"Afobakka dam" a Suriname Travel Page by ATLC

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Bauxite

This is what I wrote in 1981 for a school project:
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"Suralco, part of the American firm Alcoa, is the largest producer of aluminium in the world. In the Brokopondo-agreement of 25 January 1959, Suralco obtained the right to mine bauxite in a region as large as The Netherlands.
For 10 years, Suralco was allowed testdrill in a 500.000 hectares region and to exploit a zone as large as 20.000 hectares.
[...]
Alcoa was to finance the building of a dam and the hydro-electric power station. It cost Alcoa abou 300 million Dutch guilders but the electricity was used for the Surinamese people (80b million kW) and 920 million kW for Alcoa.
This arrangement would remain until 2033, when the power station and the reservoir lake would be given to the Surinamese government.
By that time, the bauxite mines would have been exhausted.

With the building of the Afobakkadam and the reservoir lake Brokopondo, many native Indians had to transmigrate. A nice word for being driven off their land to live elsewhere."</i>

The picture is also from my school report.
You can easily see that there's bauxite in Suriname. It makes the earth a bright red.
When you do a boat tour in the harbours of Rotterdam, in The Netherlands, you can see lots of aluminium. It is the world's largest stock.