Chico Mendes

David Quirarte Miguel Escoto and Patrick Najera
Ms. Shashy
Environment Science
May 10, 2015
The Life and Work of Chico Mendes
It is surprisingly easy to love the place where you are born and raised. A person’s home can be of great influence to a person’s upbringing and development later on in life. To Chico Mendes, the phrase “there is no place like home” was taken into action. Chico Mendes was an astonishing environmentalist who strived for the preservation and maintenance of the Amazon Rainforest, in Brazil. His perseverance, determination, and dedication towards his mission impacted an entire country and its government. Throughout his life, Mendes achieved incredible accomplishments in the efforts of preserving the Amazon Rainforest, the place he called home. Chico Mendes was born on December 15, 1944 in Porto Rico, a small Brazilian village in the Amazon jungle. Throughout his childhood he would often assist his father in the family business, which was extracting latex from the surrounding rubber trees. His family suffered in extreme poverty and he was never able to attend school, because he had to contribute to the support of the family. Life in the rainforest was not only dangerous but also quite difficult. There were little to no health services and treacherous plants and animals lurked throughout the jungle, substantially increasing the danger. The plantation owners prohibited their workers to learn how to read, in order to maintain ignorance amongst the community. These owners were afraid that the workers might begin to rebel and create an uprising due to the inhumane conditions they were working under. However, Mendes’ father was one of the few that knew how to read. He was able to teach him how to read at a very young age and this greatly contributed to his success as an activist. When Mendes was twelve he met Euclides Tovora, an escaped political prisoner. Tovora taught him about the teachings of Marx and Lenin along with the political history of Brazil. Tovora advised Mendes to begin a union for the workers and to stand up for what he believed was right. This sparked his desire to better and preserve the life of the plantation workers and the Amazon rainforest. Mendes began his activism by direct appeal. He sent letters to the president of Brazil in order to describe the inhumane working conditions the rubber tappers worked under. He also stressed the poor treatment from plantation owners and the fact that the tappers were unable to attend school in order to maintain ignorance. These letters did achieve better treatment of the workers and assisted in shining light on the problem many plantation owners desired to hide. Throughout the 1970s a shift occurred throughout the Amazon rainforest. As the demand for latex declined this led cattle ranchers to begin taking over the rainforest. In a sense this was much worse because these cattle ranchers would burn, cut, and destroy the rainforest, with no effort to restore the land once used up. Mendes decided to take action and joined a union against these cattle ranchers in order to preserve the rainforest. To accomplish their goal the union embraced a tactic called empates, or blockade. This tactic sent individuals into areas that would soon be destroyed and they would force the cutting-crews out of the area. Mendes in his last interview stated, "We organized 45 empates. About 400 of us were arrested and about 40 tortured, and a few were killed, but we succeeded in keeping more than three million hectares of the forest from being destroyed. Thirty of our blockades failed and 15 worked, but it was worth it." This displays the sheer will these men had in protective the rainforest and how they were willing to risk their life for the rainforest the all loved.
The activist horizon expanded in 1981 as Mendes became president of the rural workers’ union in Xapuri. With this new position Mendes was able to achieve great success in the fight against the destruction of the rainforest. He managed to convince tappers to establish cooperative businesses. By doing this he eliminated the middleman, which was very affective. In 1984 Mendes proposed a land system that would create rural land modules for tappers. Although this proposal was declined it was a very itelligent and important proposal in the fight against the destruction of the rainforest. Maria Allegretti was a colleague of Mendes who helped him organize a national meeting of the rubber tappers of Amazonia. It was at this meeting where tappers were introduced to the ideas of saving the Amazon through a series of seminars, cultural events, and meetings. The tappers in turn took on a new position and would defend the rainforest rather than destroy it. Mendes’s previous proposal provided a platform for the tappers to establish a national council. This national council made a series of land reforms, which included the creation of extractive reserves, and allocated areas for rubber and nut gathering in the rainforest. Mendes not only had an impact on his country, but he had an international impact.
Mendes achieved this by traveling around the world. In 1987 he traveled to Miami, and Washington, D.C. It was here where he spoke about the destruction of the forest caused by cattle ranchers. Mendes continued to spread his knowledge about the rainforest till his death. Mendes’s work can also be seen as the first reserve in the Amazon was named the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve. He eventually paid the ultimate price for his activism. On December 22, 1988 Mendes was murdered in Xapuri, Brazil as he exited his house. The murder of Mendes sparked international attention and desire to find the killer. Darci Alves da Silva was convicted of the murder after the Brazilian government investigated the murder. Chico Mendes was clearly a man of action. He displayed strength, determination, and intelligence in his mission towards preserving the environment. Even though Mendes was just one man, he began a movement that captured international attention on critical issues of sustainability among rainforests. Chico Mendes truly cared for the cause he invested so much time and sacrifice into. He dedicated himself completely to his activism, so much so that he lost his life in the process. Chico Mendes life has impacted the world greatly and his work was transcended into today’s modern world.

Work Cited
Burch, Joann J., Chico Mendes, Defender of the Rainforest, The Millbrook Press,
1994. Print.
"Chico Mendes Facts." Your Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
DeStefano, Susan, Chico Mendes: Fight for the Forest, Twenty-First Century, 1991. Print.
Revkin, Andrew, The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rainforest, Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.

Cited: Burch, Joann J., Chico Mendes, Defender of the Rainforest, The Millbrook Press, 1994. Print. "Chico Mendes Facts." Your Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. DeStefano, Susan, Chico Mendes: Fight for the Forest, Twenty-First Century, 1991. Print. Revkin, Andrew, The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rainforest, Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.