'Happy suffering': the Brazilian gold rush that spawned iconic pictures

Four decades after Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado shot a human anthill of mud-spattered miners digging for gold in the middle of the Amazon, some of the "garimpeiros", now into their 70s, are still hoping to get lucky.

- ANNA PELEGRI

Salgado’s 1986 black-and-white photos of hundreds of men with pickaxes and spades working in the Serra Pelada open-pit mine travelled the world, depicting the hellish conditions in which people were still toiling in the late 20th century.

“I never saw anything like it,” the photographer, who died in May at the age of 81, said of the columns of men he saw clambering up the steep sides of the mine on ladders, with massive sacks of earth on their backs.

The mine, which was closed down by authorities in 1992, is covered by a lake in the present day.

But some veterans of its heyday remain consumed by the prospect of the riches hidden under their feet.

Chico Osorio was one of the miners who struck gold at Serra Pelada in the 1980s.

He extracted more than a tonne of gold from the mine, which he used to fund a lavish lifestyle, but in an all-too-familiar, rags-to-riches-and-back-again tale, he squandered much of his fortune.