Pitinga mine, Tin mine in Presidente Figueiredo, Brazil

Pitinga mine is an open-pit tin mine in the Serra da Madeira hills of Amazonas, Brazil, where cassiterite is extracted from primary rock after the alluvial deposits were exhausted. Bucketwheel dredges once pumped ore to floating processing plants; today the ore is concentrated on site and shipped to Mamoré Mineração e Metalurgia in São Paulo for smelting. Columbite is also processed there into an iron-niobium-tantalum alloy.

The Brazilian Geological Survey discovered cassiterite deposits in 1976, leading to mining operations starting in 1982. These early years established the foundation for mineral extraction in the region.

Vila Pitinga was built by Mineração Taboca as a company town for the mine, 300 km from Manaus along the BR-174 toward Boa Vista. Its roughly 5,000 residents have schools, restaurants, health facilities, a bank branch, post office, telephone exchange and supermarket. The village belongs to Taboca, owned since 2008 by the Peruvian group Minsur.

The site lies roughly 300 kilometers from Manaus and requires planning to reach from major cities. Visitors should check access requirements in advance, as the active mining area has safety restrictions.

The mine's tailings are not simply discarded: they are kept in holding ponds as a reserve that could be reprocessed if the price of tin rises. In 1987 the dykes of four ponds broke, releasing sediment into the Alalaú River and polluting fish downstream in the Waimiri-Atroari reserve.