As ruínas do complexo de exploração aurífera do Forte de Brumadinho, na Serra da Moeda, Minas Gerais, Brasil: contribuições para sua compreensão e conservação

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the understanding and conservation of an extraordinary cultural site, with no correspondents known, little studied, and quite threatened by the pressures of mining, industrialization, urbanization, and tourism on the cultural landscapes existing in the Moeda mountain range, in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais. As we have tried to demonstrate, the so-called Brumadinho Fort is not a remnant of the Portuguese colonial military architecture, despite its popular denomination, the legends that surround it and its imposing walled structure, built exquisitely in stone, containing traces of various buildings in its interior, and apparently implanted according to the great baroque and renaissance axialities. Although it is unknown colonial documentary sources about it, its architectural features, the archaeological structures in its surroundings and what is known of the Luso-Brazilian history indicate that it is, rather, the seat of what may have been one of the first, largest and most important enterprises of gold exploration established by the Portuguese in what was their most profitable ultramarine domain: the captaincy of São Paulo e Minas de Ouro (1709-1720) and, later, the captaincy of Minas Gerais (1720-1821). Thus, the fort should not be understood and conserved as an isolated heritage asset, but as one of many remnants of an enterprise whose relations with natural resources have left other relevant marks on the landscape. This includes the ruins of huge open-cast mine which consists in a testimony of the state-of-the-art in gold exploration technology at the time; its ingenious hydraulic system containing water collection and adduction channels with kilometers and reservoirs with millions of liters of volume; as well as a partially paved road that linked the complex to the ridge of the Moeda mountain range, and thence, through the Royal Roads network to important urban and economic centers in the captaincy, on the coast, and beyond.