After 30 years digging for gold, the 46-year-old has no savings.
As many as a third of the miners have malaria, a deadly disease if untreated.
Junior Alves de Goes, aged 43, squirms and moans in his hammock from a high malarial fever. If he survives, he’ll have a debt of 1,000 reais (US$449) for food and transport.
“It’s a gamble — you can make it big or end up like me,” he said.
Images of the slave-like working conditions in which haggard, mud-drenched miners carried bags of earth on their shoulders at the Amazon’s Serra Pelada mine became world famous through Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado.
At Bom Jesus, miners lug buckets of rocks and earth by hand through narrow tunnels that risk collapsing.
Teams of around four miners get only 35 percent of output, while their bosses, who pay for equipment and transport, take a 45 percent cut.
Valmir Climaco, a cattle rancher and logger, says he owns the entire complex, even though the land belongs to the state. He takes the remaining 20 percent cut of output and has a monopoly on selling fuel, power and some foods at inflated prices.
“If anybody crosses him, he pulls out his gun,” one woman in Bom Jesus whispered. “But don’t say I told you.”
Some miners end up accumulating debt, which they work off as if they were indentured servants.
“It’s a jungle prison,” said Jose Geraldo Torres, a national legislator for the Amazon state of Para.
The government says there are 200,000 wildcat miners in Brazil but experts say there may be twice as many, mostly illegal. Authorities try to get them to form cooperatives and comply with environmental regulations.
But in Bom Jesus the occasional visit from an official does little to impress the 1,000 desperate miners.
Despite warnings, they still work with highly toxic chemicals like mercury to amalgamate crushed iron ore. The runoff flows into the river.
“There isn’t a federal police post for a stretch of nearly 1,000 kilometers in eastern Para. To have rule of law, you need somebody to enforce it,” Torres said.
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