The good life of the gold miners of Faria Lima.

By Moisés Mendes, for 247

The gold miners of the Amazon will never understand why they are being expelled from Yanomami lands and why their fellow miners on Faria Lima Avenue have the protection of the Central Bank, economists, and the mainstream press.

They don't understand because they don't even know Faria Lima exists. But the gold miners of the Amazon and the gold miners of Faria Lima could belong to the same brotherhood as predators of environments and collective heritage.

Only the illegal miners in the forest, or the exposed and low-life part of them, are expelled and condemned by environmental elites, major newspapers, and economic groups with a good conscience about environmental preservation.

Therefore, the biggest challenge for Lula today is no longer the illegal miners working on indigenous lands for financial groups protected by Bolsonaro (especially since they are already fleeing), but the miners on Faria Lima Avenue with the protection of the Central Bank.

The vagrants fleeing the Amazon are even attacked by the bosses of the gold miners on Faria Lima Avenue. Urban capitalists have commitments to nature and to the people and animals of the forests. And they repudiate illegal and destructive mining.

You don't have to look far to find leaders of gold miners from Faria Lima who have already written articles, given speeches, and practiced the marketing of good capitalists.

Men from the production and financial markets, who today mingle, do not condone, if they have any sensitivity whatsoever, the destruction of rivers, forests, and indigenous peoples.

The most lovable part of these people has declared pacts with the present and future of humanity.

But in the money economy, what prevails is the predatory nature of those who thrive on spreading fear through fiscal irresponsibility, excessive spending, and inflation.

The gold miners in the jungle are primitive, not them. Brazilian capitalism, which lives off interest and its derivatives, will never be threatened because its protector has the autonomy to do as it pleases.

"Go ahead and prospect," warns the Central Bank, "because we control the rivers of the economy. Lula will pretend to govern, but we are the ones who will determine how to meet an inflation target like never before."

The collusion is widespread. Nobody wants to face withdrawal without high interest rates. The mainstream press wants high interest rates. Liberal economists are clamoring for high interest rates.

There are business owners who don't ask for high interest rates, but they don't align themselves with those who ask for low interest rates. Because they too have been influenced by those who thrive on high interest rates.

It's one of the consequences of the Bolsonaro era. Brazilian capitalism, which always railed against interest rates, often merely rhetorically, is now devouring interest with farofa, gorging itself on interest.

But what about those who don't live off interest? Unaccustomed to complaining under a far-right government, they don't contradict the gold miners of Faria Lima and their big bosses.

Why don't small and medium-sized business owners join Lula and stand up against Roberto Campos Neto's interest rates?

Why is Lula shouting almost alone, while productive sectors dependent on cheaper money are suffering from high interest rates?

They don't shout because Bolsonarism and anti-Lula sentiment have also disfigured the average Brazilian business owner.

This is the complicity that strengthens the illegal mining on Faria Lima. The big businessman doesn't want to touch what benefits him, and the small businessman remains entrenched in Bolsonaro's ideology.

Low interest rates, for many of these people, are a product of Lula's recklessness and leftist leanings during his third term.

Thus, the gold miners of Faria Lima continue mining as long as they are not bothered, especially since, in their view, the moral issue only serves to address other mining operations.