THE CLOSEST MAN HAS COME TO CREATING A HELL ON EARTH
THE CLOSEST MAN HAS COME TO CREATING A HELL ON EARTH. The story goes that it all began in January 1979. Serra Pelada was, in addition to a small town, a gigantic gold mine in Brazil 430 kilometers south of the mouth of the Amazon River. In the late 1970s, a local boy stumbled upon a small six gram gold token hidden in a local river. In a very short time, that discovery became one of the most notorious, savage and violent open-air gold mining digs in human history. A few weeks after the young man's encounter with the piece, word spread that there was gold in a rural area by the lake in Pará, Brazil, and that the site would be open to the public for mining. And then there was no going back. . A week later, the area was inundated with tens of thousands of potential prospectors hoping to cash in on the discovery and build a better future for their families. They came from all over Brazil hoping to find work in the mine. Workers earning between 2 and 3 dollars a day, a contract wher