sua Vida?’: Individuals' Resistance Under Corporate Repression

Abstract

In Minas Gerais, Brazil, activists challenging Vale's extractive activities are often portrayed as obstacles to economic progress, while their resistance is criminalised. Paradoxically, as corporate repression intensifies, individual forms of dissent persist and evolve. Through ethnographic research, this article explores how isolated activists navigate an environment marked by surveillance and legal intimidation, resulting in social isolation. It reveals a forced transformation from collective to individual resistance, and from broad anti-extractivism to targeted critiques of corporate practices. These transformations, while fragmenting movements, have engendered more resilient, albeit solitary, forms of activism, challenging narratives of complete corporate hegemony in extractive contexts.