amazonmining
By Timothy J. Killeen 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...
Mongabay
By Timothy J. Killeen Gold mining has been a feature of the Andean Amazon since pre-Colombian times and, along with silver, it was the cornerstone of the economy in the colonial and republican periods. In Brazil, gold mining was a source of wealth for the Portuguese crown and a major diver in the colonization of Mato Grosso and Rondônia during the eighteenth century. Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana all experienced nineteenth-century gold rushes, as did Venezuela in the first decades of the twentieth century. These historical events, however, have been dwarfed by the gold rushes of the moder...
Mongabay
By Timothy J. Killeen The mineral resources that characterize the High Andes of Peru are conspicuously absent north of the Huancabamba Gap, the altitudinal low point in the Andes linked to the deflection zone that created the Amazon Rift Valley. There is, however, an unusual mountain range located east of the Cordillera Oriental on the border between Peru and Ecuador. The Cordillera del Condor is a fold and thrust belt created in one of the earlier phases of the Andean orogeny when magmatic plutons were intruded into older sedimentary strata that created copper porphyries with significant mine...
Mongabay
By Timothy J. Killeen The mineral resources of the Pan Amazon are not randomly distributed across the region but are located on landscapes with specific geological histories. There are three conspicuous macro regions: A. The Amazon Craton is the term used to describe the complex of ancient rocks that form the heart of the continent, which was created via the serial accretion of continental plates between one to three billion years ago. Each such orogenic event was accompanied by magmatic intrusions that are imbued with the mineral resources. B. The Andean Cordillera was formed after the Amazon...
Mongabay
By Timothy J. Killeen Vale SA Brazil’s second most valuable company is also the fifth largest global mining corporation. In 2022, it was as ranked by the Refinitiv ESG framework as best in its class of ‘diversified miners’ (1 out of 615). This score is remarkable considering Vale is being sued by the SEC for deliberately misleading investors of its ESG-related risks prior to the tailings pond disasters at Brumadinho in 2019. Ironically, this high ranking is a direct consequence of that disaster, which led to a 50 % drop in its share price and the dismissal of its CEO. The company subsequently ...
Mongabay
By Arturo TorresDan Collyns The road leading to Podocarpus National Park winds around lush, forested mountains that seem to stretch endlessly on the horizon. Covering 1,463 square kilometers (565 square miles), the park stretches from the foothills of the eastern Andes into the rainforest, straddling the southern Ecuadorian provinces of Loja to the west and Zamora Chinchipe to the east. It extends from the foggy alpine shrubland known as the páramo, at 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) above sea level, down into tropical forest at 900 m (3,000 ft), with waterfalls and boulder-strewn crystalline river...
Mongabay
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