November 5th marks the 10th anniversary of the largest socio-environmental crime in Brazilian history—and the second largest in the world, behind only Chernobyl. The BHP/Vale’s Fundão dam collapse in Mariana (2015) released more than 40 million cubic meters of toxic sludge, killed 20 people, and buried the Doce River, one of the country’s most important river basins. Three years later, in Brumadinho, more than 272 people lost their lives, swept away by 12 million cubic meters of tailings following the Vale’s dam collapse. The most significant environmental tragedy in terms of the number of labour victims still awaits justice.

What seemed like an exception has become the rule: in 2025, 43 dams are on alert in Minas Gerais, 15 of which are at critical risk, directly threatening more than 95,000 people. It’s a development model that transforms trauma into a method. This institutionalised dam terrorism expels communities from their lands and condemns them to lives surrounded by fear, contamination, and abandonment.

Now, the new frontier of extractivism is moving to the Jequitinhonha Valley, one of Brazil’s regions with the lowest Human Development Index (HDI). Under the guise of “green progress,” the so-called “Lithium Valley” is advancing: a race for “white gold,” with billion-dollar investments to fuel the global demand for batteries and electric cars.

The promise of a sustainable future thus becomes yet another mineral rush—with the same methods, wounds, and injustices. This photo series arises from the urgency to affirm to the world that the so-called “clean” energy transition cannot repeat the mistakes of the past, nor deepen the ongoing cycle of injustice. They are visual documents of a struggle that belongs not only to the documentary filmmaker, but to all those who believe that building another world is urgent. The future cannot continue to be built on the rubble of the sacrifice zones of the Global South.

Let the world see. Let the world feel. Let the world hear.

The memory of mining crimes in Brazil cannot be buried.

Postponing the world’s end is remembering, resisting, and transforming.”

Isis Medeiros