MINERAL COOPERATIVISM IN BRAZIL AND BOLIVIA

Abstract

Mineral cooperatives currently assume a position of invisibility in the cooperative movement and academic production. The literature on these organizations, their challenges and organizational models is limited, not allowing concrete readings about their reality to be structured. In this scenario, it is proposed to undertake an analytical effort to overcome this gap. The article aims to establish a comparative overview between the cooperative organizational model prevailing in mining activities in Brazil and Bolivia. The work is characterized in terms of objectives as a descriptive, procedurally bibliographical study, adopting content analysis as a method, whose focus is on the way of functioning, the way of organization and the specificities of cooperatives in the mineral segment and what differentiates the Brazilian and Bolivian mineral cooperativism. Conclusively, the results allow us to infer that mineral cooperatives play an important social role, however, the trajectory, format and reality of mineral cooperatives in each country is different, especially due to the social reality, the historical trajectory of mining and the apparatus legal and institutional in these two countries. Both cases showed how the State has induced mineral cooperativism as an alternative to informality and illegality in mining, signaling the creation of merely formal cooperatives and the misappropriation of the organizational form.