BRAZIL MINING – Mining operations turning Brazilian communities into ghost towns

“I like being here, but there’s no way I can stay anymore,” 81-year-old Maria Pereira dos Reis, one of the last inhabitants of Santos Reis, a small community in central Brazil that has become a ghost town due to gold mining, said with resignation in her voice.

With no parishioners showing up for church services, stores closed and most houses turned to rubble, Santos Reis is on the verge of disappearing from the map entirely 27 years after its founding.