ABSTRACT
The past fifteen years have brought unprecedented social and economic change to Roraima. Planned government directives, promoting agriculture and ranching alongside newly constructed highways, provided the initial catalyst for this transition. Latterly, however, land development has been of a more spontaneous nature, as migrants have flooded into the state especially during the 1987-90 gold-rush on the lands of the Yanomami Indians. The lure of mineral wealth has attracted an even greater number of immigrants than during the earlier search for land, and is principally responsible for Roraima ’s spectacular population growth over the past decade - higher than for any other Brazilian state. The rapidly expanding garimpos (mines) absorbed capital and labour from the ranching and agricultural sectors and accentuated a pre-existing trend towards urbanisation. The impact of these changes has affected both urban (Abers and Lourenço 1992) and rural economies (MacMillan 1993a and b), but has also had political repercussions that remain an important influence on land development in the state.
