PIRATE FRAGMENT 3

I was alone in the camp at that time. Mr. Adamastor and the other divers were on the raft miles upriver, working their shift from eight o'clock at night until dawn, when one of the locals would come to bring them to rest and take me back. While waiting for the first light of day, I read in my notebook:

"Mr. Adamastor is completely crazy, never leaves his raft for a moment, commanding the divers with an iron fist and practically single-handedly washing the carpets in the drain. The old man seems to derive an almost sexual pleasure from sticking his hand in that milkshake of gravel, crystals, and sharp grains of sand, which leave his hands raw. He has rubber gloves, but often works without them: "I like to feel the gold on my flesh. Besides, if something better comes along (diamonds, he meant), these hands here feel it immediately."

When the Federal Police's Operation Kimberly arrested fifteen people in 2004 in São Paulo and Rondônia, accused of forming an international gemstone smuggling ring, Mr. Adamastor and I had already been in a rut within the reserve for at least three months. We already knew that some miners (only a few, at the time) had been killed, but everyone still believed the crimes had been motivated by internal disputes among the miners themselves, dating back at least a year.

It turns out that well before that, in 2002, another Federal Police operation, codenamed "Conexão Bélgica," had already taken place within the reserve. During this operation, approximately 4,000 diamonds were seized, and more than two thousand miners were removed from the area, in addition to the seizure of a single-engine plane carrying five hundred thousand reais. During the 2002 investigations, a total of twelve unidentified human remains were also found.

Most incredible of all, just two years later, in 2004, illegal mining continued to thrive within the Roosevelt Reserve, attracting adventurers from across the country, even after Operation Kimberly dismantled the international smuggling ring. Among those arrested were an agent and a chief of the Rondônia Civil Police, a federal police officer, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, and Cinta-Larga Indians, who legally inhabited the Roosevelt Reserve. The cherry on top, the operation's main target, was a man named Marcos Glikas, considered one of Brazil's biggest gemstone smugglers. Investigations revealed that in a single transaction, the São Paulo businessman sold a batch of diamonds worth one million eight hundred thousand dollars to Belgian receivers.

Less than a month after all this was revealed on national radio and television, Mr. Adamastor, two other caboclos, and I remained camped inside the reserve, as if nothing had happened. I simply followed the old man along jungle trails that probably existed only in his imagination, as we were finding almost nothing of value there. The end result was only a few tiny diamonds. It was one of our least profitable expeditions, but it was on it that I learned everything about panning for precious stones.

Still, that small fraction was a lot for me at the time. Enough to put off studying indefinitely, my main goal. I returned to Minas Gerais with the economic freedom of an established adult, and soon after, I got married. Once married, I spent all day reading and stretching. To occupy my mind with some creative activity, I decided to adapt a classic of world literature, King Solomon's Mines, by Rider Hagaard, which resonated perfectly with my experience at the Roosevelt Reservation. The book was promptly accepted by a renowned children's publisher, so impressed were they by the veracity with which I rewrote that famous story.