When neo-extractivism reaches bodies and territories: agribusiness, vulnerability processes and coloniality

Abstract

Agribusiness, a hegemonic productive model in Brazil and in several countries of the Global South, has expanded in recent decades, linked to numerous impacts on human health and the environment. In Chapada do Apodi (CE), communities have been cornered by large irrigated fruit companies, some of them with transnational capital, which use a huge volume of chemical and pesticide fertilizers in their plantations, affecting not only the workers of these companies, but also the residents who live in the vicinity of these developments. From the presentation of the main studies and research carried out in the Chapada do Apodi territory on the impacts of agribusiness on human health and the environment, with emphasis on research that investigated the relationship between exposure to pesticides and the birth of children with malformations congenital diseases and precocious puberty in the Tomé community, the processes of deterritorialization and vulnerability are discussed, engendered by agribusiness, which are responsible for the imbalances in the health-disease process of local subjects. Through a critical theoretical framework, a reflection is built on the macro-structural contexts of capital domination, in recent years represented by neo-extractivism, and the perpetuation of a coloniality of being, knowledge and power. The rescue of peoples' knowledge origins, such as Buen Vivir, and the diverse and collective search for paths of emancipation, brings clues to overcome these asymmetries and injustices, in a decolonial perspective.