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Xapuri home by Darly Alves da Silva, a rancher. The shooting took place exactly
one week after Mendes' 44th birthday, when he had predicted that he would not live
until Christmas. Mendes was the 19th rural activist to be murdered that year in
Brazil. Many felt that although the trial was proceeding against the actual killers,
the involvement of the Ranchers' Union, the Rural Democratic Union, and the
Brazilian Federal Police was ignored. In December 1990, Darly Alves da Silva, his
son Darly Alves da Silva Jr., and their ranch hand, Jerdeir Pereia, were sentenced to
19 years in prison for their part in Mendes' assassination. Chico Mendes was well
aware of the threat to his own life; perhaps he foresaw his death. In a letter written
shortly before his assassination, he wrote: “If a messenger from heaven came down
and guaranteed me that my death would help to strengthen our struggle it would
even be worth it. But experience teaches us the opposite … I want to live” (Mendes
1989
, p. 6).
In recent years, some of his compatriots have risen to prominence. As the new
millennium began, the daughter of a rubber tapper from Acre, Marina Silva, became
the Brazilian Minister of the Environment. A forest engineer and former political
advisor of Mendes, Jorge Viana, was elected Acre's governor. And although Brazil's
fi rst working class President, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, was criticized early in his
administration by environmental groups for allowing deforestation rates to increase,
his presidency clearly signaled a great transition. Lula once stood trial in military
court alongside Mendes for their respective unions activities. Mendes' philosophy
has been adapted by rural Amazonian communities of small farmers and settlers,
including those who were lured by offers of free land during the effort to construct
new roads in the Amazon region by the military dictatorship in the 1960s. Some of
these farmers, seeing the limits of the old methods of cutting, burning, planting, and
moving on, have embraced new forms of agriculture that can be sustained on fragile
Amazonian soils. As Chico Mendes stated:
Our struggle will continue until all our areas are guaranteed, until indigenous people have
their land guaranteed. The forest is our mother, our source of life and in order to save it, we
will do everything we can until the end.... At fi rst I thought I was fi ghting to save rubber
trees, and then I thought I was fi ghting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am
fi ghting for our humanity (Revkin
2004
, p. 201).
Perhaps the most signifi cant element of Mendes' legacy is the enhanced power
and voice acquired by the organizations related to him and the rubber tappers'
cause: the National Council of Rubber Tappers and the Amazon Work Group. As a
result a new generation of environmental leaders and activists came onto the scene.
Furthermore, the political conditions for potential change have never been better,
for state and federal policies which promote and support sustainability have been
framed. The poverty, degradation, and destruction of the Amazon forest and its
peoples are amongst the greatest of current socio-environmental challenges. It was
only after the death of Chico Mendes that the 970,750-ha Chico Mendes Extractive
Reserve, accommodating 3,000 families, was created.
One of Chico Mendes' earliest allies from the “other Brazil” - the developed,
industrialized south - was the late José Lutzenberger, an agronomist who became
the country's leading ecologist. He was appointed Minister of the Environment
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