Alagoas

"Lua quickly became the symbol of the programme, being used in local media and community activities to gain public attention," said Iran Normande, from the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil, one of the authors of the study.

Brazil's Transnordestina railway, which has been under construction for over 15 years but is only half completed, could be key to that expansion, said the minister, part of a powerful political family in the northeastern state of Alagoas.

Around 200,000 people in the Alagoas state’s capital of Maceio were affected by the excessive extraction of rock salt, according to the Brazil Senate’s website.

It said that Friday’s settlement “represents yet another important advance” in the issue of Alagoas.

He continued in politics and later served 26 years as a conservative senator for the northeastern state of Alagoas, where his well-to-do family was from.