Word: lunda
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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THEY ARE CALLED GARIMPEIROS, A Portuguese word for a prospector or trafficker in illegal treasure. Lured by the promise of quick wealth, an estimated 50,000 Angolans, Zairians, South Africans, Belgians and even a few Americans have surged into Angola's remote Lunda Norte province. From the air, they look like a colony of ants tunneling aimlessly into sunbaked moonscape. On the ground, the diggers, shirtless, sometimes laboring with a pistol in one hand and a shovel in the other, are scrambling to get rich...
...easy money. Legislation enacted in November permitting Angolans to trade in uncut diamonds was intended to soak up rough stones that people had illegally hoarded down through the years. Instead, because the move made it vastly easier to unload illegally dug diamonds, it further spurred the stampede to Lunda Norte. Cafunfo, a town of 5,000 on the Cuango River, mushroomed to 50,000 people, who live mainly in corrugated-iron shacks. "It's like the Wild West," says Gallegos, who visited the region recently. "The law of the gun prevails...