CHICO MENDEZ

EARLY LIFE

• Chico Mendes was born on December 15, 1944 in a small Brazilian village in Seringal Santa Fé, outside of Xapuri.
• His family were all rubber tappers, people who make their living sustainably by tapping the sap of local rubber trees.
• His family also got their income by harvesting nuts and fruits from the rainforest.

EARLY LIFE

• Chico started working when he was nine years old, and never received formal schooling until later in his life
• He never learned to read until he was about 20 years old.

LABOR

• Chico began to organize rubber tappers in the region, and he was soon elected president of the Xapuri Rubber Tappers' Union

ENVIRONMENT FIRST

• When 130 ranchers expelled 100,000 tappers from the rainforest, Chico and his laborers fought back, convincing families to stand in front of chainsaws and block bulldozers.
• Their efforts were some what successful and attracted the attention of the international environmental community.
• Chico was placed on the United Nations Environmental Program Global 500 Roll of Honor Award in 1987; he also won the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988.

SUCCESSES

• When rancher Darly Alves da Silva attempted to clear-cut an area of rainforest that was planned as a nature preserve in 1988, Mendes succeeded in stopping the planned logging and created the preserve. Mendes also gained a warrant for da Silva's arrest for a murder he had committed in another state.

LEGACY

• After his murder, the Brazilian government stopped subsidizing logging and ranching operations and established many rubber preserves and nature reserves, including one named after the Chico , Parque Chico Mendes.
• The World Bank, is now financing nature reserves that function as sustainable rubber plantations.

AFTER DEATH

• The events following Chico Mendes' murder were deafening. They marked a turning point in the fight to save the Amazon. A human face could be connected to the cause: money and support from all over the world poured in to help complete his work.

AFTER DEATH

• Chico Mendes is not just a hero of the Amazon, he is a hero of the entire planet.
• The burning of the Amazon is a burning that impacts every forest and city and village on Earth. The fires that Chico Mendes fought to put out threatened more than just a few strange and exotic locations thousands of miles away.

AFTER DEATH

• On a planet where the giant chain of life stretches from continent to continent, the flames of their endless burning continue to eat away at the very edges of our own homes and backyards.

THE FOREST NOW

• All is not well in the Brazilian rainforest, by most accounts. Clear-cutting continues, and according to some reports, fighting development in the rainforests of Brazil has cost some 1,000 activists their lives since 1988. Much work remains to be done to honor the legacy of Chico Mendes.

THANKS FOR WATCHING

WORKS CITED

• “Chico Mendes.” The MY HERO Project, 10 July 2015, 5:52:30 PM, myhero.com/chicomendes.
• Lallanilla, Marc. “Learn About the Life of and Death of Rainforest Activist Chico Mendes.” ThoughtCo, 15 Aug. 2018, www.thoughtco.com/who-killed-chico-mendes-1708804.