Gold Rush

bamburro – fofoca – embora

The ephemeral lifecycle of a gold rush often starts with the sudden discovery of a magnificent rich lump of gold (por. bamburro) that triggers a wave of euphoria, new imaginations, desires and rumors spreading fast outside the spot (por. fofoca). The gold fever rises and causes the migration of a flow of people and machines that form a new whole through this phenomenon. But the rush is only temporary, until another fofoca sparks a new lifecycle and sets everything in motion again (por. embora).

In the 21st century, the Brazilian Amazon has been affected by numerous gold rushes. Small-scale, highly mechanized gold extraction has led to severe deforestation and degradation of ecosystems, recurrent invasions of indigenous territories, and precarious living and working conditions in the mines. Seen as an assemblage, a gold rush entangles a multitude of heterogeneous actors, technologies, practices and discourses. Each gold mine embodies a dense socio-material network in which all entities are strictly organized and assigned in hierarchical positions from managers, miners, excavator operators, cooks, to power generators, mercury and dying fish. Three types of small-scale gold claiming practices are commonly found in the Tapajós region in the state of Pará: (1) baixão, where pressurized water dissolves the gold sediments in the subsoil, and mercury separates the gold particles from the slurry; (2) filão, or lode mining, where gold particles are mostly extracted from quartz rock veins in underground tunnel systems; and (3) balsa, where sediments are extracted by divers directly from river and creek beds. All these practices materialize through the assemblage of a gold rush and establish new territories as they emerge, transform and break apart again.

The visual representations are part of an ethnographic study conducted with Peter Richards and Jeffrey Hoelle between 2014 and 2016 as part of the NGS CRE funded project “The New Amazonian El Dorado: The Social, Environmental, and Economic Effects of a 21st Century Gold Rush”. All people portrayed show the nickname assigned to them in the gold mine.