Abstract
The scene could have been right out of an American Western movie. The normally bustling streets of Xapuri, an outpost town in the far western Amazon region of Brazil, had turned ominously quiet. It was just three days before Christmas in 1988, and the neighborhood should have been bustling with the activity of the season. Instead, friends usually chatting on the street had retreated inside. Children, usually running and laughing with friends, were nowhere to be seen. Traffic was almost absent on the dusty street. Danger was thick in the air.
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Notes
- 1.
Gomercindo Rodrigues, Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: The Struggle for Justice in the Amazon (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007), 20. Rodrigues went by the nickname “Goma,” but Mendes always called him “Guma.”
- 2.
Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), xv.
- 3.
“White gold” reference from: Felipe Milanez, interview with Gomercindo Rodrigues, Chico Vive (blog), December 22, 2013, http://www.chicovive.org/node/59.
- 4.
Information about rubber trees from: Alex Shoumatoff, The World Is Burning (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990).
- 5.
Revkin, 43.
- 6.
Information about Acre’s rubber production from: Anthony Hall, “Did Chico Mendes Die in Vain? Brazilian Rubber Tappers in the 1990s,” in Helen Collinson, ed., Green Guerrillas: Environmental Conflicts and Initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean (London: Latin American Bureau, 1996), 93–102.
- 7.
Rodrigues, 65.
- 8.
Mendes, in: Miranda Smith, Voice of the Amazon (film), 1989.
- 9.
Chico Mendes, Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in His Own Words (London: Latin American Bureau, 1989), 17.
- 10.
Augusta Dwyer, Into the Amazon: Chico Mendes and the Struggle for the Rain Forest (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990), 10.
- 11.
Quoted in Revkin, 75.
- 12.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 17.
- 13.
Rodrigues, 126.
- 14.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 18.
- 15.
Ibid., 19.
- 16.
Mendes, quoted in: Bjorn Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the Possible: The Brazilian Rural Workers’ Trade Union Movement, 1964–1985 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 223.
- 17.
Mendes, in Smith film.
- 18.
Euclides Tavora, quoted in Dwyer, 19.
- 19.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 21.
- 20.
Tavora, quoted in Dwyer, 19.
- 21.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 224.
- 22.
Reported in Dwyer, 5.
- 23.
Smith film.
- 24.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 22.
- 25.
Smith film.
- 26.
Data about land speculation from Revkin, 135.
- 27.
Mendes, in Dwyer, 21.
- 28.
Mendes in Rodrigues, 148.
- 29.
Mendes, in Revkin, 5.
- 30.
Ilsamar Mendes, quoted in Revkin, 212.
- 31.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 22.
- 32.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 224.
- 33.
Milanez.
- 34.
Mendes, quoted in Dwyer, 22.
- 35.
Ilsamar Mendes, quoted in Shoumatoff, 76.
- 36.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 2.
- 37.
Mendes, quoted in Shoumatoff, 29.
- 38.
Quoted in Dwyer, 4.
- 39.
Ilsamar Mendes in Smith film.
- 40.
Revkin, 8.
- 41.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 72.
- 42.
Ibid., 37.
- 43.
Mendes, quoted in Dwyer, 10.
- 44.
Mendes, quoted in Shoumatoff, 28.
- 45.
Quoted in Shoumatoff, 100.
- 46.
Mary Allegretti, quoted in Revkin, 180.
- 47.
Quoted in Revkin, 203.
- 48.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 228.
- 49.
Revkin, 177.
- 50.
Mendes, quoted in Dwyer, 11.
- 51.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 43.
- 52.
Revkin, 219.
- 53.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 63.
- 54.
Goma Rodrigues in Smith film.
- 55.
Steven Schwartzman, EDF’sSchwartzmanRemembersChicoMendes (blog), 2008, http://blogs.edf.org/climatetalks/2008/edfs-schwartzman-remembers-chico-mendes/.
- 56.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 230.
- 57.
Mendes, Fight for the Forest, 51.
- 58.
Milanez.
- 59.
Mendes in Smith film.
- 60.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 229.
- 61.
Moacyr Grechi, quoted in Shoumatoff, 72.
- 62.
Steven Schwartzman, quoted in Shoumatoff, 88.
- 63.
Collinson, 2.
- 64.
Mendes, quoted in Rodrigues, 151.
- 65.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 226.
- 66.
Shoumatoff, 90.
- 67.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 227.
- 68.
Mendes in Smith film.
- 69.
Quoted in Shoumatoff, 91.
- 70.
Quoted in Revkin, 227.
- 71.
Mendes, quoted in Revkin, 268.
- 72.
Mendes, quoted in Maybury-Lewis, 234.
- 73.
Darly Alves da Silva, quoted in Revkin, 266.
- 74.
For information on extractive reserves from Unidades de Conservação, see: http://uc.socioambiental.org/en/uso-sustent%C3%A1velextractive-reserve.
- 75.
Milanez.
- 76.
Al Gore in Smith film.
- 77.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, quoted in: “Brazil Salutes Chico Mendes 25 Years after His Murder,” Guardian, December 20, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/20/brazil-salutes-chico-mendes-25-years-after-his-murder.
- 78.
Marina Silva, quoted in Rodrigues, xi.
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© 2017 Larry A. Nielsen
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Mendes, C. (2017). Gandhi of the Amazon. In: Nature’s Allies. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-797-1_6
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