Gold mining in Brazil

Despite the influx of money and political power this generated, it did not facilitate proper construction of mining institutions, therefore much of the collection was inefficient.

Because artisanal mining is prohibited under federal law, the methods employed are often crude and unregulated, resulting in polluted water and massive deforestation.

[3] Illegal miners had been emboldened by the policies of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who opposed the protection of indigenous populations living in areas targeted for mining.

[4] In the 1690s, colonists known as Bandeirantes hunted the countryside (notably southeastern Colonial Brazil) for indigenous people to capture for the slave trade, and gold was discovered.

The discovery changed the history of eastern South America, expanded the use of indigenous and African slaves in the Portuguese colonial regions of the continent, and contributed to the borders of present-day Brazil.

Much like other gold rushes around the world of the era, the natural resources received notable environmental degradation from the mining process.

[7] Brazil's illicit gold mining industry began to fully blossom in the 1950s, consequently making the Amazon a focal point for the Brazilian Government.

The solution was to build a network of roads and highways penetrating the forest, thus allowing not only mass settlement in the region, but also the opportunity to extract resources quickly and effectively.

This was also seen as a way to prevent further migration in the south of Brazil, because highly successful agricultural operations were already underway and the government wanted to avoid any conflict between farmers in the region.

Though Brazil's Ministry of Agrarian Development presides over the land allocations and regulations that stipulate the rules landowners must adhere to, they fail in ensuring cooperation.

Thus, there ensues a case in which government agencies that preside in overlapping jurisdictions fail to clearly define multilateral policy objectives, which ultimately produces inefficiencies.

Once they found that the land they were allowed to farm on was not yielding consistently, they saw the need to make use of the entirety of their allotment, thus leading to the deforestation of the required riparian buffers.

Gold mining is explicitly illegal in the Amazon according to official federal mandates,[9] however, it persists due to the lack of government oversight described earlier.

Another big part of why the government isn't able to enforce policies on the artisanal mines however is because they cannot find the, since a lot of them are located in remote areas in the jungle.

Because the government does a poor job of patrolling the forest, the local chiefs are the informal gatekeepers and can essentially control who has permission to mine.

Many developers took little issue with the limitation of mining practices because, at the time, the price of gold did not render it worth the hassle.

[14] Brazilian miners, garimpeiros, came from all walks of life and corners of the country out to the Amazon rainforest to mine for gold.

"In all Garimpos there is a considerable floating population of non-garimpieros supplying goods and services; cooks, male and female prostitutes, mechanics, mule drivers, gold buyers, police troopers, traders, pilots, doctors, dentists, entertainers, photographers, and others".

[15] These makeshift pop-up towns seemed to resemble those of the Wild West in America, where the law was scarce, and a sense of social Darwinism was established.

[17] In a lot of small scale mining operations there have also been a lot of instances of forced labor and modern day slavery; which is defined as forced labor, which is enforced by violence and long working hours, since it violates the workers rights and includes degrading working conditions and restriction of workers to move around.

Tensions tend to run high when a lot of people immigrate to the area for the gold mines and for the new discovered deposits, which can impact the cultural practices of the indigenous groups and their way of life.

The difference is that today's technology vastly accelerates the mining process in the jungle, meaning that it is affecting double or triple the amount of land as before.

The two main sources of mercury contamination are the fish that these communities consume and how close to mining the individual is, and more importantly, the exposure to amalgamation.

[13] This results in a gritty operation through the use of hazardous technology such as explosive fertilizer and mercury, which ensures the capture of even the smallest pieces of gold.

Gold's recent surge, sparked in part by the terrorist attack on 9/11, has been amplified by the slide of the U.S. dollar and jitters over a looming global recession".