"The fight against invisibility in the Trombetas River region", 18 December 2025

With an eye on expanding the company’s mines in the Trombetas River region, the home to 15 Quilombola communities, the Mineração Rio do Norte mining company...,which has operated in the region since 1979, wants to expand its mines and, to do this, it promotes measures that would not fulfill a fundamental precept of the International Labour Organization Convention 169, of which Brazil is a signatory. And it has relied on consent from federal agencies.

In visits to the region’s Quilombola and Ribeirinho communities, in August of this year, our reporters saw how the presence of this global mining company, in which Switzerland’s Glencore, Great Britain’s Rio Tinto, and Australia’s South32 hold shares, harms Forest preserved over centuries by local populations...without ever being listened to...

In 2024 alone, Mineração Rio do Norte said it had extracted 12.8 million metric tons of bauxite from the Trombetas River region...

The group is already creeping toward five other plateaus in the region, through its New Mines Project, which is aimed at clearing 64 square kilometers of Forest that sits inside a federal sustainable use conservation unit (a type of protected area where economic activity is allowed), which is estimated to hold 280 million metric tons of ore reserves, to be mined over 17 years...
According to Convention 169... before destroying 64 square kilometers of Forest and starting operations, Mineração Rio do Norte would need consent from the Quilombolas and Ribeirinhos who live near the Trombetas River and its tributaries – they are covered by the convention as “tribal peoples.”...

the mining company’s legal director, Vladimir Senra, reduced the right of consultation to simple meetings with residents....

In a statement, Mineração Rio do Norte said it had an “open, inclusive, and respectful dialog with the communities” in the Trombetas region and that it “has respected all ILO principles in consultations.”...

Quilombola communities in western Pará lost open access to the Trombetas River because of mining company infrastructure.