The new gold rush accelerates the destruction of the Amazon

Standing in front of the immense hole he dug in the middle of his farm, Brazilian Antonio Silva tries to explain why he became a gold digger in the Amazon again.

This 61-year-old grandfather of six grandchildren had given up his time as a “garimpeiro”, when he allowed himself to be seduced by the gold rush, damaging the environment in the process.

But the pandemic arrived, prices skyrocketed, and he made a decision: He invested his 50,000 reais ($ 9,000) savings in renting an excavator and hiring four workers to dig in the land he had initially bought to raise cattle, in a deforested area. from Sao Felix do Xingu, in the state of Pará, southeast of the Amazon.

From the hole, the size of a large house, now comes cloudy water, pumped and filtered to separate the gold particles. With disappointing results.

“I know it’s wrong. I am aware of the problems that mining causes. But I don’t have any other income ”, Silva (a pseudonym) is justified, whose first time as a“ garimpeiro ”coincided with the gold rush of the years 1970-1980.

At that time, he worked in the Serra Pelada mine, sadly known for the images of hordes of men covered in mud, climbing its flanks laden with sacks.

Illegal mining is now booming again in the Amazon basin, fueled by the rise in gold prices: an ounce reached as much as $ 2,000 last year.

To investors’ eagerness to turn to safe haven during COVID-19, thousands of miners responded by digging in the largest rainforest in the world.

So far this year, they have destroyed 114 km2 of the Brazilian Amazon, the equivalent of 10,000 football pitches, the largest annual area in records.

The bulk of this destruction, according to Greenpeace, occurs in indigenous reserves, where gangs of ‘garimpeiros’ install large mines with heavy material, attacking villages, transmitting diseases, polluting water and devastating communities whose knowledge and respect for nature are key to save this territory.

‘You will have to kill me’

Almost 1.2 million km2 of the Brazilian Amazon correspond to indigenous reserves, the majority in virgin forest.

Many are rich in minerals and their remote location makes them easy targets for gold seekers, whose arrival also triggers, according to investigators, other drug-related crimes, prostitution of adults and minors, slave labor …

The government estimates that some 4,000 illegal miners currently operate in indigenous territory in the Amazon, a figure, according to analysts, greatly underestimated.

Recent studies determined that they used 100 tons of mercury between 2019-2020 and that up to 80% of children in neighboring villages suffered neurological damage due to their exposure.

Mercury, used to separate gold from the ground, also poisons fish, a food source for many communities.

Some towns try to organize to put an end to this nightmare, organizing everything from patrols to protests. Not without risk.

Maria Leusa Munduruku is a leader of the Munduruku community, whose territory in Pará has been one of those that has suffered the most.

When illegal miners began buying members of his village with money, alcohol and drugs to enter their tribal land, the 34-year-old Munduruku organized local women.

But right away, he began receiving death threats, he says. On May 26, armed men broke into his home.

“They doused my house with gasoline and set fire,” he tells the AFP, wearing a wreath of red flowers over her black hair, as she breastfeeds her baby.

“I told them I would not go. That they would have to kill me. My house survived. God only knows why it didn’t burn. Everything inside was burned.

Munduruku, with five children and a grandson, moved on. In September, she traveled 2,500 km to Brasilia, to co-lead a protest by indigenous women asking the justice to protect their lands.

“We must make sure that our children have a river to fish in, a land to live in,” he says.

“That’s why I keep fighting.”

Bolsonaro’s support

Brazil, the world’s seventh largest gold producer, mined 107 tons last year, according to official figures.

A recent study showed that only a third of Brazilian production has a documented legal origin, while current regulations allow sellers to guarantee it simply by signing a piece of paper.

With the ultra-rightist government Jair Bolsonaro’s plans to open up indigenous reserves to mining, illegal activities also soared in this difficult-to-control region.

“We realized that police operations on the ground were futile,” says Helena Palmquist, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Pará.

The miners were fleeing when the police arrived, he explains. And although the authorities burned the machinery they left behind, they were easily replaced despite the fact that, for example, an excavator costs 600,000 reais ($ 108,000), which shows the financial strength of the gangs.

So the prosecution had to use creativity to hunt down the funders.

In August, it suspended the operations of three large gold operators, claiming a fine of 10.6 billion reais ($ 1.9 billion). The sentence is pending.

But there are great interests at stake.

“The lobby of the gold sector regularly meets with the Minister of the Environment, with senior administration officials. They have direct access to the government, ”says Palmquist.

“And there is this deep-rooted belief in Brazil that the Amazon is a good to be exploited.”

Although this could be changing.

In Sao Felix, Dantas Ferreira usually fishes at dusk in the Xingú River, a tributary of crystalline waters of the Amazon in which another river further north, the Fresco, discharges a cloudy water that according to the authorities comes from the residues of illegal mining .

Like many people in this town, Ferreira, a 53-year-old rancher, proudly supports Bolsonaro.

But he assures that environmental destruction has gone too far in the region.

The president “has to stop this,” he says.

“If they don’t stop illegal mining, our water will never be normal again.” (I)