Artisanal small-scale gold mining, or garimpo in Portuguese, started in French Guiana in the 1990s. The French authorities have repressed it, but this has not led to the end of the activity. Based on extensive fieldwork, this paper aims to analyze the garimpo as an economic and social informal world built to be resilient to repression and to neutralize the high risks of clandestine exploitation. This system provides economic, social, and moral resources, all embodied in the garimpeiro identity, allowing a workforce made of thousands of individuals to act as a cohesive work organization.