RAIELE was just 26 years old when she was brutally raped and murdered in her room, deep in the Brazilian jungle, at the hands of an illegal gold mining gang.
“She fought so hard for her life, so much, that her blood was all over the walls,” says her sister, Railane.
BBCRaiele was brutally murdered in the Brazilian rainforest[/caption]
BBCIllegal gold mines – garimpos – are havens for violence and exploitation[/caption]
BBCRaiele is one of many victims of the “wild west” gold mining operations[/caption]
“He offered her money and she said she wouldn’t go with him. He kept hunting her until he found her.
“There were no bones or anything left from all the beating that killed her.”
The tragic mum is one of the many victims of the “wild west” gold rush underway in the South American country.
Here, deep in the Amazon rainforest, women face the risk of beatings or murder at the hands of gold prospectors.
A new BBC documentary has uncovered the secret world of the illegal gold mines known as ‘garimpos.’
Impoverished women who go to work as cooks or in bars find themselves drawn into prostitution.
And as the new programme titled Sex For Gold reveals, some who refuse to sleep with the men end up being brutally slain.
The government in Brazil has been trying to tackle the problem of illicit gold mines, which cause deforestation and poison the rivers with the mercury used in the extraction process.
The mining gangs are heavily armed and prone to violence and Raiele is not the only young woman to suffer.
The horrific experiences of other workers is revealed in the World Service documentary for the BBC 100 Women season.
Violent Gangs
Mother-of-seven Dayane, 34, tells how she has been working in the mines since she was aged 12.
Her jobs included cook, washerwoman, bar employee and sex worker.
She left out of fear after a miner threatened to shoot her.
Dayane says: “The women are very humiliated there, slapped in the face. The women who work in the bars are at risk of violence.
“I was sleeping in the bedroom and a guy jumped through and put a gun to my head because I said I wasn’t going without money.
“They pay, they also want to own women.”
SuppliedDayane has worked around the mining villages since she was 12[/caption]
GettyThe illegal mining causes significant environmental damage[/caption]
AFPAttempts by the Brazilian government to end the illegal mining once and for all have so far been in vain[/caption]
Despite that, Dayane was considering returning to the mines to earn enough money to set up her own business.
The bars and brothels in the mines near Itaituba, known as Gold Nugget City, are little more than wooden shacks.
To make it to the village, the documentary crew had to travel for more than eleven hours on unpaved roads.
Producer Emma Ailes tells The Sun: “If it rains and you get stuck, there’s no one coming to help you. And that was a mine you can get to by road – some of these women go on a small plane, or by boat.
“It has a very wild and lawless feeling.”
Far from civilisation, the settlements near the mines are no more developed than the roads that lead to them.
There’s mosquitoes, there’s malaria – it’s a very hard way of life
Emma Ailes
Emma adds: “The living conditions in those mines really is rudimentary – they have to bring in a generator for electricity, a cooker, but you’re really living in the open air, and you’re next to an open bit mine.
“There’s mosquitoes, there’s malaria – it’s a very hard way of life.”
Gold Rush
The male miners come back from the forests, where they often work in a small gang with just one digger, after getting hold of the most precious metal.
Being in plentiful supply, gold nuggets are used as the currency in these areas, instead of money.
Thais Carranca, who uncovered the exploitation, saw this for herself in Itaituba.
She says: “If you are going to buy beer in a bar, you’re probably going to pay in gold.”
SuppliedNatalia is one of the women to earn her living around the mines[/caption]
BBCConditions in the mines and in the nearby villages are often rudimentary[/caption]
AFPMuch of the gold from the garimpos ends up in Europe and the UK[/caption]
Some of the miners decide to spend it on the intimate company of women.
Natalia, who is a brothel madam, says that sex workers can earn in one day what a Brazilian on the minimum wage gets in a month.
She has got a moped, fancy bathroom and a “really big bed.”
Natalia boasts: “It’s the girls who work who dictate ‘I want to be paid in gold, one, two, three grams.’”
But she is also considering quitting because “my quota is up.”
Luanna, a friend of Raiele, prefers to work in the bars in the cities because it is too dangerous out at the garimpos.
You lose your temper for anything, it’s bang they get rid of you, kill you right there
Luanna
They say: “Inside the gold mines you cannot lose your temper.
“You lose your temper for anything, it’s bang they get rid of you, kill you right there.”
Another sex worker believes that the mines are far more dangerous for women than men.
She comments: “I was born in the mines, I live in the mines, but now I am afraid to stay in the mines.
“A lot of women die on a daily basis, more women than men.”
Bloody bounty
Despite this, many of the women working at the mines are following in the footsteps of their mothers and grandmothers.
While desperate to break this generational cycle, the gold is their only shot at saving their daughters from a similar fate.
BBCWorkers can earn in a day what other Brazilians earn in a month[/caption]
BBCGold is so plentiful near the mines it’s often used instead of money in the bars and brothels nearby[/caption]
GettyThe Brazilian state has launched Operation Greed to stamp out the mines[/caption]
Itaituba is in Pará state, which produces three quarters of Brazil’s illegal gold.
A lot of this bounty ends up in Europe, with around £74 million worth from Brazil linked to the illegal trade according to the Escolhas Institute.
Much of this also ends up in the UK, Emma added.
She says: “It’s the gold in your phone, it’s the ring on your finger.
“You might not know it, but that gold has come from places that are perpetuating this cycle these women are living.”
The authorities have sent in armed police and the military to remove the secret digs and destroy machinery.
There are more than 4,470 “wildcat” mining sites in the Amazon, with around half of them in Brazil.
How much illegal gold is in the UK?
More than 90 per cent of gold exports from Brazil to Europe come from areas where the illegal mines are located, according to the Instituto Escolhas think tank
And along with Canada and Switzerland, the UK is one of the three largest customers of Brazilian gold.
Although there are large areas of industrial mining in parts of Brazil, which are legal and often state-funded, the illegal garimpos are small scale, crude operations.
A report by the think tank found that 1.5 metric tons of gold exported to the European Union were potentially linked to the garimpos, valued at over £73 million.
Meanwhile, data from the World Wildlife Foundation showed that only 9.5 per cent of gold mining sites in Brazil could be shown to be completely legitimate.
Much of the gold traded ends up in the UK, where it makes its way into products from jewellery to electronics.
It is impossible to tell just how much of this gold is connected to the illegal Amazonian mines, due to opaque supply chains.
Gold passes through many stages before it ends up on our shores, and is often mixed with together with gold from other sources.
However, given the high proportion of illegal gold coming out of Brazil, and the high amount of gold imported into the UK from Brazil, it is inevitable that much of it is connected to the exploitation and suffering in the garimpos.
Often the gold is discovered on indigenous lands, which are protected by law.
The police in Brazil have seized luxury cars and jewellery as part of Operation Greed which is aimed at breaking the ties of the criminal mining trade.
But with so much money to be made it is unlikely to wipe out the dangerous business.
Sex for Gold airs on Saturday December 7 and Sunday December 8 on BBC iPlayer, BBC News Channel and BBC World Service YouTube.
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