Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
28.1
Introduction
This chapter will present and discuss two Brazilian environmental activists who
acquired international notoriety for different reasons: Chico Mendes for being
acclaimed as the fi rst environmental-cause martyr; José Lutzenberger for being the
fi rst environmental leader to occupy a place in the Brazilian Federal Government as
Minister of the Environment. After the presentation of their individual trajectories,
some considerations are given about their legacy, explicit or implicit, regarding
northern/southern-hemisphere environmental interactions. By doing so, we hope to
better integrate environmental ethics in academic programs and help create a holis-
tic worldview that integrates the participation of different regions, disciplines, and
cultures, in order to reorient global society toward a more sustainable socio-
ecological trajectory.
28.2
Chico Mendes
Chico Mendes (Francisco Alves Mendes Filho) was a Brazilian rubber tapper,
1
trade union leader, and one of the most important environmental-movement leaders
in South American history (Vaughn
2003
). He was born in the town of Xapuri (in
the Brazilian state of Acre
2
) in 1944, and was murdered by ranchers in 1988
(Rodrigues
2007
). He fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest and advocated for
the human rights of Brazilian peasants and indigenous people. His goal was to sus-
tain communities of rubber tappers and indigenous people who knew how to live in
the forest without wrecking it. His idea was “to live
with
the forest,” not exploiting
or destroying it. He proposed the establishment of 'extractive reserves' in the
Amazon, which would harvest renewable resources on a sustainable basis. Chico
Mendes led the Rubber Tappers Union in resisting the pressures of wealthy farmers
who were extra-legally grazing their cattle on government land. Sometimes called
“The Gandhi of the Amazon,” his struggle caught the attention of international envi-
ronmentalists who saw his resistance movement as a fi ght to save the rainforest.
Chico Mendes, at a very young age, had an excellent example from his father,
Francisco Alves, who came to the remote Brazilian Amazon forest near the border
with Bolivia and Peru in 1926, leaving the poverty of his home in the state of Ceará,
Brazil. His wife, lrace Lopes Filho, was a member of a family who for generations
1
In Portuguese:
seringueiro
.
2
Until the beginning of the twentieth century Acre belonged to Bolivia. However, since the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, a large part of its population was of Brazilians who exploited rubber
tree groves and who, in practice, achieved the creation of an independent territory. In 1899,
Bolivians tried to gain control of the area, but Brazilians revolted and there were border confronta-
tions, generating the episode which became known as the Acre Revolution. On November 17,
1903, with the signing over and sale in the Treaty of Petrópolis, Brazil received fi nal possession of
the region.
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