Eldorado do Juma, Brazil – It’s a gold rush in the Amazon jungle, driven by the Internet.
Speeding past unbroken walls of foliage, a motorboat packed with gritty prospectors veers toward the shore of the Juma river and spills its passengers into a city of black plastic lean-tos veiled by greasy smoke.
All around them are newly dug pits, felled trees, misery and tales of striking it rich.
This is Eldorado do Juma, scene of Brazil’s biggest gold rush in more than 20 years.
Drawn by a Brazilian math teacher’s website descriptions of miners scooping up thousands of dollars in gold, 3,000 to 10,000 people have poured in since December, felling huge trees, diverting streams and digging ever-deeper wildcat mines, in an area that months ago was pristine rain forest.
Hundreds of men with picks and shovels hack at the earth, marking their tiny plots with tree branches and string.
Others feed dirt into wooden troughs and residue into pans. A lucky few will end up with tiny nuggets and flakes of gold to sell for $530 an ounce in Apui, about 50 miles north.
It’s reminiscent of Serra Pelada, a mountain that became a gargantuan hole in the jungle floor after a gold rush in the early 1980s, immortalized in photos of what looked like a hellish human anthill.
Price gouging (chain saws costing about $400 in gold) is rampant, and malaria is spreading in the makeshift city. It already has bars, restaurants, barbershops, bakeries and jewelry stores, most built of tree branches and tarps. A brothel is under construction.
Federal police with automatic weapons arrived last month, imposing a curfew, cracking down on shootings and making it harder to get rich quick.
“Luckily, we caught it right at the beginning. It is a concern for everyone … that this doesn’t become another Serra Pelada,” said Walter Arcoverde of the National Department of Mineral Production.
