Last Tribes of El Dorado: The Gold Wars in the Amazon Rain Forest

The province of Roraima in northern Brazil has the highest number of native Indians (Yanomono) and one of the richest gold deposits in South America, mostly on Indian lands. Since 1980, illegal gold camps with nearly a million nomadic miners have sprung up throughout the Amazonian jungle highlands, spreading into Venezuela and Guyana. This largest gold rush in history involves miners, Indians and the Brazilian government. Posing as a miner, Tierney (The Highest Altar) spent almost a year in gold-rush country among miners and isolated villages of the Yanomono. Miners (garempeiros) work in small groups in the most remote places, supplied by light planes. Danger, disease and death are rampant; one of the most profitable services in the gold camps is murder, 30 grams of gold being the standard fee for a killing. Tierney views the garempeiros as one of the last tribes of El Dorado with their own mythology, ritual combats and closed circle of bloodletting. His vivid portrait of this gold rush makes North American rushes seem like Sunday School picnics. Illustrations. (Apr.)