A gold mining site along the Transamazonian Highway in the gold hub of Jacareacanga.
Photographer: Maria Magdalena Arrellaga/BloombergThe Big Take
Gold’s Price Surge Drives Narcos Into Illegal Mining in the Amazon
Gangs in Brazil are digging up the precious metal any way they can — at whatever the human and environmental cost
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The sun had just barely broken over the horizon when Benildo Rodrigues took off that morning. His single-propeller Cessna plane was loaded with more than 100 pounds of gold that had been extracted from deep inside the Amazon. The haul, worth more than $4 million at today’s prices, had been pulled out of the rainforest illegally.