The sad dream of the contemporary Eldorado: The Impact of Illegal Mining in the Kayapó Indigenous Land – PA

Abstract

The present work presents the results obtained during the research developed at MPEG, where an attempt was made to understand the sociocultural impacts generated by the illegal mining activity in the Kayapó indigenous land. Based on a bibliographical and documental survey, with a qualitative approach, and a historical and socio-anthropological focus, we seek to understand how mining activity has been a driving machine for the destruction of the Amazon, and this can be observed throughout the history of the practice of illegal mining in the Kayapó Indigenous Land, located in the southeastern region of the State of Pará, in Brazil. The relationship between mining and the consequent disruption of the way of life and the impacts on the well-being of indigenous peoples in America are coeval with the continent's colonization process itself. Since the beginning of the invasion of American lands by Europeans, the desire for quick wealth through the extraction of gold, silver, other metals and precious stones has driven processes of extermination and deterritorialization of the people who lived here. In this sense, we seek to understand that colonization is not configured only as an attack from the past, as it is updated in time by the coloniality of power, carried out by the designations of the modern/colonial system, which acts in the various aspects of social life, involving power relations in their multiple dimensions.