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An interview with Oswaldo Sevá

[Translation of an interview from Brasil de Fato for Feburary 25. See original here.]

By Spensy Pimentel and Joana Moncau

An engineer with a doctorate in geography, Professor Oswaldo Sevá has been one of the principal allies in Brazilian universities of the social movements in their struggle against large development projects, like hydroelectric plants, mines and highways. These are efforts that he, in his courses at the Universidade de Campinas, calls “current conflicts of primitive accumulation.” The struggle he is most involved in currently is against the Belo Monte mega-plant on the Xingu River, a paradise of bio- and socio-diversity in the middle of the Amazon, now threatened by that project, which dates from the times of the civilian-military dictatorship and was resumed and brought up to date by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since the ‘80s, Sevá has been publishing studies critical of the project, demonstrating its faults and inconsistencies. In the following interview, the professor shows that the current scenario of socio-environmental conflicts has, in reality, a global significance, representing a challenge for the social movements of the entire world. And he warns, “The threat is very serious as well where intellectuals and politicians considered leftists recite prayers from capital’s missal, repeat the ideological mantras of capitalism and use their political and cultural capital to suppress critics and to make those who think independently more tractable, in order to isolate those who simply continue resisting expropriation.” (more…)