Garimpagem, Formal Mining and the State

Abstract

State regulation of gold mining in Brazil dates from a proclamation issued by the Portuguese crown in 1535, some 50 years before any minerals were actually extracted in the colony. The very word ‘garimpeiro’ was an indirect product of state action. In 1731, almost exactly 250 years before federal intervention in Serra Pelada, the Portuguese crown mounted a military operation to take over the diamond garimpos of Tijuco, Minas Gerais. Patrols sealed off the area, with orders to prevent the entry of anybody not carrying a royal permit. But it seems to have been just as difficult 250 years ago as it is today to keep garimpeiros away from a strike. The records soon began to mention the appearance of garimpeiros, who took their name from grimpas, the foothills and valleys of the highlands of Minas Gerais, where miners hid from the patrols and extracted diamonds clandestinely. It is not difficult to find other echoes of contemporary Amazonia in the eighteenth century. From the 1720s on a series of gold strikes were made around Cuiabá, in Mato Grosso, which for decades to come would be a major administrative headache for the Portuguese authorities. In 1789, for example, gold was discovered at a place called Sapateiro, to the north of Cuiabá, and a disorderly fofoca ensued. The reaction of the Governor in Cuiabá bore an eerie resemblance to events in the Araguaia-Tocantins nearly 200 years later:

On the 7th of July the recent discovery of Sapateiro was divided up into datas [an archaic word for barrancos] which were distributed by lot. 400 people owning a total of 2,250 slaves competed in the lottery, together with just over 100 freed slaves who entered as individuals.¹