Guided by Bronco OV10 reconnaisance planes and transported in Super Puma helicopters, Venezuelan guard units first shot down a plane filled with five Brazilian miners.

In reprisal, the Brazilian miners virtually exterminated the population of the two lodges, news reports quoted survivors today as saying.

Soon after Operation Harpie Reinforce began, an altercation took place between French authorities and Brazilian miners.

This massacre was the result of tensions surrounding the 1987 gold rush in Brazil, with conflict between Brazilian miners and the Yanomami people.

While some high-income Brazilian miners and workers can afford the plane journey from Boa Vista as a means of entering the country, others use the time-tested routes of land and water.

Many Brazilian miners came to Guyana illegally.

In the Colombian Amazon, the authorities prepared this week to deport 29 Brazilian miners detained in raids.

The fund made money in Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, a Brazilian miner of nickel and iron ore.

There has been some degree of integration between the Amerindians and Afro-Guyanese and the Brazilian miners, but none of these race groups live in the village.

Allen is later "betrayed" by his two Carib companions, Yepe and Pim, who abandon him to work for Brazilian miners.