Serra Pelada

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Bearded prospector in the Serra Pelada
Serra Pelada in the Município de Curionópolis
View of the flooded Serra Pelada

The Serra Pelada is a Brazilian village, district of the municipality of Curionópolis , in the southeast of Pará .

The village is located near a mountain range is a low mountain range up to 700 m high, in the Carajas region between the localities Curionópolis and Parauapebas , about 40 kilometers southwest of Marabá in the Brazilian state of Pará .

history

In 1976 the region was first examined mineralogically and made known by the journalist Ricardo Kotscho. In the years 1978/1979 large amounts of gold were found, which in the 1980s triggered an invasion of 80,000 to half a million gold diggers ( Portuguese garimpeiros ). Above all, landless farmers from the poor northeastern states of Brazil and soldiers of fortune invaded the Serra Pelada and formed uncontrolled hut settlements. A hole 120 meters deep and 300 meters wide was dug in the tropical rainforest with simple means such as shovels and picks and the gold was exploited in open-cast mining . The resulting gold rush was the largest in Latin America and one of the largest of the 20th century after the Klondike gold rush in Alaska.

The open pit was considered one of the largest in the world. In order to avoid possible conflicts, prostitutes were forbidden from entering the open-cast mine, and alcohol was also forbidden. Due to the harsh working conditions and the high infection pressure from tropical diseases when the conditions were inadequate, the mortality rate among the prospectors was very high.

In 1988, the Brazilian military police suppressed a unionized miners' uprising , allegedly leading to over a hundred deaths. While 745 kg of gold were found this year, it was only 250 kg in 1990.

In 1992, the productivity of the open pit fell sharply. The collapse of the crater edges and the inflow of groundwater created a lake that brought the uncontrolled gold rush to a standstill. The mine owner, Vale , had to pay a fine of 59 million reais to the federal government because the mining rights had been illegally granted to the Garimpeiros. In 2002 the gold prospectors were assured a certain autonomy and a region of their own, but this was not able to contain the increasing conflicts and the murder rate. In 2007, the Brazilian company COOMIGASP obtained the mining rights.

Others

The Serra Pelada became internationally known through the famous photo series by Sebastião Salgado . The Garimpo of the Serra Pelada developed as a kind of archaic parallel world with its own laws and language. The supposed chaos during gold mining was actually tightly organized. No more than 10 miners worked on the 2 × 3 m wide plots (Portuguese cata ) and the overburden was transported over the crater thirty times a day in 30 kg sacks by thousands of unskilled workers (Portuguese formigas , in jargon "ants"). They received the equivalent of 50 cents per aisle, food and a place to sleep. The boundaries of the parcels were defended against competitors by force of arms. The work was controlled by a few hundred gold prospectors, who owned 75% shares in the open pit, the rest were unskilled workers and henchmen with the status of serfs.

literature

  • Sebastião Salgado - Gold. Taschen Verlag, Cologne, 2019, ISBN 3-8365-7508-6
  • P. Frey and R. Rey, Serra Pelada - The Gold and Hope, U. Bär Verlag, 1987, ISBN 978-3-905137-11-8 .
  • Ricardo Kotscho, Serra Pelada - Uma Ferida Aberta na Selva, Sao Paulo, 1984

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.wissen.de/lexikon/serra-pelada?keyword=Serra%20Pelada
  2. ↑ http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/geowwissenschaften/bericht-12521.html
  3. ↑ http://www.brasilescola.com/brasil/serra-pelada.htm
  4. ↑ Serra Pelada ( Memento from April 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ port. For gold mine
  6. ↑ Bald Mountain . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 1988, p. 118-119 ( Online - Jan. 11, 1988 ).

Coordinates: 5 ° 57 ′  S , 49 ° 40 ′  W