Gold was central to the colonization of the Mato Grosso state area. The state’s current capital city, Cuiabá, was founded by bandeirantes, settlers in Portuguese Brazil from São Paulo, who discovered gold in the region in 1719. As they explored, they found gold in the upper reaches of the Rio Guaporé, which led to the creation of the first capital of Mato Grosso at Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade in 1731. The easily exploitable placer deposits were soon exhausted, but the thirst for gold was reignited during the 1970s when wildcat miners, garimpeiros, rushed to exploit a region with both alluvial and saprolite deposits at four major garimpos: Baixada Cuiabá, Serra de Aguapei, Novo Xavantina and Alta Floresta-Juruena. The gold rush of the 1970s and 1980s attracted tens of thousands of garimpeiros into previously remote regions. There are no reliable estimates of the quantity of gold they extracted, but it is widely assumed the demographic surge, and the capital derived from gold, accelerated the development of the state’s agricultural economy. Many garimpeiros became small farmers and ranchers, particularly in northern municipalities where INCRA sponsored a half dozen settlement projects. As in Pará, they have retained both their knowledge and propensity to exploit alluvial gold, which has shown a resurgence of activity in the old garimpos located near Alta Floresta and Pontes de Lacerda. In the Baixada Cuiabá, a dozen moderately large placer mines have transitioned into strip mining operations exploiting primary ore deposits that use cyanide to separate and concentrate…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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