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Over the past decade, the extraction of ores in Brazil has increased vertiginously, driven by the neodevelopmental program of the governments of the Workers' Party. In order to get a better view of the facts, state investments in the sector, from 2011 to 2016, were over US $ 66 billion. In 2014, only the state of Minas Gerais, which historically constitutes the country's most important mineral production center, produced a mineral balance of US $ 14 billion. This scenario, however, has been responsible for a set of contradictions to great extent, as it has been demonstrated in the case of Paracatu, a municipality of Minas Gerais. Our research sought to identify the social and environmental impacts that have been provoked by the mining industry in this municipality. In methodological terms, we set up the politicaleconomic conditions under which the mining activity gained centrality in Brazil. Then, based on the available literature, we identified some contradictions on the expansion of this economic activity in the municipality of Paracatu, manifested in the form of socioenvironmental conflicts. Finally, we presented the public health situation, based on the report given to us by a distinguished local scientist in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the territory of the southeastern mesoregion of the Pará State, as one of the preferential locus of conflicts that involves different social actors and the mining companies, besides contesting analytically the form of the economic and social development adopted by the Brazilian government in the Amazon of the Pará State at the dawn of the 21st century. The southeastern mesoregion of the Pará State is the most affected by the mining activities of the principal mineral company of the State, the Valle Company. These social and territorial impacts have brought into debate if the mining is the only way of regional development. The conflicts of interests among the populations directly affected and the mineral policy in the Amazon region, have raised a broad debate in the affected societies in the last 30 years of the mineral exploration in the region, confronting the richness and poverty as a remarkable regional landscape, and proposing to reflect about the effects of the mining activities in the mining towns of the Pará State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]