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Brazil Gold Mining

Brazil having been a Portuguese colony was a major sugarcane producer and most of its citizens relied on sugar cane farming as the main economic activity. However as the traces of gold became evident I the rivers that ran across the sugar cane fields the natives new there were gold deposits available. Due to the fear that the colonial Portuguese authorities would take advantage of any gold discoveries, the natives decided to keep the news as secretive as possible and they only did the mining in small scale as a substitute to the main stream economic activity. These discoveries were made in the earlier parts of the 17thy century. The very first traces of gold wee found in the cities Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais at around 1697. Since these times to date more gold deposits have been discovered and exploited and even as of today, Brazil still boasts of some of the greater gold deposits I the South American region. In earlier years the evidence of gold presence could be seen in the magnificent structures in the form of churches and other multistoried buildings that sprung up within major towns in gold rich regions.

In these times, Brazil was going through its rough history of slave trades as I was a major transit corridor for slaves to and from Lisbon. This saw the area receive multiracial inhabitants as some of the slaves who managed to escape from the rough neck slave captains found a way o integrating into the community. This situation later led to numerous conflicts between the locals and the new comers when they eventually ended up at the goldmines in search of a lively hood.

Away from the old time gold mining in Brazil, let's have a short preview into the impact of gold mining in present day Brazil. Gold mining in Brazil is a main source of income for many other countries within the Amazon basin. Brazil's gold production is rated as fourth in the world. The main problem associated with this factor however, is the pollution from mercury which is a main component in the current gold processing techniques. Mercury is used in the process of separating the gold from other surrounding rock sediments that usually come together with the mineral when it is mined. The largest gold deposits in Brazil in current times are found along the Venezuelan Brazilian border. This area is commonly referred to as the shield and covers an estimated 415,000 square kilometers of jungle and savanna grassland.

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