In the State of Roraima, Brazil, there are hundreds of people asking for asylum: they are displaced by gold and mercury. They come from Brazil itself, Venezuela and Guyana. This investigation follows the trail of mining that is devastating forests and communities in the northeastern Amazon and its links to China.
In the Amazon rivers of Guyana, Carlos, a 40-year-old Venezuelan, earns 5,000 reais a month (about $1,000) mining gold illegally. He says that in the last four days of work, he and four other miners collected 143 grams of gold for “the boss.” He does not say who his boss is, but he says that this man, without going to the mine, sold those 143 grams for more than 11,000 dollars. To amalgamate the dispersed grains of gold into small pebbles, and thus transport the gold, the miners need mercury, which, due to its toxicity, is prohibited in almost the entire world. Carlos gets it for $5 a gram.
Carlos says that there is a lot that can be seen in the jungle. On his cell phone he has images of mercury, of gold stones, of a white leopard that he has just hunted, of giant trucks going uphill, of a CAT 320 hydraulic backhoe, of German MAN trucks and of boats loading drums with fuel. He says that every seven months, the time it takes him to raise about 4,000 dollars, he goes to spend a month with his family, who is waiting for him in Boa Vista.
Boa Vista is the capital of the State of Roraima, Brazil, a few kilometers from the border with western Guyana and southern Venezuela. At the local airport, in the hall where the luggage is removed, there is a sign that says: “welcome to the new frontier of agribusiness.” In the central square of the city there is, proudly erected, a statue of wood, aluminum and cement: the “monumento ao garimpeiro”, as gold prospectors are called in Brazil.
For many, mining is the only way to earn a salary. This is the case of Francisco, a 29-year-old Venezuelan who, having been a miner, he and his family share shelter with victims of illegal mining. Francisco says that he did both stone mining and alluvial mining in Callao, Venezuela: “the quicksilver, or mercury, is what is in charge of collecting the gold.” Francisco at times sounds obsessed with gold, but he tells why he came to Boa Vista: “Some friends of mine died in the mine, that’s why I decided to get away from that life.”
Under the name of ‘Operation Acohida‘ there is a strong humanitarian aid coordinated by the Brazilian army and UNHCR-UN among other organizations, to give shelter to tens of thousands of Venezuelan migrants and refugees who have arrived in Brazil in recent years. Thaís Menezes, UNHCR-UN Institutional Relations officer, reports that they have spaces to house indigenous populations and others for mixed non-indigenous populations: “we have the capacity to accommodate 10,000 people.” Francisco, for example, lives with his wife and his two children in a steel-framed “housing unit” of 17 square meters, with four windows and plastic walls.
Threats to the indigenous
Between Brazil and Venezuela is the Yanomami territory, which has about 10 million hectares, the size of Portugal: almost 30,000 people distributed in more than 370 villages. They have the largest demarcated area in Brazil, which should protect them from mining, but the Bolsonaro presidency promotes: the same visited an illegal mine.
Dario Vitorio Kopenawa Yanomami, 40 years old, Yanomami leader, tells the meaning of two words: napewhich in Yanomami means both “white” and “hostile” and xawara upë, “liquid of epidemics”, as they call mercury. “In the jungle, not only do we have no words, we also do not have remedies for diseases manufactured in the city,” says Darío.
Dario shows the data he has: there are at least 237 communities affected by the garimpo illegal, 16,000 Yanomami, more than half of the total population. In the last year the illegal exploitation of gold grew by 46%. The best threatened they are the indigenous people in voluntary isolation or “uncontacted”. Meanwhile, for those who have already been reached by mining, the consequences were diverse: abuses sexual, deforestation, malaria, murders.
A study carried out in all the rivers of Roraima, found that it is unlikely to eat mercury-free fish in the entire state. The situation is even worse in indigenous territories: in some Yanomami villages, nine out of ten people studied were found to be contaminated by this metal.
Richard, a 49-year-old health agent, who works as a translator from the Yanomami language to Portuguese in health missions of the Brazilian State, breaks down when recounting the situation: “I’m tired of going to the funeral of people close to me, young people.”
Venezuelan Mercury
Milly, 27 years old and belonging to the Pemón indigenous people, came to seek asylum in Boa Vista. Her community, in the Gran Sabana, extreme south of Venezuela, was expelled from its territory with war tanks by the Venezuelan army in what was called the “kumarakapay massacre”. “I have seen children and grandparents get sick and die in the Pemón community of Campo Alegre from drinking water with mercury, but we indigenous people are the ones who have to defend the land from those things, we have to continue with pride,” says Milly, who recalls in turn that his grandparents did artisanal mining but on a small scale, “it was to exchange gold for food”.
There are many mining towns in Bolívar, in the south of Venezuela. In one of them, Laura, a resident of La Claritas, acknowledges having trafficked mercury in her town: “friends who are in the Venezuelan National Guard brought it to us to sell.” Last June Venezuelan military They were arrested with 30 kg of mercury in the Brazilian city of Pacaraima.
Laura also refers to having crossed to Boa Vista to obtain supplies illegally and affirms that it is a dangerous activity: “the same person who sold you or bought you, can send you to steal.” Laura usually buys a kilogram of mercury for 3 grams of gold and resells it for 5. One gram of gold equals to 40 dollars and is a widely used means of payment in the south of Venezuela.
The origin of the supplies
The mercury that circulates through Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil, according to a report of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), comes mainly from China and enters through Guyana and Suriname, from where it spreads to neighboring countries. Mercury also passes from bolivia to Brazil, illegallyalthough later it can be ordered through online platforms such as Mercado Libre.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of mercury and has pledged to ban primary mining of this metal by 2032. Marcos Orellana, UN special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, says that “much of the mercury that China produces what it consumes, but there is a remnant that exports it. What level is illegally exported and feeds the Orinoco, Guayana and Brazil? It is not known”.
Importing mercury from China is easy. In the web Made-in-china there is a list of companies that supply mercury at 99.9% in tariffs low cost. For example, Linbing International Trading It has a factory in Hebei province and offers a free sample of mercury in glass bottles for a minimum order of 25 kilos, for between 50 dollars per kilo. The most frequent Chinese exporting district to Guyana is the province of Hunan, one of the three that still extract mercury in the Asian giant. However, for IUCNmost of the imports of this metal would be through smuggling, taking advantage of the huge chinese presence in Guyana, something very evident in Lethem, the city on the border with Brazil, an hour and a half from Boa Vista.
China seeks to take advantage of Guyana as a bridge to the rest of South America, which is why they agreed that it be part of the new silk Road. When they signed the agreement, in 2018, the then Vice President and Foreign Minister of Guyana, Carl Greenidge, said what i expected thus be able to finance a highway that connects Linden, near the capital Georgetown, with Lethem, crossing the middle of the country and the jungle.
*This note is part of the research “The Mercury Route” of beatsmade possible by the Rainforest Journalism Fund with support from the Pulitzer Center.
