“The River Was My Teacher”: Poetics and Relationality in the Aftermath of Development

When calculating compensation for the displacement caused by the recent construction of the Belo Monte dam in the Brazilian Amazon, authorities placed a large emphasis on measuring the monetary value of lost property, overlooking the fact that for many people who were displaced, “home” included their proximity to the river and a rich relationship with it, at times that of a mother and child, at times a teacher or a sibling. This article explores what emerges in this precarious zone of displacement when we take seriously the question of relationality. In particular, I examine how poetics—through the poetic expression of local residents—allows one to express and/or imagine alternative realities that are invisible to development discourse. This invisibility is partly responsible for authorities’ inability to account for the depth of violence caused by the dam. I bring development scholarship into dialogue with Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, in order to highlight and amplify 1) the continuities between colonial and development discourses as well as 2) the relational sensibilities invisibilized by development projects such as the Belo Monte dam. As such, this article aims to foreground both the precarity brought about by the dam as well as possibilities of repairing the lives and connections torn by it.