Webson Nunes and his four colleagues work as illegal miners at a wildcat copper mine in Canaa dos Carajas, Brazil. The small city at the edge of the Amazon has become a boom town in recent years, with Vale, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, running one of the world’s largest open-air mines there. However, at an estimated 100 illegal mines like Nunes’ bootstrap operation, “garimpeiros” make a living digging for precious minerals. Nunes acknowledges that he works with one eye on the mine and the other outside, constantly aware of the police’s arrival. Despite this, he considers his work lucrative, earning 150 reais ($30) a day. Illegal mines generate approximately $800 per metric ton of copper they sell on the black market. Most of the copper mined illegally in Canaa is exported to China, according to authorities. The number of illegal gold mines in the region also causes greater environmental damage because of the toxic mercury used to separate gold from soil. Since Vale launched S11D in 2016, the town’s population has nearly tripled in size to 75,000. Canaa voted heavily for Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential elections last year, despite his controversial stance on allowing mining on protected Amazon lands. Bolsonaro’s successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has since toughened measures against illegal mining. However, garimpeiros argue that regulating the industry would create jobs and tax revenue and that Vale, which has a monopoly on mining rights on local land, uses just 13% of it.
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