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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]