Selling sex for gold in the Amazon's illegal mines

Dayane Leite never wanted to become a sex worker but at the age of 17 her husband died of a heart attack and she couldn’t pay for the funeral.

Her home town, Itaituba in Brazil’s northern Para state, is at the heart of the country’s illegal gold-mining trade, so a friend suggested raising the money by having sex with miners, deep in the Amazon.

“Going to the mines is a roll of the dice,” she says.

“The women are seriously humiliated there. They may be slapped in the face and yelled at.

“I was sleeping in my bedroom and a guy jumped through the window and put a gun to my head. And if they pay, they want to own the women.”

Dayane successfully gathered the money for the funeral, and at the age of 18 she had her first child. For the last 16 years, like many women in Itaituba, she has been returning periodically to the mines to work as a cook, a washerwoman, a barmaid and a sex worker.

She now has a family of seven to support.

“I'm not going to say that all the women in the city do it, but a fair share of them do sex work. So it’s kind of normal. We don’t really care,” says Natalia Cavalcante, who became a sex worker in a remote mining settlement at 24. Four years later, after marrying the owner of a bar, she became the madam of a brothel – a job she only gave up recently, to look after her nieces in the city.

Life in mining villages in the rainforest is harsh - most consist of just a dirt track, saloon bars and a church. But the miners themselves live even further out, in shacks made of wood and canvas, surrounded by snakes and jaguars, and in total darkness once the generator is switched off. Women working as cooks have to live in these camps, alongside the men.

The miners appear in the village whenever they have found gold and have money to spend, Natalia adds. Sometimes they have to be persuaded to have a shower before sex, women say.

Running a brothel is illegal under Brazilian law, but Natalia says she took no commission, she just employed bar staff and rented out rooms.

Young women would contact her asking for work, and she sometimes lent them money for the journey, a seven-hour drive from Itaituba.