The story of Carajás

Photo: NASAFinding one of the world’s largest deposits of iron ore in a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest was something of an accident, according to mining-technology.com. In 1967, a helicopter carrying a team of geologists from a Brazilian subsidiary of U.S. Steel landed on a barren hilltop to refuel. The geologists recognised iron ore on the surface of the hill, and four decades later, one of the world’s largest iron ore mines had taken its place.

This image of the Carajás Iron Ore Mine was taken by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s EO-1 satellite on July 26, 2009. Terraced layers of red earth reveal the method of mining. Carajás is an open-pit mine, in which minerals are removed from the surface one layer at a time. In 2007, 296 million metric tons of iron ore were pulled from the mine. The mine is estimated to contain about 18 billion tons of iron ore, plus gold, manganese, copper, and nickel.

The Carajás Mine sits in the Carajás mountain range (Serra dos Carajás) in northeastern Brazil. The mountain terrain is still evident in the untouched land around the mine. The red-tan exposed earth contrasts with the deep green rainforest. Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the company that runs the mine, preserves the forest immediately around the mine. The large image, which encompasses a broader area, shows deforestation north and east of the mine.


Illustration by Carlos Latuff

An Amnesty International report states: "On 17 April 1996, military police began clearing landless protesters from the PA-150 highway at Eldorado dos Carajás in the state of Pará. An hour later 19 people lay dead, many shot at close range; some hacked to death by the protesters’ own farm tools.

After a complex legal battle, 127 military police and 19 higher ranking officers went on trial in June 2002. All were absolved with the exception of Col. Mario Pantoja and Major José Maria Oliveira, both of whom remain at liberty while they fight a second appeal against their sentence."