Post by : Bianca
Haleem
Lucindo Lima still sings about wealth he believes lies beneath Serra Pelada's ridges, his voice carrying the energy of someone far younger than his 72 years. The 1980s gold rush site now stands as a reminder of lost hopes and the sharp contrasts within Amazonian mining.
Outside his worn wooden home in Curionópolis, in Pará, Lima sings of buried riches as the region prepares to host COP30. His words reflect the situation of many garimpeiros — small-scale, artisanal miners who continue to hunt for gold despite legal and safety risks.
The boom began in 1979 when thousands converged on Serra Pelada, carving a vast open pit by hand. Iconic images by Sebastião Salgado captured the frenzy: a seething mass of men working the crater. By 1992, falling ore grades and persistent flooding forced operations to stop, leaving a water-filled pit as a stark reminder of the rush.
Not far from that abandoned excavation, roughly a two-hour drive away, lies Carajás — the world’s largest open-pit iron ore complex run by Vale. In contrast to Serra Pelada's manual toil, Carajás uses driverless haul trucks, AI systems and is central to Vale’s plan for about $13 billion in investment from 2025 to 2030. Vale says annual revenues from Carajás alone are nearly nine times the total historic gold output of Serra Pelada.
Vale has pledged to conserve nearly 800,000 hectares of surrounding forest, yet illegal gold mining in Pará persists, fouling rivers, accelerating deforestation and spreading mercury contamination that endangers communities. Where Vale moves ore by rail in a highly organized system, garimpeiros must rely on informal roads and river routes that carry greater hazards.
Even after decades of hardship, many miners hold on to hope. Cicero Pereira Ribeiro works with a pick in one of Serra Pelada’s narrow shafts, descending some 25 metres below ground. Antonio Luis, who has mined there since 1981, says: "We haven’t woken up from this dream yet." For those involved, the lure of gold remains powerful.
Serra Pelada today represents a study in contrasts: the fading legacy of a legendary gold rush beside the technological scale and environmental commitments of modern mining in Brazil’s Amazon. Both forms of extraction coexist, shaping the land, the economy and the futures of local communities at a critical juncture.
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