Flooded: Development, Democracy, and Brazil's Belo Monte Dam by Peter Taylor Klein (review)

Reviewed by: Flooded: Development, Democracy, and Brazil's Belo Monte Dam by Peter Taylor Klein Steven J. Rainey Peter Taylor Klein Flooded: Development, Democracy, and Brazil's Belo Monte Dam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022. vii + 233 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $150 hardcover (ISBN 978-1-978-82613-7); $32.95 paperback (ISBN 978-1-978-82612-0); $32.95 e-book (ISBN 978-1-978-82614-4 [ePUB], ISBN 978-1-978-82616-8 [pdf]). Local controversies over construction of Brazil's Belo Monte Dam near Altamira in Pará state are the focus of Peter Taylor Klein's Flooded: Development, Democracy, and Brazil's Belo Monte Dam. The book combines the results of ethnographic work drawn from interactions with various participants involved in the conflicts, negotiations, and legal maneuvering that took place during the dam's construction with scholarly interpretations of unfolding processes. The result is a nuanced depiction of various participants' perspectives and experiences surrounding Belo Monte's construction. Klein's book falls within the environmental and social justice frameworks, focusing on the experiences of communities affected by the dam's construction. The book centers on the concept of democratic developmentalism, a development strategy in which democratic governments promote economic growth through large-scale infrastructure projects while simultaneously seeking to reduce poverty and alleviate the projects' social and environmental impacts. Klein notes that participatory decision-making, a central tenet of democratic developmentalism, is often criticized by some scholars and activists as justification for powerful interests to carry out their own agendas. He makes a compelling argument, however, that participatory decision-making should not be so readily dismissed, since it provides more space for mediation, which can enhance democracy by promoting inter-group cooperation. Part I, Hydropower, Resistance, and the State, provides the historical and theoretical contexts for Klein's analysis of the debate over Belo Monte's construction. Klein first examines the history of hydroelectric dams and how national leaders have used the rhetoric of development to justify dam construction, despite the associated environmental and social impacts. After providing a short history of dam-building in Brazil beginning in the 1930s under the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship, through its peak in the 1970s and 1980s under the military regime, Klein provides the Tucuruí Dam on the Tocantins River in Pará and the Balbina Dam in Amazonas state as examples of the social and environmental consequences of authoritarian approaches to dam construction. He then covers the rise of activism in the region that accompanied the military's push to expand the Brazilian frontier into Amazonia through infrastructure and colonization projects. He describes how the Catholic Church became the principal provider of local development during the Vargas dictatorship, later to be joined by labor unions, social movements, women's groups, and the Workers Party (PT), to push for regional development and resist dam construction on the Xingu River. This history of local activism influenced local resistance and accommodation during Belo [End Page 212] Monte's construction, as Klein demonstrates in subsequent chapters. Klein next explains how the PT, under the leadership of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reinitiated the push for Belo Monte Dam's construction, paradoxically undermining the burgeoning anti-dam movement, despite their support of Lula's presidential campaign. The decision for the construction split the anti-dam movement into two groups: those who continued to oppose the dam and those who chose to support the PT. The latter group sought to unite residents to support one another, identify and empower leaders, and build support for making demands about pressing issues. During this time, the offices of the public prosecutor and the public defender emerged as key actors in ensuring that Brazil's social and environmental laws would be used to benefit groups affected by the dam's construction and subsequent operation. Part II, An Ethnography of Dam Building, covers various interactions between the diverse groups introduced in Part I. Klein begins this section by detailing how the Steering Committee of the Regional Sustainable Development Plan of the Xingu (CGDX) provided a forum for groups affected by the dam's construction to air grievances by bringing together government officials and civil...