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What has the world learnt? |
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This week, with the attention of the world focused on Copenhagen, the 21st anniversary of the assassination of Chico Mendes is fast approaching1. It is a good moment to assess his legacy. What has the world learnt? The first training school for indigenous teachers in Brazil – the Centro de Formação dos Povos da Floresta – was created in Acre, through the work of NGO Comissão Pró Índio do Acre, which has been working with indigenous groups there for 30 years. Projects also include courses for indigenous researchers, schoolteachers and agro-forestry agents, the production of school textbooks about local indigenous histories and languages as well as a documental archive relating to indigenous issues. |
An avant-garde concept in learning was initiated in 2005 with the Universidade dos Povos da Floresta, in which the idea of developing a new form of university research, involving scientists as well as masters from the forest, emerged from teaching experiences of the Commissão Pró-Índio in Acre, as well as experiences in monitoring, research and management from several social organisations and universities. “The main idea behind the Universidade da Floresta is not to transmit indigenous knowledge to students in an academic programme, for example, but rather to include indigenous people in the research and teaching process, ” says Mauro Almeida. Various indigenous and “traditional” groups have been learning to use video and recording technology to record aspects of their cultures. State-run initiatives as well as NGOs such as Vídeo nas Aldeias have projects in this area. Many “traditional” communities, previously marginalized in economic and political terms, today face much better prospects. |
The first RESEX |
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The first RESEX was created in 1990. Today there are over 50 in Brazil – a figure that should have been a lot higher by now, say those involved in trying to get communities’ rights to their land recognized. The production of rubber and oil from plants, such as the andiroba, the collection of babaçú nuts and açaí fruits, are among some of the dozens of extractive activities that take place all over the Amazon. Differently from agriculture, which involves cutting down the forest, forest species can be managed by the extractivists without destroying the forest. So a whole range of collectors of forest products – known in Brazil as riberinhos, peconheiros, quebradeiras and seringueiros -- are now potentially able to offer products extracted from natural environments being conserved by them, and consequently for ethical consumers these products are more attractive.
Viana has tried to create a consensus within the state, attempting to bring cattle ranchers and loggers into the fold and to forge unity. This year he was photographed on horseback in Rio Branco’s city centre amid celebrations of the launch of Expoacre, the yearly cattle fair. The work on acriano identity construction has been carried on by Viana’s successor to the office, Binho Marques. Tião Viana, brother of Jorge, has been senator for Acre since 1998. The most famous of Chico Mendes’ heirs is Marina Silva, however. |
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| Elected Senator for Acre in 1994, she was nominated Minister for the Environment from 2003 in the first Lula government. She resigned from the post in protest in May 2008, following a series of political defeats, all of which illustrated that the federal government’s idea of “development” – involving hydroelectric dams, road building and incentives to agribusiness – was very different from hers. She is now expected to stand as presidential candidate for Brazil’s Green Party. In the last few years there have been examples of Chico Mendes’ name being appropriated in cases that he would probably not approve of. Brazil’s federal environment agency, IBAMA, was split last year; one of the sections was renamed Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação e Biodiversidade. The developmentalist agenda of the federal government has little to do with Chico Mendes’ fight; the use of his name almost seems like a way of providing the government with sought-after green credentials. Chico Mendes died fighting for the rights of people living in the forest. He provided ideals and a pragmatic vision to his fellow forest-dwellers, extractivists and indigenous groups. He offered Brazil and the world with a reference for possible actions, a standard to live up to. The forest to him and his companions was not something distant and untouched; it was their home and livelihood. Let’s hope some of this wisdom has trickled through to those negotiating their futures at Copenhagen. |
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The Life of Chico Mendes |
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| “The world of Chico Mendes was the world of nature. And the world of nature was the world of Amazonia. The great valley of dense forests, of gigantic rivers that discharge into the river-sea is the land of the ribeirinhos, of the indians and of the people of the cities. This world had in rubber the formative economy of its culture. Rubber made a civilization in the North of Brazil.” Márcio Souza. Chico Mendes. A Luta de Cada Um. Instituto Callis, 2005. p. 76. Born in 1944, Chico Mendes was the son of rubber tappers who were among the 55,000 migrants who came to the Amazon from the northeast of Brazil – the soldados da borracha or “rubber army” – to reactivate production for the American war effort after the fall of the rubber-producing British colony of Malaya to the Japanese. This was to represent the second and last big rubber cycle in this relatively unknown and remote region inhabited by indians and descendants of migrants from the first rubber cycle. The state of Acre in the south-western Amazon became part of Brazil only in 1903, having previously belonged to Bolivia and been an autonomous state in between. The extraction of latex from the rubber tree helped to fuel the industrial revolution by supplying the raw material for the pneumatic tyre developed by J.B. Dunlop, making possible the bicycle boom at the end of the 19th century. The hevea brasiliensis, or rubber tree, was ultimately what connected this far-away place to global centres of capital. Lured by stories of overnight fortunes, migrants – most of them fleeing the drought-stricken Brazilian northeast, but also young Europeans and Americans – came in their thousands. The seringalistas, or rubber barons, instituted a system of debt slavery however that trapped the recent arrivals in their far-away colocações. Correrias, or massacres of indians, were promoted by the rubber lords as they took over areas inhabited by them. The descendants of survivors, such as the Katukina Pano and the Kulina, still remember through oral history this time of atrocities. Other indians were incorporated into the enterprise, either as rubber-tappers, guides or suppliers of forest game. As time went by, settled seringueiros, or rubber-tappers, learned from indians how to live in the forest. Nevertheless, these groups had become traditional enemies, as the former came to displace the latter. The installation of the military government in Brazil from 1964 was to change the fate of those living in the forests. The regime decided the Amazon region should be colonized, and roads needed to cross the “uninhabited” jungle and “development” should be built. By this time the system based on the production of rubber was in serious decline, and the rubber barons were only too happy to sell the land they had grabbed to speculators and cattle ranchers coming from the south of the country, resulting in the expulsion of rubber-tappers from their lands. |
During the 70s though, seringueiro groups in the south of Acre, more precisely in the districts of Brasiléia and later Xapurí, began to organize themselves. Under the leadership of Wilson Pinheiro and Chico Mendes the empate, or “stalemate”, tactic was developed. This involved men, women and children appearing through the forest, singing, forming human chains in front of the trees about to be cut down, and asking the hired hands to either leave their jobs or join them. This strategy was to become so successful that in the year of 1988 only 50 hectares of land was deforested instead of the 10,000 hectares planned, and even then only with police protection. A well known story relating to one empate relates how, during a standoff between around 100 seringueiros and 50 armed policemen, the women spontaneously began to sing the Brazilian national anthem; the soldiers suddenly stood to attention and the commander had to call the operation off.
By Bruna Cigaran Rocha e Vinícius Honorato
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Footnotes |
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References |
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THIS MONTH: Chico Mendes: What has the world learnt 21 years after his death .jpg)
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“Traditional communities” in Brazil are groups of people who, as anthropologists Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Mauro Almeida have pointed out, pledge to preserve natural resources, these being essential to their survival, and indirectly important as the basis of their legitimacy vis-à-vis the nation.jpg)
Since his death followers of Chico Mendes have assumed prominent roles within state and federal governments, mainly standing for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), or Workers’ Party. Jorge Viana, with a degree in forest engineering, became mayor of Acre’s capital, Rio Branco, in 1992. In 1998 he became state governor for two consecutive terms, during which time he proposed the concept of florestania. Simply put, this takes the “city” out of citizenship and substitutes it for “forest”. The figure of Chico Mendes is a key reference in the state government’s efforts to forge a unique identity for the inhabitants of Acre. Deyvesson Israel Gusmão, of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute in Acre, explains that, “Basically, there is a symbolic construction according to which the current government is his heir and the actions it carries out are a natural consequence of Chico’s legacy. To achieve this, the government takes sustainable development as its key theme in its discourse and practice”..jpg)
Cultures