Brazil remembers slain activist

[Judi Lynn]

Page last updated at 10:23 GMT, Monday, 22 December 2008
Brazil remembers slain activist

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to lead tributes to the Amazon rubber-tapper Chico Mendes on the 20th anniversary of his murder.

Mr Mendes is seen as a pioneer of the environmental movement who mobilised local forest communities to stop the advance of loggers and ranchers.

He was shot dead outside his home in the state of Acre on 22 December 1988.

His legacy was the creation of a network of reserves where people can make a living from the forest.

Mr Lula is expected to make a television address on Monday night to pay homage to Mr Mendes.

The rubber-tappers' leader had spent years encouraging poor communities to protect the rubber trees that gave them their livelihood against large landowners who wanted to clear the forest for cattle ranching.

~snip~
The situation of environmental campaigners also remains difficult. Since the murder of Chico Mendes, more than 1,100 people, including rural workers, priests and judges have been killed in land disputes, according to the Pastoral Land Commission.

Very few of the murders have been solved or the perpetrators punished.

~snip~
After a long and complicated trial, a local rancher and his son were jailed for 19 years in 1990 for Chico Mendes's but were freed after serving a third of their sentences.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7795194.stm

http://ecx.images-amazon.com.nyud.net:8090/images/I/516DV096N1L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

There's a movie about this man
for those who would be interested.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/1347/1052418233_54a5a94a33.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/38219000/jpg/_38219302_150chico.jpg http://www.edlc.org.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/who-are-environmental-defenders.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

1. The Uncertain Legacy of Chico Mendes

December 22, 2008, 9:32 am
The Uncertain Legacy of Chico Mendes
By Andrew C. Revkin

http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2008/12/22/science/earth/22mendes.480.jpg

Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, 1944-1988. (Credit: Courtesy and
Copyright Denise Zmekhol)

Twenty years ago, after building a movement to stem the destruction of Brazil’s rain forests and their inhabitants, both human and wild, Francisco Alves “Chico” Mendes was struck down by a single shotgun blast fired by the son of a cattle rancher irked that he had been denied the right to cut down a fresh tract.

More than a thousand similar murders had gone unprosecuted on the Amazon frontier. But Mendes had built a global network, from local labor organizers to American environmentalists, and had personally pressed development banks in Washington to restrict loans for Brazil’s road-building projects until local peoples’ rights were considered. His killers were caught and jailed.

Mendes’s work and death both left big marks in Brazil and beyond, reshaping forest and development policy and spurring some efforts to bring justice to the forest frontier. Nonetheless, both forests and their inhabitants are still falling. More than 1,000 similar killings have occurred since 1988, by some accounts.

More:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/the-uncertain-legacy-of-chico-mendes/?partner=rss&emc=rss

(Links to movie trailer, and song included)