JLAG Perspectives: Videography for Participatory Cartography in a Site of Wind Power Conflict in Coastal Ceará State, Brazil

• Published in: Journal of Latin American geography 2017-11, Vol.16 (3), p.159-163
• Main Authors: Gorayeb, Adryane, Brannstrom, Christian, de Sousa Mendes, Jociclea, de Andrade Meireles, Antonio Jeovah, Chaves, Leilane Oliveira, da Silva, Edson Vicente
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alternative energy sources; Audiences; Cartography; Coasts; Community; Documentary films; Green technology; Land rights; Mapping; Videography; Wind farms; Wind power; Wind power plants
• ISSN: 1545-2476; 1548-5811; 1548-5811
• DOI: 10.1353/lag.2017.0049

Installed wind power capacity in Brazil expanded rapidly from 28.6 megawatts (MW) in 2005 to 10.6 gigawatts (GW) installed electrical capacity in 2016-roughly a 37,000 percent increase in just over a decade. Here, we discuss the process of creating a 20-minute video, "We Made Our Map: Territory, Participatory Cartography, and Wind Power in the West Coast of Ceará, Brazil" (LabocartUFC 2016), which shows results of a participatory mapping project that helped a traditional community secure land rights when threatened by a wind farm. After many complaints by Xavier residents, in 2013 the wind power firm donated R$540,000 (approximately US$130,000) to the Xavier community association for the construction of twenty-two brick houses, one per family, to mitigate the negative impacts of the wind farm. In 2014, project leaders Gorayeb and Meireles decided to make a documentary film about the problems caused by the wind farm in the Xavier community, and on the stages of cartography applied to community resistance, resource access, and traditional livelihoods.