Chico Mendes
Wikimedia commons
At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then
I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity. Chico Mendes |
Chico Mendes
Chico Mendes, a symbol of the global environment movement, was assassinated in 1988 for challenging those who were destroying the rain forest by slashing and burning
He became president of the local Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union, and initiated the practice of workers and their families linking arms to block the ranchers and loggers from cutting down trees. He helped create the National Council of Rubber Tappers, uniting tappers from across the country to raise awarness of the nationwide problem of deforestation and exploitation.. The landowners and large corporations fought back but the united grouping of tappers, indigenous peoples and environmental activitsts succeeded in bringing the fight to save the forest to global attention |
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Sue Branford reflects on life and legacy of Chico Mendes in a BBC interview :
I had expected someone tough and militant but Chico was surprisingly modest and unpretentious. Yet it was also clear that he was passionate in his political beliefs, driven by a burning sense of social justice. Indeed, he was an active trade unionist and had helped set up the Amazon branch of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the left-wing political party created in the early 1980s by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (now [2008] the country's president) and other urban trade unionists. Chico had a profound love of the tropical forest. As we walked at a fast pace through the trees to visit a community of rubber-tappers, he was constantly pointing out with delight parrots and other birds, though generally all I managed to see was a flash of colour. |
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Chico Mendes demonstrating the process of tapping a rubber tree to produce latex. photo Miranda Smith Wikimedia Commons
The photograph above was taken in July 1988 by Miranda Smith, when she first met Chico. By the time Miranda returned to Xapuri in November, Chico was protected by bodyguards, but it had become too dangerous for Chico to venture into the forest.
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Chico Mendes became a rubber tapper, or seringueiro, as his father before him. Rubber tapping or gathering the latex from a plant is a sustainable form of exploiting the wealth of the Amazon without harming the trees or environment. Nearly all of the world's natural rubber comes from Pará rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis.
He learned to read and write despite access to formal education and shared the knowledge he gained with members of the community. |
I became an ecologist long before I had
ever heard the word Chico Mendes 
Hevea brasiliensis: the Rubber tree
Wikimedia Commons
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The legacy of Chico Mendes
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Chico Mendez received several international awards during his lifetime including a United Nations Environmental Program award in 1987 and a National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988.
After his death the the Alliance of Forest Peoples was created to protect rubber tappers, rural workers, and indigenous peoples from encroachment on traditional lands. The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the forest around Xapuri. Chico Mendez was officially recognised as Patron of the Brazilian Environment and the Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation of Biodiversity (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), is named in his honour. As in other areas of the world the environment remains under pressure and his legacy is under threat with the Guardian reporting in 2013 'satellite data showed a 28% rise in deforestation this year, breaking a five-year trend of decline'. |
I was in my yard and thought that the tree was a living being.
We take trees for granted. We don't believe they are as much alive as we are.
Ziggy Marley
