Maceió on unstable ground.
Since 2018, the city of Maceió has been grappling with a silent and devastating transformation. What began with tremors and cracks in walls revealed a much deeper process: the progressive collapse of the soil caused by Braskem’s decades-long exploitation of rock salt.
The Brazilian multinational petrochemical company is one of the largest producers of thermoplastic resins in the Americas and has been mining in the state of Alagoas since the 1970s.
Extracted by dissolving underground rock, the minerals left behind a network of unstable cavities beneath densely urbanized areas.
Over time, these structures gave way. The land began to sink.
Entire neighborhoods were compromised as cracks multiplied, buildings posed structural risks, and streets had to be closed off. Areas such as Pinheiro, Mutange, and Bebedouro were progressively emptied, giving way to a landscape marked by abandonment. Closed homes, shuttered businesses, and entire blocks transformed into danger zones came to define the landscape of a city that, at certain times, had to be partially evacuated. More than 60,000 people left their homes, displaced by a threat that did not end — it only grew.
Over the years, the crisis has intensified in cycles. Warnings of imminent collapse, constant monitoring of the mines, and new urban lockdowns have created a recurring state of emergency.
On various occasions, entire areas were cordoned off, movement restricted, and the population placed on alert. Maceió began to experience an unusual condition: that of a city periodically besieged by a disaster moving beneath the surface.
In this fragmented territory, the neighborhood of Bom Parto remains a space of constant tension. Located between evacuated areas and risk zones, it has not been completely emptied, nor has it been preserved. Its residents live with soil instability and the deterioration of basic services. Water shortages have become frequent. Power outages are recurrent. Access to urban infrastructure deteriorates as the surrounding environment falls into disarray.
The alarming situation, which experts had been predicting since the late 1990s, sparked widespread panic following the collapse of Mine 18 in December 2023.
The mining region operated by Braskem experienced severe structural problems in its tunnels and pipelines, affecting the neighborhoods of Bebedouro,
Pinheiro, Bom Parto, Mutange, and Farol.
It is in this context that protest emerges as a form of everyday expression.
In Bom Parto, demonstrations are not isolated events,
but part of daily life. Residents take to the streets, organize rallies,
and demand not only redress, but basic living conditions.
They denounce negligence, challenge compensation deemed insufficient, and demand visibility for a reality that insists on remaining on the margins. Collective mobilization thus establishes itself as a form of resistance in the face of a process that displaces, silences, and fragments.
What is unfolding in Maceió is not merely a geological phenomenon.
It is a profound rupture in the city’s structure. The ground gives way, but along with it,
the bonds, memories, and ways of life that sustained these territories also give way.
Between ghost towns and neighborhoods that resist, the city continues to exist in a state of constant instability — a place where the land, once a symbol of achievement for its residents, has become the manifestation of the failure of large-scale extractivism.
