Mining, territory and power in the Brazilian Amazon: geo-economic restructuring and governance fragmentation

• Large-scale mining actively restructures territory and local governance. • Extractivism produces selective and fragmented territorial development. • State strategies and global capital shape local extractive governance. • Carajás reveals spatial limits of extractive-led development in the Global SouthGHTS. This article analyzes large-scale mining in the eastern Brazilian Amazon through a territorial political economy perspective. It argues that mining cannot be understood merely as an economic sector or a neutral driver of regional development, but as a geo-economic process that actively restructures territory, governance arrangements, and power relations. The empirical focus is the Carajás mineral province, in southeastern Pará, one of the world’s leading mining regions. The analysis demonstrates that mining-led development produces territorial fragmentation, municipal reconfiguration, fiscal dependency, and socio-spatial inequalities, while reinforcing extractive-oriented local elites and weakening democratic governance. Rather than generating sustained territorial development, extractive expansion creates structural development traps marked by economic volatility and limited local autonomy. By mobilizing the Amazon as a analytically relevant case, the article contributes to international debates on extractivism in the Global South, highlighting the territorial and institutional limits of mineral-export development strategies.