Abstract
At first sight a garimpo appears to be a place where the social stratification that is so much a feature of Brazilian society is largely absent. People mix without apparent distinction in work and at play, and from a distance it is impossible to tell the doctor or the businessman from the smallholder or the building worker. It is not unusual to see a middle or upper class man cooking a meal for illiterate smallholders and ex-shop assistants. But appearances are deceptive, for within a few hours of arrival in a garimpo it becomes obvious that there are social hierarchies; some garimpeiros give instructions, others carry them out.
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Notes and References
Respondents were asked for a full occupational history. As was to be expected, given the high rates of rural-urban migration in eastern Amazonia, many people began their occupational lives as smallholders and went on later to urban occupations like construction work. Thus the high figure for ‘smallholder agriculture’ in Tables 4.6 and 4.7 is not fully reflected in the urban/rural background estimates.
Although ‘bankrupted’ is the nearest equivalent in English to blefado, it does not come close to conveying the multiple connotations and force the word has for garimpeiros. To blefar is not merely to be in financial difficulties but also to be ground down both physically and spiritually. It combines the notions of physical weakness, financial hardship, mental exhaustion and despair.
Similar parasitic strategies have been noted in informal sector antimony mining in Bolivia. See Godoy, 1985, p. 155.
See for example Santos, 1981; Salomão and Machado, 1985; Guerreiro, 1984; Kotscho, 1984 and Andrade, 1983. All of these authors are influential opinion formers who together have done much to define the parameters of the debates about mineral policy and mining in Brazil. Santos was one of the discoverers of the Carajás deposits and now heads the important DOCEGEO residency in Belém. Salomão is a prominent geologist and the most acute analyst and critic of garimpagem in the formal mining sector. Machado is a regional entrepreneur in Roraima, northern Amazonia, and Kotscho a nationally famous journalist. Guerreiro, besides being a geologist, was a state deputy and, later, federal congressman for Pará. Andrade is also a federal deputy for Pará whose electoral base includes Cumarú, and has consistently involved himself with garimpeiro-related issues.
For example by Andrade, 1983, pp. 88–113.
It was presented to the annual conference of the SBPC (Sociedade Brasileira para a Protecão da Ciência) in Belém in 1983 although, frustratingly, it was never published. I could not locate it in the DOCEGEO archive in Belém. It is directly quoted, with the figures given above, in Salomão and Machado, 1985, pp. 11–13.
Salomão and Machado, 1985, p. 12.
Although this was rare and contrary to the popular image of the rubber boom. See Weinstein, 1984 for an excellent overview of labour relations in the rubber boom.
With the rare exceptions of closed fofocas and garimpos — see previous chapter.
Again, with the exception of closed fofocas and garimpos.
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© 1990 David Cleary
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Cleary, D. (1990). The Social Structure of the Gold Rush. In: Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11247-0_4
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