The Meanings of Charcoal: The Community of Vargem da Lua (MG) and Charcoal Territories in 20th-Century Minas Gerais

Abstract

Charcoal production shaped and became integrated into the landscape of the Doce River Basin for over four decades in Minas Gerais. Aligned with the expansion of the steel industry beginning in the 1920s, charcoal helped to articulate a new territorial frontier through the various forms of land occupation by steel companies. Alongside this, it was responsible for processes of territorialization and for economies linked to charcoal production by peasants—pressured by the steel industry—and by charcoal-producing communities, through the low-cost appropriation of unpaid human and more-than-human labor. The community of Vargem da Lua, in the municipality of São Gonçalo do Rio Abaixo – MG, emerged in this context and established its territory through charcoal production. This article highlights the unique features and significance of this process, based on fieldwork conducted with local residents, aiming to contribute to the visibility of such communities, their actors, and their activities within geo-historical and political ecology studies. The article seeks to identify the networks formed by the community in the production of a specific economy and energy, whose purpose was subsistence-oriented charcoal production—distinct from, yet articulated with, the objectives of the steel industry.