Abstract
Artisanal small-scale gold mining, or garimpo in Portuguese, started in French Guiana in the 1990s. The French authorities have repressed it, but this has not led to the end of the activity. Based on extensive fieldwork, this paper aims to analyze the garimpo as an economic and social informal world built to be resilient to repression and to neutralize the high risks of clandestine exploitation. This system provides economic, social, and moral resources, all embodied in the garimpeiro identity, allowing a workforce made of thousands of individuals to act as a cohesive work organization.Resumen: Resiliencia de los mineros de oro ilegales brasileños en la Guayana Francesa: El garimpo como sistema económico y social La minería de oro artesanal a pequeña escala, o garimpo en portugués, comenzó en la Guayana Francesa en la década de 1990. Las autoridades francesas lo han reprimido, pero no ha supuesto el fin de la actividad. Basado en un extenso trabajo de campo, este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar al garimpo como un mundo económico y social informal construido para ser resistente a la represión y neutralizar los altos riesgos de la explotación clandestina. Este sistema proporciona recursos económicos, sociales y morales, todos encarnados en la identidad garimpeiro, permitiendo que una fuerza de trabajo compuesta por miles de indivi-duos actúe como una organización de trabajo cohesiva.
Highlights
Artisanal small-scale mining provides a livelihood to about 20 million people worldwide
Based on extensive fieldwork in French Guiana for the past four years, this paper presents a quick overview of artisanal gold mining in the Amazon and in French Guiana, the methodology employed in the study, and how it relates to other works in the literature
The objective of the research was defined as understanding the context and the global mechanisms of the garimpo in French Guiana, leaving aside intelligence elements that could lead to concrete action
Summary
Artisanal small-scale mining provides a livelihood to about 20 million people worldwide. It produces at least 25 percent of the overall annual gold production (IGF, 2017), representing another type of extractive frontier, different from the big mining firms and the capitalist extractive frontiers present in many countries in South America. When applied to ecosystems or societies, this concept has to be adapted because if societies persist despite disruptions, they do not end up the same as before (de Bruijn et al, 2017) In this case, resilience is not equivalent to stability (Holing, 1973), but it implies “coping, adapting and transforming capacities” (Keck & Sakdapolrak, 2013), which are what the garimpeiro system provides
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