Soy Republics, by Fernando Rugitsky – 16 April 2026

From Phenomenal World

Corporate concentration and the far right in South America

Early this year, in the Brazilian Amazon, a coalition of fourteen indigenous groups rose up against a government decree that planned to privatize the waterway between Itaituba and Santarém—two towns in the state of Pará—as well as a public project to dredge the River Tapajós. The giant commodities trader Cargill controls ports in both towns that act as key nodes of the logistics infrastructure through which soy grown in the rainforest and savanna is sent to global markets, mainly in Europe and Northern Africa. In 2022, around 13 percent of all soy exported by Cargill from Brazil was shipped from Santarém, including almost two-thirds of the beans grown in the rainforest.

The groups launched the protest by camping in front of a Cargill terminal in Santarém and demanding that the government cancel both the privatization of the river and its dredging. The communities claimed that the plans, on which they hadn’t been consulted, posed a direct threat both to their livelihoods and to the rich biodiversity of the region, risking the release of harmful mercury from the riverbed. At its height, the camp had more than a thousand people. After just over a month, the government agreed to meet their demands. The reaction from the mainstream press was one of shock and horror.

The episode brings to the fore the critical role played by multinational corporations in conflicts around the Amazon. By looking at the South American soy boom in the biome and beyond, we can begin to grasp the ways in which corporate concentration in one of the region’s main export activities has contributed to both the rise of a far-right agribusiness bloc and popular mobilizations in defense of the environment. While one of my previous columns discussed how policies oriented towards “land-sparing” helped to create the conditions for bolsonarismo, here I will discuss another crucial factor in South America’s political evolution: the power relations within supply chains.

[READ THE REST]

Fernando Rugitsky is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at SOAS University of London. He writes Meridional, a column for Phenomenal World.

Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.