Popular vigilance: In Santa Cruz, young researchers denounce environmental racism.

The history of Santa Cruz, in the West Zone of Rio, is marked by the fight against predatory industrialization. Martha Trindade, one of the first activists to raise her voice against pollution, passed away due to respiratory problems, but left a legacy that today inspires the Martha Trindade Collective. Formed by young researchers from the region, the group uses citizen research and education to counter the narrative of companies like Companhia Siderúrgica do Atlântico (TKCSA) and prove that development cannot cost the lives of the population.

One of the collective's first actions was to investigate air quality. Researcher Flávio Rocha explains that the steel company always claimed that the air in Santa Cruz was "better than that of Leblon." But the research refuted this claim. "We went to measure this quality. This process of reflection confirmed to us that the air here is not better than that of Leblon, and it also showed that the air is above the values allowed by the World Health Organization (WHO)," revealed Rocha. The work of the collective, which has already reached Fiocruz, shows that popular vigilance is a powerful tool for generating data and denouncing environmental injustice.

The collective does not only work in academia, but also at the grassroots level. In workshops supported by the Casa Fund, the group discusses the concept of environmental racism, showing how social and racial inequality makes the peripheries territories of sacrifice. "The production of narratives cannot be restricted to universities and the white population; the periphery also has the capacity to build together. We talk a lot about the populations that are sacrificed for the sake of development. All development has a price, and here it has been the lives of these people," argues the researcher.

The history of the neighborhood, which has one of the ten lowest HDI in Rio, is the backdrop to the struggle. Santa Cruz, historically occupied by fishermen and traditional communities, underwent accelerated industrialization that ignored local knowledge and impacted the region's food sovereignty. Pollution from the steel mill affects not only the air, but also Sepetiba Bay and the Guandu River, where fishermen see their livelihoods compromised.