“The miners knew the trails through the mountain, but worked there just to survive. (…) their sons became guides, fire fighters, and agents for preservation. In just one generation, there was an incredible change in the outlook of the local inhabitants: from brute exploration to preservation! Tourism evolved to guarantee income for their families (…)” (Roy Funch, in an interview for the Guia da Chapada Diamantina.)

2017/09/03

History of the Forests in the Mining Region

Gilberto is an old-time diamond miner (garimpeiro), as was his father and grandfather, going back in time (almost certainly) to the slaves who were brought in to work the mines (Brazil only fully abolished slavery in 1888).

I've known Gilberto for years, and he can usually be found at a friend’s house at the foot of the hills. He spent most of his life living in a crude rock shelter in the mountains near his diamond claim, and feels much more at home away from the "big city" of Lençóis (population 10,000).

I had arranged for Gilberto to take me up into the mountains today to visit the "Bananeira" (banana tree), a small settlement of diamond miners in the old days, but now totally abandoned. To start the day (8:00 AM) he put down half a glass of "cachaça" (local rum) in one swallow, and off we went

The trail followed a popular tourist route for about a mile and then branched off to the south. I'm usually pretty good at following the old trails in the mountains, but this was exclusively over an exposed rock surface that had been little-used for years, so it all depended on Gilberto's sense of direction from his hundreds of trips in.

We came across an old shelter ("toca") at the "Bananeira" site that had been built under a wide sandstone ledge, and closed off with mud-and-wattle walls. These sites have been serially occupied over the decades (and centuries) by different generations of miners – and the last "owner" had been "remodeling" it by erecting stone walls (no mortar) to replace the mud walls when he died (of old-age) – so the job will remain incomplete. Nearby was a set of three tocas all in a row under an especially long rock overhang, each maybe 4 m wide and 3 m deep. One of them had been Gilberto’s father’s, and then his, but all three were totally abandoned now and in various states of disrepair. Tin cans, lots of cut wood (saplings) used to fashion crude beds, and a few old, rusting tools and assorted pieces of litter were strewn about. There was another very long and narrow toca near the creek. Floodwaters had washed away the outer wall, and but Gilberto told me that when he was younger there had been a good number of miners living there, while others slept under available rock overhangs wherever they could find them.

I took some documentary photographs and GPS readings then hiked down the Bananeira Creek to the Bananeira Falls (not too much water that day, but must be spectacular when it rains – with a sheer 20 m drop). We then turned upstream to find the toca where “Mãe-da-Lua" used to live (the nickname translates to "mother of the moon"). She was a diamond miner and apparently quite a character, sober at the diggings, but usually drunk and wild in town. This was about 40 years ago.

We were walking in the stony bed of the Bananeira Creek when Gilberto mentioned that there was a "homestead" on each side of the watercourse. Only someone who had lived there could have identified those sites, as they were both now completely overgrown and hidden by the heavy vegetation. I crashed my way through the entangled plants and the vestiges of loose mining debris to find small meadows completely overgrown by Brazilian stinkgrass (Melinis minutiflora, and African invasive species) – a sure sign of past human habitation. The grass was chest high and daunting to wade through, as it was impossible to see where you were stepping. I eventually arrived at (in both cases) the ruins of a very small, old stone house. Each seemed to be a simple one-room structure (about 3x4 m), with the end-walls peaking to about 2.5 meters to hold the roof beam. The sidewalls were made of stone and were only about 1 m tall – almost certainly having been completed to the roof with mud-and-wattle walls. The doorframe (opening) was on one of the walls that supported the roof (photo).

The old houses got Gilberto talking about the farming plots that the miners planted while working their claims. Miners were, of course, focused on mining – but they still had to eat. The mountains weren't really appropriate for farming or cattle raising, so the miners (and the towns that sprung up in the hills) were largely dependent on the corn, beans, and dried meat brought in by mule from settlements in the flatland "caatinga" and "cerrado" areas to the west (and to a certain degree, to the east) of the mountains. Cattle were driven in along traditional trails, which can still be seen in places between the towns of Palmeiras and Guiné.

As the population of the mining zone increased and became more established, agricultural valleys such as Capão and Pati (and smaller sites such as Capão do Correio and Baixa Funda) were occupied by families that divided their efforts between agriculture and mining, becoming exporters of coffee, bananas, oranges, beans, manioc and manioc flour, chickens and eggs, etc., to the mining communities around them on less amenable sites.

The miners in the mountains usually tended small gardens and kept chickens (there was even a stone chicken coop at the Bananeira site, a kind of miniature shelter right next to the other ones, only with a lower ceiling).

As we walked back to Lençóis, Gilberto told me that all of the wooded areas on the hilltops (which the miners couldn't reach with their stream diversions/primitive aqueducts and erosive mining – so they still had soil covers) had all been cleared and planted when he was young. Every available plot of land that still had soil on it, all along the trail back to town, had been farmed in the old days –mostly with manioc, "andu" beans, rustic pineapples, sugarcane, corn, and fruit trees (oranges, mango, jackfruit). This helps explain the fact that you almost never see old-growth forests anywhere except deep in the hills and far from the diamond region. Between cutting wood for construction/cooking and clearing for planting, all the forest sites (with very few exceptions) were cleared at one time or another. They are now covered with secondary growth vegetation– small trees (less than 15 cm [6 inches] in diameter), very closely spaced, with dense understories and low biodiversity.

The natural native vegetation is now slowly returning to the forest/farming plots that had been cleared and to the mountainsides that had been stripped of both plants and soils –like a Brazilian episode of the television series "Life after People" – as nature takes charge again.

I never did get to see the toca where “Mãe-da-Lua" used to live. We passed it, but Gilberto either forgot to show me the spot or, more likely, he was really in a hurry to get back to "civilization" and have another drink, and passed it by. Next trip. 





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