“I’ve chased after rocks all my life. I’m addicted to rocks, all miners are. It really is an addiction. I’ve worked in mines since I was nine years old.” “I’m waiting to go back into the Roosevelt Reserve of the Cinta Larga indigenous people. The police closed it after the Cinta Larga killed 29 miners because they wouldn’t leave the reserve. When I’m on the reserve I work for the Cinta Larga and I get 5 percent of whatever I find. Sometimes I bargain for 20 percent.
Once I found a diamond worth one million dollars. I tried to hide it but I got scared and showed the rock to the Cinta Larga chiefs. I would have been set up for life, but if they’d discovered it I wouldn’t be here now. I didn’t have much time to decide. I had it in my hand. I could hardly breathe. It’s tough in there. On their land they are the law. Respect it or accept the consequences. I prefer not to risk my life. The problem is that the Cinta Larga open and close the mine whenever they want. If you invest in machines to work the mine you can lose everything from one day to the next. And the federal police can come in and shut everything down. You don’t even have time to hide your machine.
Society has a distorted view of miners. People think we’re a scourge. But we’re just a bunch of uneducated poor people trying to make a living. I had three children who all became miners. They’re just like me.
"Most of the time we work in poor conditions and in prohibited places. We’re not equipped to deal with society. We live outside of society, but society enjoys the fruit of our work. Many people wear the rocks we find, around their necks or on their fingers." Sometimes you find a good rock and you have money for a while, but most of us don’t know how to use money. And after a while we’re poor again.”
- Leônidas da Silva, 55, from Maranhão, lives in Espigão do Oeste, Rondônia.
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