ANATOMY OF THE AMAZON GOLD RUSH

Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush

David Cleary Research Fellow, Department of Business Studies Edinburgh University

M in association with Palgrave Macmillan

MACMILLAN

© David Cleary 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-51473-3

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First published 1990

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cleary, David Anatomy of the Amazon gold rush. 1. Brazil. Amazon River Basin. Gold mining industries I. Title 338.2'741 '09811 ISBN 978-1-349-11249-4 ISBN 978-1-349-11247-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11247-0

Aos companheiros do garimpo, e a memoria de Chico Mendes

Contents

List of Plates

List of Maps

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgements

A Glossary of the Gold Rush

Acronym Glossary

Introduction

1 An Introduction to the Amazon Gold Rush

2 Garimpagem in Maranhao

3 Fofoca: The Formation of Garimpos

4 The Social Structure of the Gold Rush

5 Economic Life in the Garimpo

6 Social Relations in the Garimpo

7 Serra Pelada: The Gold Rush on the National Stage

8 Garimpagem, Formal Mining and the State

9 The Implications of the Gold Rush

Postscript

Appendix

Notes and References

Bibliography

Index

vii

Vlll

IX

X

xi

XII

xiv

xvi

xvii

1

27

51

73

104

133

164

188

211

231

232

234

240

244

List of Plates

1 Basic instruments: 'cuia' (1) and 'bateia' (r) 2 The bateia in use: panning 3 Cobra fumando: note bateia being used to catch overspill 4 Supplying water to a cobra fumando 5 The moinho, a portable mechanical crusher, with motor and pile

of alluvium in background; the caixa in the foreground is being cleaned for gold, with riffles laid out on the right

6 Caixao, as used in chupadeira and raft garimpagem 7 A chupadeira (foreground) with pipes going up to caixao and

down to barranca 8 High pressure hoses in use during a chupadeira operation; the two

men sitting in the water are ensuring that no stones are sucked up into the chupadeira

9 Manual 'rebaixamento', showing terraced shape it typically assumes 10 A good haul: mercury saturated with gold resists water flow at

bottom of caixa 11 The final stages: excess mercury being drained off in a bateia, with

'pancake' of gold and mercury lodged in centre 12 Mercury being burnt off with butane torch; note it is being done in

area of food preparation - gas cooking rings top left 13 Gold; Santos Neto is holding about 100 grams, worth around

$1000 in 1985 14 Montes Aureos; earth dam constructed by British in 1859 now

planted with banana trees in foreground, modern barrancos cut into hillside behind

15 Detritus from earlier rushes: in Montes Aureos a steam boiler and cogwheel abandoned by the British in the 1860s rusts in the middle of a modern garimpo

16 Serra Pel ada (photograph by Sebastiiio Salgado) 17 The 'fofoca' ofTrinta Cinco in its early days: moinhos amid forest

only partially cleared in rush to get into production 18 Cigarette break

viii

List of Maps

1 Principal goldfields in the Brazilian Amazon 2 Guru pi goldfield, western Maranhao 3 Serra Pelada and southern Para

ix

xxiv XXV

XXVI

List of Figures

4.1 Age distribution of Gurupf do nos and workers 4.2 Origins of Gurupf workers 4.3 Origins of Gurupf do nos 4.4 Social structure in the garimpo 4.5 Social mobility in garimpagem

X

76 77 78 83 98

List of Tables

1.1 Official gold production figures and DNPM estimates of real gold production figures, Brazil1975-87 (metric tons) 4

1.2 Official figures for gold production in Serra Pelada, Tapaj6s and Cum ani garimpos, 1980-6 (metric tons) 4

4.1 When entered garimpagem? Gurupi donos and workers 79 4.2 Worked in other goldfields? Gurupi donos and workers 79 4.3 Father's occupation: Gurupi donos 80 4.4 Father's occupation: Gurupiworkers 80 4.5 Work before garimpo: Gurupi donos 81 4.6 Work before garimpo: Gurupi workers 81 4. 7 Distribution of Guru pi garimpeiros in occupational

hierarchy 96

xi

Acknowledgements

My first thanks should go to Peter Riviere, of the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford University, who guided this project wisely from the beginning, and Alan Angell and Verena Stokke, who made many useful suggestions on how to transform a thesis into a readable book. Research was financed by the Economic and Social Research Council in London from 1983 to 1986: I also received financial help from the Royal Anthropological Institute, in the form of a Radcliffe­Brown Memorial Award, and from my mother, Mrs Shan Duff-Smith, to whom I am more than grateful.

I could not have written this book without the friendship and help of many people in both Brazil and Britain. The Rector of the Universidade Federal do Maranhao, Professor Jose Maria Cabral, generously allowed me affiliation to the Departamento de Sociologia e Antropo­logia of the Universidade, which enabled me to stay for so long in Brazil. In Sao Luis I owe a great deal to Darrel Posey, Dan Linger, Lynn Simons, Sergio and Mundicarmo Ferretti and Carlos Augusto Ramos. I would also like to thank Deputado Gastao Dias Vieira, Deputado Jose Carlos Saboia, and Pedro Braga. In Belem, the Departa­mento Nacional de Produc;ao Mineral, DOCEGEO and the Companhia do Vale do Rio Dace generously allowed me unrestricted access to their archives and technical personnel. I thank Luis Bandeira of DOCEGEO, Alberto Rogerio da Silva, Jose Leal, Carlos Santos Neto, Otavio Blanco Rodrigues and Agildo Pina Neves, all of the DNPM, Davi Leal of the CVRD and Deputado Gabriel Guerreiro. In Brasilia: Jorge Carvalho, Rita Segura, Alcida Ramos, Julio Melatti and Deputado Ademir Andrade. The Instituto Brasileiro da Minera~ao was generous with its records and patient in explaining its position. Marianne Schmink in Gainesville kindly shared her own work on the gold rush with me. In Oxford writing was made easier by the support of Melissa Parker, Charlie Davison, Steve Vertovec, Circe Monteiro, Anna Fernandez, Mary Vincent, Helen Lambert and Tom Cheesman.

Finally, I thank above all the villagers of 'Geraldo' and the garimpeirosofCerqueiro, Nadi, Montes Aureos, Cedral, Trinta Cinco and Pica-Pau. I could not have begun to write this book without the help, interest and friendship of Santos Neto, Escuro, Antonio Garimpeiro, Parafba, Jose Benedito, Chichico, Esfdio, Edson, Geraldo Maciel, Pernambuco, Tarpona, Antonio Mineiro,

xii

Acknowledgements Xlll

Joao da Mata and Zequinha. I dedicate it to them, and to the memory of Chico Mendes, assassinated 22 December 1988: companheiros de verdade.

DAVID CLEARY

A Glossary of the Gold Rush

Alvard de pesquisa Azougue Balsa

Bamburrado Bamburro Barranco

Bateia Blefado Blefar Caixa

Caixiio Cantina Cantineiro Chupadeira

Cobra fumando C6digo de Minera~iio Cuia Curimii

Dalla

Desbravador Despescagem

Did ria Diarista Dono Fofoca

Mining permit Mercury Type of gold mining using chupadeira (see below) mounted on raft and a diver Someone who has struck it rich A rich gold strike Digging, area of gold extraction, usually measuring 5 by 5 or 10 by 10 metres Gold pan Bankrupt To go bankrupt Narrow wooden sluice lined with blankets or sacking: essential part of all mining machinery used in garimpos Large caixa used with chupadeira (see below) Small store in garimpos Owner of cantina, trader and supplier Form of gold mining using motorised suction pumps, high pressure hoses and caixao Simple wooden machine used for alluvium Legal code governing Brazilian mining Small bowl, gold pan Material which has already been put through machinery at least once A series of sluices. Common in Tapaj6s garimpos, used in nineteenth-century gold rushes. Pioneer prospector Cleaning out of machinery and collection of gold Work regime paying daily salary Garimpeiro working on diaria Owner of barranco and/or machinery Literally 'rum our, gossip'. Initial phase of formation of garimpo, excitement provoked by gold strike.

xiv

Lontona

Manso Meia-prar;a

Meieiro Mergulhador Moinho Ouro Peiio Pepita Pesquisa Porcentagem

Porcentista Radio peiio Rebaixamento Repassagem

Reque Sacudia

Sociedade Socio Xeique-xeique

A Glossary of the Gold Rush XV

Type of sluice, dating from last century, especially common in Tapaj6s Experienced garimpeiro Work regime where profit shared between dono and work crew Garimpeiro working under meia-pra~ra Diver on a balsa (see above) Small mechanical crusher Gold Worker (can be derogatory) Nugget Prospecting Work regime where gold divided between dono and workers on a percentage basis Worker under porcentagem Informal information networks in garimpos Deepening of a barranco The practice of passing material through machinery several times Bonus payment (see Chapter 5) Simple wooden machine; precursor of cobra fumando Formal partnership in gold mining operation Somebody who enters into a 'sociedade' English: 'shake-shake' (Guyana): sacudia

Acronym Glossary

CEF Caixa Economica Federal. Federal savings bank in charge of state gold buying programme.

COLONE Companhia da Coloniza~ao do Nordeste. Land colonisation company funded by World Bank and Brazilian government to regularise land occupation in western Maranhao.

CPRM Companhia de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais. State-owned prospecting and mining research company.

CVRD Companhia do Vale do Rio Doce. Largest Brazilian mining company, federal government majority shareholder.

DNPM Departamento Nacional de Produ~ao Mineral. Federal agency supervising mining in Brazil.

DOCEGEO Rio Doce Prospe~ao e Geologia. Prospecting subsidiary of CVRD.

IBRAM Instituto Brasileiro da Minera~ao. Association of Brazilian formal sector mining companies.

MME Ministerio das Minas e Energia. Federal Ministry of Mines and Energy.

PDS Partido Democnitico Social. Governing party of military regime in power in Brazil from 1964 coup to 1985.

PEGB Projeto de Estudo dos Garimpos Brasileiros. Research programme on garimpagem run by DNPM, CPRM and MME.

PMDB Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro. Main party opposing PDS from 1964 to 1985.

SNI Servi~o Nacional das lnforma~oes. Powerful military intelligence organisation used to oversee federal intervention in Serra Pelada.

xvi

Introduction

The research on which this book is based was carried out over almost two years in Brazil from April1984 to March 1986. I did not originally intend to work on the Amazon gold rush. I arrived in Brazil with a research proposal about rural-urban migration in the state of Maranhao, in eastern Amazonia, and I had selected the city of Imperatriz in the south of the state as a likely place to do fieldwork. I knew from background research in Britain that Imperatriz was near to one of the largest goldfields, but as I had never been to Brazil I did not realise quite how important this fact was. When I arrived in Imperatriz the scale and the importance of the gold rush came as a revelation, and I decided I should not be bound by research proposals that had been formulated without direct knowledge of eastern Amazonia. I began to think that I should do research on the gold rush taking place around me instead, and confirmed this decision after casting around and realising that surprisingly little had been written about garimpagem, informal sector gold mining by social scientists.

The first stage of fieldwork was four months spent in the capital of Maranhao, Sao Lufs, doing archive research on the history of gold mining in the state and improving my command of Portuguese to the point where I could start to do ethnography. From September 1984 three months were spent in the city of Beh~m interviewing politicians, staff of the state mineral agencies and companies and working in their archives. Two visits, one lasting five days and the other two weeks, were made to the city of Maraba during this time. Maraba, in southern Para state, is the jumping off point for what was then the large and thriving mining camp of Serra Pelada, where I hoped to do fieldwork. Unfortunately, this proved impossible. Serra Pelada was at that time under the control of the federal government, and I was unfortunate enough to be trying to go there at a time when the bureaucratic situation was more than usually chaotic. After twice having to begin the process of application again after the body in charge of the mining camp changed, I gave up.

Fortunately, in January 1985 I got lucky. In Sao Lufs I met a friend of a friend who had worked in a mining camp called Cerqueiro, part of the Gurupf goldfield in western Maranhao. For a fee, he agreed to take me there and introduce me to his colleagues. It was thus purely by chance that I ended up doing fieldwork in the Gurupf rather than

xvii

XVlll Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush

anywhere else. I went there for five weeks in February, and paid two further visits from May to July and September to December, spending a total of five months, and it was during these visits that most of the ethnographic material presented in this book was collected. The second and third visits were unaccompanied.

I had been prepared for a certain amount of suspicion and hostility on the part of the garimpeiros, the gold miners. They are not warmly regarded by either the Brazilian government or mining companies, and initially at least there were rumours that I was a spy in the pay of one or the other. I took the view that there was no point in worrying about this, and that the only thing I could do was hope that over time my actions would bear out my explanations of who I was. These explanations varied according to the audience. Some garimpeiros with a middle class background knew what anthropologists are and what they do. To others for whom it would have been meaningless to introduce myself as a social researcher, I said that people outside the mining areas have strange ideas about what garimpeiros are like, and I was collecting material for a book which would explain things better. I felt this was one way of explaining myself in terms which did not patronise or distort. Although a few people were never convinced, the vast majority of garimpeiros with whom I came into contact accepted these explanations, and although I was always seen as eccentric I think I was only rarely perceived as an enemy.

Over time, as I had hoped, the initial barriers of suspicion fell away. I did what I could to hasten the process by bringing small gifts when I returned, giving people copies of photographs I had taken of them, and handing out postcards of Britain to satisfy people's constant curiosity about where I came from and what life was like there: many times I felt it was they who were doing anthropology on me rather than the other way around.

When I was in Cerqueiro I lived with a dono, a small entrepreneur, who became a close friend, and a succession of work crews. There were at least six garimpos, or mining camps, within a few hours walk from Cerqueiro, and at one time or another I visited them all, usually only for a few hours or a day with the exception of Montes Aureos, where I spent a total of two weeks. Everywhere I went people already knew who I was and what I said I was doing- a testimony to the ubiquity and importance of 'radio peao', the information networks of the gold rush - and were remarkably generous and hospitable towards me. In Montes Aureos I had to shift my hammock every couple of days to satisfy the insistent offers of accommodation. I learnt to keep a low

Introduction xix

profile at meal times, because if I did not I had to eat several times over, frightened of giving offence by refusing. Many times I refused offers of small amounts of gold, explaining that I could not take them out of the country, but I was given (and accepted) several gold-veined stones 'to show the people in England'. Garimpeiros have a fearsome reputation in Brazil, and in the international media are often por­trayed as desperadoes. All I can say is that the vast majority of garimpeiros I met showed me nothing but kindness, and I was often moved by their concern for my welfare.

From the ethnographic point of view, I found the gold camps an ideal research environment. The very fact that I was a foreigner, and perceived as a very strange kind of foreigner at that, worked in my favour. If nothing else, I was at least a welcome diversion from the routine of hard work that dominated daily life. I felt many garimpeiros were surprised and pleased to find a non-garimpeiro who took a genuine interest in their work and what they thought about it, and enjoyed talking and arguing with me. I found that people positively welcomed the taping of conversations, and derived great amusement from listening to their own voice when they played it back. I was also able to travel to Sao Luis with garimpeiro friends, and spend time with them during their breaks from gold mining.

To gather information I relied primarily on note taking, and the tape recording and transcribing of conversations and more structured interviews. In the Gurupf I recorded thirty-six C-60 tapes, and four­teen further tapes were recon;led in interviews in Belem, Maraba, Sao Luis and Brasilia with politicians, geologists, administrators, lobbyists and entrepreneurs. Field notes filled five large exercise books, and I also kept a diary when in gold camps. I applied a questionnaire to a hundred garimpeiros in the Gurupi.

Participant observation in the literal sense was minimal. I was not physically strong enough to work as most garimpeiros do, although I did learn to use a bateia, a gold pan, after a fashion. Apart from that, my sole direct contribution to any mining operation was twice working shovelling alluvium into a mechanical crusher. It was not simply a question of being physically incapable of working as garimpeiros do. I also felt that my position depended on not participating in gold mining myself. Had I worked more than very occasionally when one particular friend needed help, I would have lost the neutrality which made people feel they could talk to me frankly. I should also make it plain that all my informants were men. The garimpo is a largely masculine environ­ment, but not exclusively so. Because of my position as a single male,

XX Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush

and the machismo that is so much a part of male social life in Brazil, I did not feel that I could spend significant time talking to women in gold camps without giving rise to gossip and speculation.

The periods in between my visits to the garimpos were spent partly in Brasilia and partly in Sao Luis, transcribing tapes, interviewing, and doing further archive research. I made one further visit of two weeks to Maraba and Imperatriz in August 1985 and returned to Britain in March 1986. In January 1988, after completing the thesis on which this book is based, I returned to Belem for a week, and was able to update much material in conversations with geologists and administrators I first met in 1984. I was also able to return to Cerqueiro, where my pleasure at seeing old friends once again was tempered with sadness, as I learnt of the deaths of two garimpeiro friends who had helped me during the first visits I made. I had thought I would stay only a few days, but should have known better than to try and make a fleeting visit. I fell ill and had to stay a couple of weeks, too weak for most of the time to leave my hammock, and during my convalescence old friends spent hours bringing me up to date on the many changes that had taken place in the two years I had been away, which threw valuable new light on the material collected in 1985.

I decided at an early stage that I did not want to write a community or even an area study about gold mining in a particular region, but to produce a book that dealt with the gold rush generally throughout the whole of the Brazilian Amazon. This was for three reasons. Firstly, it seemed to me that gold mining, while being extremely diverse, did have a common structure underlying its regional variations, and this had to be central to a book that purports to be about the Amazon gold rush. Secondly, there is no published source which deals at this level of analysis with gold mining in Amazonia, and therefore I felt there was a gap in the literature which I could reasonably hope to fill. Finally, although the ethnography on which much of the book is based was done in the Gurupi, and to a lesser extent in southern Para, the information I gathered came from the experience of garimpeiros in all the areas of gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. Many garimpeiros made sense of the Gurupi by comparing it with other goldfields they knew. I was operating under time and budgetary constraints which meant that I could never hope to visit the areas they talked about, like the Tapaj6s in Para or the river Madeira in Rondonia, but in time I built up a fairly detailed knowledge of the gold rush in areas like these simply by repeatedly talking to garimpeiros who had worked there. I could cross check and follow up information with different garimpeiros

Introduction XXI

to the point where I felt confident I could make useful points even about goldfields I never had the chance to visit.

The structure of this book reflects this concern with the wider picture. I have not restricted it to the Gurupf but tried to give some idea of the diversity of the gold rush by including facts and reminis­cences from as many areas as I could, thus putting the Gurupf material into a wider context. I specifically use the contrast between the Gurupf and southern Para, where I also did fieldwork, to show how gold mining varies from area to area and emphasise both the parallels and differences between regions of Amazonia. I have also been concerned to show that the history of gold extraction in Amazonia begins long before 1979, and make the point that the present gold rush can only be fully appreciated if one has a sense of historical perspective.

The book begins with an attempt to estimate the scale of gold garimpagem, and a description of the huge scale of the contemporary Amazon gold rush. This is followed by a survey of the technology used in gold camps, because the social organisation of gold extraction is incomprehensible without a knowledge of how gold is worked. The second chapter takes the Gurupf as an example of the long tradition of garimpagem in Amazonia, tracing its origins back to communities of escaped slaves in the early nineteenth century and following it through to the present day. It also serves as background material to the four chapters that follow based mainly on ethnography in Gurupf garimpos.

These deal successively with the formation of mining camps, their social and economic structure, and social relations within them. They show the great social diversity characteristic of the gold rush, with different types of garimpeiros being drawn from different strata of Brazilian society, and stress the importance of garimpagem to rural smallholders and the underemployed in urban areas. For them, and also for small and medium scale entrepreneurs, gold mining has become an attractive option that can easily be combined with other activities.

The final three chapters deal at length with the wider context of the Amazon gold rush, looking at the relationship between garimpagem, the Brazilian state, and mining companies. Chapter 7 examines the history of Serra Pelada, where the federal authorities intervened directly in a mining camp for the first time during the modern period. Chapter 8looks more generally at the relationship between the formal and the informal mining sectors in Brazil, and the history of relations between garimpagem and the Brazilian state. Throughout this book a terminological distinction is made between garimpagem and 'the

xxii Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush

formal mining sector'. One could equally well call the formal mining sector 'capitalist mining', but it was felt that having to call garimpagem 'non-capitalist mining' would be too vague. The distinction between a formal and an informal mining sector seemed more accurate and useful. Finally, Chapter 9 is a general survey of the consequences and implications of the gold rush, which are seen as more positive than is generally assumed, despite misgivings and reservations about its implications for the environment and Indian land rights.

Some points should be made in conclusion. Firstly, I have not been consistent in giving the names of informants or placenames. After interviews, many people specifically said that they would like their real names mentioned, and where it was possible I have acceded to their wishes. In other cases, for reasons that will be obvious in context, I have changed names. Placenames pose a particular problem. In the part of the Gurupf where I worked, as elsewhere in Amazonia, people often give their names to places- garimpos, for example, are regularly called after prospectors who first found gold at the spot. Since much of my material about conflicts and rivalries involves people who gave their names to places, I have changed some placenames to protect their anonymity. As these fictitious placenames are mixed together with real ones, it would not be difficult to find them out. I therefore ask that convention is observed and that the fragile mask covering identities be left in place. All translations from interview transcripts and sources in Portuguese are my own. Words in Portuguese that are used in the text - of which there are many, given the impossibility of translating much of the technical vocabulary of garimpagem into English - are italicised on their first appearance only.

In conclusion, I think it important to make clear the limitations of this book. I am very conscious that it is not a comprehensive and detailed guide to the gold rush throughout the Brazilian Amazon. In many areas I have consciously sacrificed depth for breadth: my reasons for doing so are given above. This book only deals with garimpagem of gold, and takes no account of garimpagem of cassiterite, diamonds and other precious stones, rock crystal, wolfamite and sheelite, all of which are different.

I have made an effort to put garimpagem in the context of other extractive activities in Amazonia, like rubber and the Brazil nut trade, and also tried to show the connections between the gold rush and smallholder agriculture, the urban informal economy, entrepreneurs of various kinds, elite groups, mining companies and the Brazilian state. Several theses could be written on each of these topics without

Introduction xxiii

exhausting their research potential, and any treatment that attempts to deal with all of them simultaneously can only be general. I have tried to make sure that generality never slips over into superficiality, but some topics are not as thoroughly covered as I would have liked.

To me, writing about the gold rush has been both rewarding and frustrating. I found it to be a rich and diverse topic, but that very diversity forced harsh decisions about what to put in and what to leave out, what to develop at length and what to merely mention in passing. When I say that now, having spent four years researching and writing this book, it seems to me no more than a fairly detailed introduction to the Amazon gold rush, it is not false modesty. It is simply that I know very well how much I have left out, how few places I have been, and how much there is left for others to say.

Map 1 Principal goldfields in the Brazilian Amazon

0 GURUPf. MARANHAO

8 SERRA P LADA. PARA

0 CUMARU . PARA

e ATOGROSSO

• • • BRAZIL

0 T P JO . PAR . I M ZO

0 RIVER ADEIR . RO 06 lA

8 RORAIMA

0 AMAPA

:xxiv

Map 2 Gurupf goldfield, western Maranhao

ATLA TIC

OCEA I

...

l L

0 200

miles

XXV

Map 3 Serra Pelada and southern Para

' ' '

to Sao Felix do Xingu ----------------', ' '

I

' Reden~ao• \ ------ ...

0

miles

xxvi

100