The Construction of Bento Rodrigues

ABOUT THE DISTRICT

Located 24 kilometers from Mariana (MG), the community of Bento Rodrigues, sub-district of Santa Rita Durao, was the first to be hit by the collapse of the Fundao dam on November 5, 2015. People started settling in this area in the early eighteenth century drawn by mining. The Estrada Real road, used to explore the central region of Brazil and connect it to coast of Rio de Janeiro, crossed its urban center. Until 2015, mining was the motor of its economy, besides family farming and subsistence farming on the banks of its main river, Gualaxo do Norte – highlighting the production of pout pepper jelly, which became a trademark of the region after a group of local women opened a cooperative.

Since the collapse, emergency actions have been implemented such as financial aid, temporary housing for the 255 affected families, who currently reside in Mariana and region, health care and psychosocial assistance. The serious consequences of the dam collapse have generated work focused on the resettlement of the community in a collective way, in which all the residents of the place of origin will have the option to move to a new common space, maintaining, as much as possible, characteristics of the place they came from. The need to build the settlement and re-establish its conditions and ways of life reinforces the central focus of the Renova Foundation on the resettlements, which covers the following stages: