Who was Chico Mendes?
By Jorge Cappato
Chico's father, Francisco Mendes, arrived in the remote estate
of Acre in 1926, in the wild and isolated occidental Amazon
near Bolivia and Peru, to work in the development of rubber
made from the heveas. He was escaping from the extreme poverty
of the "sertón" in the deserted state of Ceará -the other vertex
of Brazil. Strangely the Mendes had fought there against a highway
project which brought an avalanche of flagelados, another reason
for them to emigrate.
Mendes settled in the seringal Santa Fe, near the area of
Xapurí, and he became a seringueiro. They had to sail for five
weeks until they got to Xapurí. There, a seringueiro had to
"bleed" among 100 and 200 heveas a day in order to subsist.
Seven hours away, by boat, from his seringal was located the
"colocacao" where Iraci Lopes Filho lived, daughter and granddaughter
of seringueiros, who would be Chico's mother.
Francisco (Chico) Mendes was born on the night of December
15, 1944 in the colocacao Pote Seco of the seringal Porto Rico.
He was brought up surrounded by, extreme poverty, abandonment,
isolation, all kinds of shortages and overexploitation. The
Battle of rubber ended in 1945 when the demand created by the
Second World War dropped and the situation in Amazon worsened.
North American people left the ports and airports, and the seringueiros
were obliged to sell the rubber at a loss, to merchants risking
their lives while violating the obligation of selling only to
those who were seringalistas. The Newspaper "A Provincia do
Pará" estimated that from the 50,000 registered as "soldiers
of the rubber", 23,000 had died "with no bread and no medical
care".
Chico was lucky to meet Euclides Fernández Távora, a political
refugee in the Amazon. When he was 14 years old he learned to
read and write with him, making use of magazines and old newspapers,
and finding out what was going on in the world, thanks to a
short wave radio had brought by Euclides.
Towards 1970, the Brazilian president Medici decided to build
a Transamazonian highway of 5,000 kilometers to offer "a land
without men to men without lands". However, neither the land
was fertile nor was it empty: there were natives, riverside
people, seringueiros, and people who lived from and took care
of the forest. The highways impacted the lives of 96 tribes.
The nambiqwara, admired by the anthropologist Lévi-Struss, were
reduced from 20,000 to 650, after the tracing of the BR-364.
Father Turrini, a Rio Branco missionary, estimated that 838
children out of one thousand died before the first year of life
in Acre.
Massive deforestation and intentional fires would increase
during the next two decades encouraged by the fazendeiros and
the garimpeiros. The ancient forests were replaced by farms
and ranches of uncertain profitability and even more uncertain
duration. In Amazon the agricultural expansion is unsustainable,
the cattle are zebus imported from India -for the Mc Donald's
hamburgers of Texas, for instance; and when it rains the unprotected,
fragile land, erodes rapidly. In a few years the abandoned farms
of Amazon, like the depleted fields of Mato Grosso, looked like
a semi-desert. Meanwhile, the Indians and the rubber tappers
emigrated to settle down in the ghettos of the chabolas and
the favelas, uprooted and without jobs.
During the 70s title deeds were forged and adulterated, and
documents were given no matter whether those were indigenous'
lands or inhabited by families of rubber tappers for decades.
The fazindeiros burned the forest to "open up pasture", while
obtaining the property over hundreds thousands of hectares and
claimed state subventions. The fires started from sporadic to
massive. In a paroxysm of destruction the airports are closed
because of the clouds of smoke. Rondonia and Acre burned from
all sides taking advantage of the dry season every year.
"Don't you sign anything!", told Chico to the rubber tappers.
"This land is ours. When you change it into money, you are loosing
the possibility of surviving. Land is life!". But those who
didn't sign were threatened, moved out and many times were killed
by bullies sent by fazendeiros. The new highway BR-317 which
linked Rio Branco to Xapurí became a nightmare: in order to
burn the forest, the landowners didn't hesitate to even use
napalm. When the trees were burned the land eroded and brought
clouds of mosquitoes raised from the pools, transmitting malaria.
During those years the catholic missionaries published the "Catechism
of Land", explaining the basic rights of the seringueiros. The
first trade union was founded in 1975. Among the leaders were
Maia, Wilson Pinheiro and Chico Mendes. Pinheiro was killed
by two hired murderers on July 1980. By the end of 70s the price
of gold rose and the "gold fever" struck Amazon. In 1980 there
were five thousand people working at the garimpo (10) of Serra
Pelada; in 1983 they were 100,000 and kept on coming to live
under sub-human conditions. Landing fields were built where
the illegal circuits of gold, fauna traffic, drugs and prostitution
converged. Part of the gold is refined with mercury. Each ton
of gold, is equivalent to one ton of mercury in the ecosystem.
Blood analysis of kapayós natives, neighbors of the garimpos,
revealed that more than 25% had an excess of the lethal mercury,
the same as all the fish.
In the face of advances upon the ancestral lands the "empates"
appeared, seringueiro's mobilizations and producers who realized
that they were going to lose their job and way of life if they
did not defend the forest. Chico acted from the trade union,
but when he launched his electoral campaign he didn't obtain
the votes, neither the expected support. The fact is that -
as Javier Moro puts it- "As Chico wasn't dogmatic, there was
a constant collision between him and the limits imposed by the
different ideologies", his "was more a moral authority than
a political one". Nevertheless, he took advantage of the electoral
rallies to denounce illegal logging, violent expulsions and
arbitrary arrests. In April 1983, he got married to Ilzamar
Moacyr and went to a CUT congress on their honeymoon in San
Pablo. Afterwards, they lived in a borrowed house.
At the beginning of the 1980's the dictatorial government
impelled the Polonoroeste Project intended to "set up the production"
of 25 millions of hectares on the frontier with Bolivia; for
that purpose the BR-364 had to be enlarged by 1200 kilometers
linking Cuiabá, Mato Grosso capital, to Porto Velho, Rondonia
capital. The World Bank and IDB, ignoring their own environmental
experts, were the financiers. The forecasts were clear; after
the BR-364 what took place was the annihilation of Indians,
deforestation, extinction of species, soil erosion, social and
economic disaster. Later on Tucuruí was built, by that time,
the fourth largest in the world, on the Tocantins river, an
Amazon tributary, which is nowadays considered an environmental,
sanitary and social disaster. Afterwards, another complete setback
would follow: the large Balbina dam was built in order to provide
electricity to the industrial area of Manaus. These facts promoted
environmental legislation projects in the USA, demanding impact
reports before financing these kind of works; "easy to manipulate,
but at least a good start", said Barbara Bramble, who from the
National Wildlife Federation, knew and supported the Chico's
struggle, together with Bruce Rich, Blackwelder, Steve Schwartzman
and other North American ecologists. They lobbied at the Congress,
while they questioned the World Bank. The Treasury Department
asked the WB for explanations for the first time. Goodland and
Price, WB advisors, presented conclusive reports as regards
to the environmental and social disasters financed by the Bank.
Meanwhile, Adrian Cowell, a British film director, shocked
the world with a series entitled "The Decade of Destruction",
filmed in Amazon; which includes "Betting on Disaster", a documentary
showing bloodcurdling images of the fires and the dramatic consequences
after the road paving of the BR-364. Signatures were collected
for a letter addressed to the WB, ranging from the NGOs to the
German Bundestag. After that, they succeeded in temporarily
blocking the WB funds; until 1985 when Brazilian government
finally demarcated a territory for the Indians and the BR-364
went on.
Tony Gross and Mary Allegretti, a Brazilian anthropologist
who had known Chico and had worked in the forest, reinforced
the international movement to attract the attention on Amazon.
By that time, Chico rescued from the meetings of seringueiros
the idea of "extractive reserves": areas where not only native
rubber would be of use, but also the recollection of wild fruits
and medicines -1,400 forestall plants containing actives agents
against cancer, for example. It has been proven that one-hectare
of forest produces -not only in rubber, but in nuts, resins
and fruits- much more than one hectare given over to cattle
raising. Besides, these reserves guarantee the forest and the
traditional peoples' preservation.
In 1987 Chico, encouraged by Mary, Adrian and Steve, went
to the USA. He dialogued with WB and IDB directives, and explained
the idea of the extractive reserves while criticizing the transamazonian
highways. After a while, in Washington, he maintained a series
of interviews including a key meeting at the Senate. Then, Senator
Kasten, would require explanations to the Banks regarding the
disaster in Rondonia and Acre. The tour was a success; but it
also brought up adverse reactions, especially among the Brazilian
landholders.
Meanwhile, in mid-1987, the satellite NOAA-9 detected large
fires in the Amazon. During that time, on both sides of the
BR-364, there were more than 200,000 intentional fires: an area
twice as big as switzerland, was burning. Setzer, the Brazilian
researcher, who had followed the satellite images in his computer,
calculated that fires had injected into the atmosphere more
than 500 millions of tons of carbon; equivalent to 10% of the
world contribution of greenhouse gases, which every year affect
the global climate.
In June 1987 Chico received the Global 500 Award of the United
Nations, which catapulted him to international fame. Although,
the Brazilian government and the media in his country ignored
him, Chico was rewarded in London with international media coverage.
Later on, in New York, he received the Better World Society
Prize, created by Ted Turner, the CNN owner. Chico estimated
that with the cost of each breakfast in the Waldorf Astoria,
a rubber tapper's family could live for about fourth months.
Bishop Grechi supported Chico's proposals and his opposition
to the "development" style which was sought to be deliberately
imposed upon Amazon. In November 1987, Chico made a speech in
the Legislative Assembly of Acre. The resistance was settled
and a historical "empate" at the seringal Cachoeira in the face
of the attempted logging and agricultural colonization. Chico
impelled expropriation to be turned into extractive reserves.
In June 1988 the Río City council gave him the keys of the city.
That was the first public acknowledgment he received in his
own country. But it came too late; the landholders violence
in Acre increased. After a new murder of a seringueiro leader,
the federal government established that the seringales Cachoeira,
Sao Luis do Remanso and two more, should be turned into the
first extractive reserves of Brazil. The climate of reprisals
created by the fazendeiros didn't stop. On 6th December 1988,
in Sao Pablo, Chico took part of a seminar about Amazon organized
by the University. There he pronounced the famous speech which
ends saying: "I don't want flowers, because I know you are going
to pull them up from the forest. The only thing I want is that
my death helps to stop the murderers' impunity who are under
the protection of the Acre Police and who, since 1975, have
killed more than 50 people in the rural zone. Like me, seringueiro's
leaders have worked to save the Amazonian rainforest and to
demonstrate that progress without destruction is possible".
On December 22nd 1988, Chico was shot to death in the chest
outside his home in Xapurí just before dark.
Contact: rios.proteger@arnet.com.ar
