Mining in the Xingu

historical violence against Indigenous peoples in Pará

Abstract

This article analyzes mining and wildcat mining in the Xingu region, with emphasis on the Pará portion of the basin, in light of the historical formation of violence against Indigenous peoples. The objective is to understand to what extent contemporary mining pressure reactivates historical practices of territorial expropriation, denial of rights, and Indigenous vulnerability. The research is qualitative, historical in nature, and based on historiographical review and documentary analysis. The corpus includes studies on Indigenous history, the Amazon, frontier dynamics, and extractivism, as well as institutional reports and public documents on territorial conflicts. The results indicate that mining in the Xingu is not an isolated phenomenon, but a contemporary expression of a long-term pattern of unequal occupation marked by the articulation between economic exploitation, environmental degradation, and territorial violence.