Events in the Life of Chico Mendes

Posted: 01-Jun-1999; Updated: 27-May-2009

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Chico with daughter Elenira and son Sandino

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• Remembering Chico
• Environmental Defense and Chico Mendes: A Brief History of Their Work Together
  

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• Francisco "Chico" Alves Mendes Filho was born in 1944 in Xapuri, Acre in the western Brazilian Amazon.
• Poor and illiterate, his father earned his income tapping rubber trees in the forest.
• Chico became a rubber tapper at the age of 9 after being denied a formal education. Until 1970, landowners of rubber estates did not allow schools. Chico learned to read by "sheer luck."
• Chico organized the rubber tappers to work together to defend their homes from cattle ranchers, gaining international support.
• In the 1970's, Chico became a leader in creating the non-violent resistance movement to defend the forest and the homes of forest people from destruction.
• In 1975, he founded the Union Movement in Acre.
• He helped found the leftist Workers Party in 1979.
• In 1985, Chico founded the National Council of Rubber Tappers, a non-governmental group to defend the living and working conditions of communities that depend on the forest. He also organized the first National Meeting of Rubber Tappers in Brasilia with the support of anthropologist Mary Helena Allegretti.
• Conceived of "extractive reserves" as a means of using Amazon resources sustainably for the economic benefit of local people and protecting the rainforest from logging and cattle ranching.
• Received two international environmental awards. One was the "Global 500" award in 1987 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the other was Ted Turner's Better World Society Environment Award.
• With the help of Stephan Schwartzman of Environmental Defense Fund and others, Chico became internationally known as a rubber tapper, union leader and Brazilian grassroots activist.
• In 1988, Chico led the Xapuri Rural Workers Union in a winning effort to stop cattle rancher Darly Alves from deforesting an area the rubber tappers wanted to make into a reserve.
• Chico was assassinated outside his house on December 22, 1988 by Darci Alves, son of cattle rancher Darly Alves.
• In 1990, assassins Darly and Darci Alves were sentenced to 19 years of prison. They escaped from prison in 1993, but Darly was recaptured and it is now serving his sentence. For the first time after many murders over land conflicts, the perpetrators were convicted and jailed.
• The land and forest that Chico lived and died for is now the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve covering 970.570,00 hectares.
• The international outcry caused by his assassination was an important factor in Brazil's decision to host the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.