An Introduction to the Amazon Gold Rush

This book is about what in Portuguese is called garimpagem . There is no exact English translation; it is best defined as small scale informal sector mining. In Brazil miners of this type are called garimpeiros : their diggings and the communities which form around them are known as garimpos . Garimpagem has traditionally been associated first and foremost with gold extraction, in Brazil and elsewhere. Brazil has a particularly rich tradition of gold mining: eighteenth-century gold rushes in Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso transformed the Brazilian interior during colonial times, and it was partly the search for gold which drove the frontiers of Brazil so deep into the South American land mass. This book is devoted to a contemporary heir to that long tradition of prospecting and mining in Brazil. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.