Part Two: Chico Mendes & the Rubber Tappers Who Fought for the Rainforest

stuff unfortunately, but so it goes. I guess with this, uh, whoever this, whoever this person is, I'm not seeing a picture of him, but I'm assuming he fine is hale because he's funny. Here he's awesome because he's this like, um, he's this like portly short guy with him out. No, No, he's like the uncle you really like. You know, Hey, he just a dope Like a picture of him. Oh man, he's like a dope somebody man. Yeah, drop a pitch, Oh yeah, okay yeah nah yeah, No, I mean he's

somebody's like bad decent uncle. Yeah, he's your decent uncle. He's not like not a bad he was saddam mustache growing on the style at the time. I was just assuming he was a baddie like everybody else in Brazil. Now he's he's all right, we'll gotta do it, all right. That other voice is Sophie, Sofie producer. Hi, Sophie, I guess I knows that as part two, My bad for

Saddam and you Chico. They're very not Saddam. I mean, yeah, we'll get to I mean the look though, the look though, it's like they probably went to the same like you know, disco texts. They probably they probably pointed to the same photo at the barbershop. It's sorry, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah exactly, it's the only photo at the barbershop at this time. So yeah, to be fair because communism anyway. Ian is

our audio engineer on Woman Roto theme Music. Today we are talking about the rubber tappers, the Brazilian Amazon who fought like hell to save their home, and we're focusing on one organizer, Chico Mendez and his mustache, but the movement itself is the cool person this week, possibly also his mustache, depending on your opinion of mustaches. Yep. Where we last left off, Chico had just grown up and a communist fugitive had been teaching him before disappearing mysteriously

into the trees to foment revolution. No, he died, and let's see where they go from there. Hopefully he doesn't become a misogynist out of the blue. That would be really frustrating. Damn it, that's foreshadowing, I know. So it's not long before Chico is trying to get up some political shit. He can read and write, which very few people around him can do, and so he starts writing

this is really sweet. His The first political action that he takes is he writes letters to the dictator and he's like, hey, things are kind of bad here, and he includes like lots of information about how everything's bad. They're like, hey, up out, this doesn't work. So he starts organizing and being a shitty husband. That's his other thing. The other thing Chico Mendez is good at is marrying

teenagers and being shitty to them. Yea. When he was twenty four, he married his first wife, Eunice, who was sixteen. He complained about it constantly. Yeah, I was hoping you were going to be like and she's nineteen, and I'm like, okay, well it's nineteen no, but no, damn no, an actual child. Yeah, an actual child, Yeah, he complains, and not even like,

let's see if I could do this. If you're going to have a child bride, be fucking good, Like I don't know, because like they're because there are cultures where the ages of marriage are different. Right, yes, but but be fucking good. What were you gonna say? Yeah, I was gonna say, like, yeah, you got a sixteen year old in your house and you complaining about how she child ish? You're a dumbass. Yeah, the childish because she is one? Yeah, do you say it? Yeah? Yeah, she

don't know how to do those taxes. She can't really cook. Yeah, she can't go to the bathroom without permission. He's a child, Yeah, has not developed. No, he complains about her constantly. He's never home. He spends all of his time rubber tapping and organizing. When he is home, they fight, and she often ran away to her family's house to get away from him. To be fair, he also ran away to his family's house to get away from her all the time too. They had a daughter. Okay, his political stuff.

The rubber bosses are getting weak at this point. Basically, the rubber industry is beginning to fall. Lots of bosses are bailing, and so Chico goes to his rubber boss, who's like, not quite as bad as some of them, basically, but still sucks. And he's like, hey, you should stop taking the ten percent off the top, and you should start stop charging us rent for the paths we walk between the rubber trees because we're your only workers and

everything's falling apart. It takes about a year of pressuring, but eventually he succeeds, and you know, so he beats being at home with your wife. In fact, he entirely abandons his wife while she's seven months pregnant with his second daughter, who he literally never bothers to meet. She dies at eleven months old, and instead he goes off to become a teacher in nineteen seventy one, so he even he won't even meet that one. No, no, god, damn it. Okay, but now he's a teacher. What could

go wrong? That's a perfectly safe well, I have thoughts. What great is he teaching? So mostly he's teaching adults. He teaches tappers how to read and write, and then he starts teaching the kids, like a nine year old girl who he teaches how to read and write by taking her aside and teaching her separately. And then six years later, when she's fifteen and he's thirty for he starts sleeping with her and then marries her when she's nineteen. Shit, this ship is buried at the back of this biography.

I was this the protagonist. You were supposed to tell me something good today, Margaret. I okay, the original draft I was writing said and today's hero, and I went back through and changed it all to today's protagonist. Yes, because maybe not the hero, but it's like, okay, it's you know, I get really annoyed that whenever you read about like the big great men in history, no one mentions they literally groomed a child to marry them after

ditching his first wife. But in a weird way. I think it is worth understanding how people who are doing a lot of good as organizers and or people who are being held up as like figureheads and put on pedestals are just people, and people suck. It's very important to understand that. Yeah, yeah, I would be mad at him. I would be mad at anyone who did these things,

but more mad because he's on this pedestal. But the reason he's on a pedestal is because of the way that we talk about history, the way we talk about movements, and the way that movements organize. So yeah, okay, around this time, not when he marries his second wife, but ten years earlier, when he's teaching her when she's nine, Brazila is going through some bad shit. It's going through dictatorship and it's going through industrialization. This is where we

get to the destruction of the rainforest part. Sorry that you came on this show. Okay, so sure, the leftist too also wanted to develop the rainforest, but the right wing dictatorship like meant it. They're like, we're going to fucking industrialize this country, and so they did a lot of manifest destiny type fucking conquering of the western frontier,

which basically means, let's go fuck up the rainforest. Yes, why have the world's biggest trunk of biodiversity when we can have basically useless soil, Because there's this thing about a rainforest, at least this rainforest, there's no fertile soil. Yes, yeah, yes, the time, Yeah, the nutrients are in the goddamn biomass. Yeah. So they show up and they keep burning at all the fuck down, slash and burn to raise goddamn cows.

And you know, it's like it's now going Margaret, when you had, if and if you ever have children, just the desire for them to be like everybody else, no matter how unique of a situation that you try to set up, you know, for your children. They just like I remember, there was she like, my kids are out of this they're out of My little one she never was, but my other one, she's out of this season now, you know, Thank the Lord. But there was a time where I would be like like fam like I wrapped

for a living. I will be bringing home these like you know, unique one of a like colorways of like these like Nike dunks or looks like these, like these things that I would get, you know, because people will always want to, you know, they would send me stuff and I would be like, yo, send me a kid's version this size, you know what I'm saying. I would bring home these stuff. I brought home like one of the first, uh, one of the few um black ballerinas

like you know world right now. I brought home some like slippers from her because she happened to be like a fan of the music, and she was just like, oh, thanks, Like she's just like can I, but can I? I I brought it these brand new chucks, like like seriously brand new colorway chucks, and she was like, can we just go to Target and get these? And she's like, I feel like those are fake? And I'm like, no, they're no, they're not. They're one of a kind. She's just like, yeah,

I know, but everybody at school has these kinds. And I'm like, but you okay, and just like you just you you you make it. You make a Wago steak for your child, she want a hot dog. And I'm like, so I'm thinking about like why y'all, why y'all want to grow cattle? Yeah, like why you want cattle? Like you no one has a rainforest? Yeah? Yo, say like no, it's such a good point. Yeah, why you want cattle man? Yeah? Yeah? No,

and it I mean, we'll get to this later. But like at some point during all this, they do the fucking math. And if you like rubber tap and collect brazil nuts and like collect the things from the forest sustainably, you get like seventy five dollars worth of value per acre or whatever over ten years. And if you do that, if you slash and burn and grow cows, you get like fifteen dollars per acre. It's not even worth it. Yeah, Yeah,

that's that's the fucking irony of it all. And then even during the entire time, Brazil stays a net importer of beef, like they never actually reach this like grand media economy that they like. Yeah, uh so during starting in the mid sixties running up until basically today. A lot of my research kind of ends after Chico Mendez dies in the late eighties, but I did a little bit after that. But it's fucking depressing. They keep putting

roads into the forest. Everywhere there's a road, there's development, not sustainable development, but bad development. Families, mostly poor families, are getting offered these plots of two hundred fifty acres if they contain it. Sometimes also through squatting laws, where if you at that time, if you prove that you're using land productively for a year, then you had like

some right to it. And that's actually going to cause a lot of the conflict that's going to come up later as a lot of the rubber tappers are actually i think technically squatters. Some of the legal ship some of the legal arguments get real complicated. So they go and these people who are doing this the slash and burn. These are mostly poor fucking people. Yeah, they slash and burn, they plant grass. Within five years to ten years, the

soil is depleted and they have to move on. These people have been called literally surplus population because they've been driven out of their homes by the stread of spread of industrialization along the coast. And these are the people who had been or could be clambering for land reform or for revolution. So it's this clever move where it makes them the the agents of reaction instead of agents revolution.

The slogan, you'll love this slogan was a land without people for a people without land, even though there's so many people who live in the forest already. And yeah wait, yeah, yeah, okay, all right. And then even white settlers, you know, the rubber tappers are from Brazil's point of view, white. You know, obviously, race relations between the US and Latin America are complicated.

So they go and they fuck up the forest. They don't harvest the trees, they actually just knock them down, including all these like old growth mahogany and cedar and shit that they could sell for a ton of money. They're doing shit. Let's these are like the big ranchers doing this. They'll like two bulldozers and attach an anchor chain from a ship between the two of them and just fucking plow the rainforest down, leave it to rotten burn.

They use herbicides that Dowchemical had left over from the Vietnam War, the same ingredients as agent orange to murder the shit out of everyone. They hire poor folks to slog through the jungle with chainsaws, and then the rubber tappers anyone who doesn't get out of their way, including

actually squatters, they just murder. And you get these cowboy folks, the pistolerros, who mimic Turn of the century cowboy culture down to the big belt buckles and like the gun you know, in the belt or whatever, and the place burns. By the nineteen eighties, you get plumes of smoke that could be seen from space. And Okra is the state in the kind of southern part of the western chunk of Brazil. The state called Okray. It's the poorest state in Brazil, at least at the time of the stuff

I'm reading. In the early nineties, it's where Chico Mendes lives. An Okra. Literally half of its land was owned by ten owners shortly after this land rush. So there's fire and cows and pistoleros and forced removal of rubber tappers and all this bad shit just flooding into the state. And in nineteen seventy six, some heroes, actually i'll use heroes here, some rubber tappers. They fucking did something about it, Okay, And you get this tactic. It's called the impotch and

it's a big demons Yeah. Yeah, it's a big demonstration. It's sort of a mix between civil disobedience and a mass direct action attack. Over the next decade, the tappers stage more than forty of these mass actions. Well they do it way more than forty, but forty of them are big. And they save two million acres of forest from sauls and fire by way of these direct actions. So that's the core of how fucking cool these people are.

And I'm going to describe it. I'm going to quote from a book called The Burning Season by Andrew Revkin. The impat has repeatedly been characterized in the press as a peaceful sit in, something that Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior might have conceived, but in fact it is frequently an aggressive showdown, a classic Brazilian confrontation in which bluff counts for a lot, but it must be backed up by a willingness to act and as for where

it comes from to continue quoting Andrew Revkin. Although Chico Mendes has frequently been credited with creating the impace, this form of protest was really more of a spontaneous reaction from Acre's rubber Tapper community, a communal response to a shared threat. Mendes and the other leaders the rubber Tappers, with the help of their new allies from the Catholic Church and Brazil's burgeoning Union movement, simply took a crude

action and honed it into a powerful weapon. And so the first one of these, I just think it's really funny because like when I first start doing research on something and I'll listen to some like I'll kind of like I'll listen to a podcast about it, I'll I'll find the like little surface level things and you know, and they're like in the spirit of literally they're both like in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King

these peaceful sit ins. Let me describe it to you. Yeah, I was like, wait a minute, this ain't gole be peaceful, is it. It is peaceful in the way that if you show enough force, you can stay peaceful. I love it. On May ninth, nineteen seventy six, some rubber tappers whose whole town had just been bought out from under them to be converted to pasture. I'm reading this is if it's a quote, but it's not. I'm actually just going back to my script. Okay, they got themselves some shotguns

and some friends. They legally had squatters rights, but only if they're putting the land to productive use. And so if the land is cut and burned, then they can't claim productive use because they can't rubber tap of fucking burned field. So they have to act fast. The only way that they can protect their legal right to this forest is contesting the legal right by stopping the fucking burning.

Twenty seven of them, not Chico yet, surround a camp of sixty some loggers with like shotguns and are just like, you gotta leave. Okay, yeah, nah, yeah, that that type of piece got it. I this is the reason you're the perfect guest for this is that is that is what the fucking rubber tappers are doing this entire time. Yeah, and the loggers left it, of course they did. Yeah yeah.

It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. These people are like, no, we fucking know this place that yeah, and it kind of worked like it worked to the tappers end up giving seventy acres each, but it's land that's already been mostly burned and you need about like I think five hundred seven hundred acres actually in order to be a rubber tapper sustainably as like one person. Oh wow. But so this is useless to them. But what it does is it starts a movement. It basically shows them that

they have power, and so they get some allies. One of their first allies is liberation theology. Liberation theology is running through South America at that time, which is basically like Catholicism done cool, Like what if we did Jesus shit instead of like power hung I was like, one would argue, yea yeah, it's a lot more like the Jesus of the book. Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, and they would make that argument as well, and I think

did so successfully for a while. Yes, not the entire institution of the Catholic Church, but huge chunks of it in Latin American particular start moving over towards liberation theology, including a ton of regional and local players. And there's still some priests in Akra who are conservative and working for the ranchers. So basically both sides have their priests.

But one of the reasons the church was and actually one of the reasons that the church was such a big part of the left in Brazil, is that the dictatorship had like murdered everyone else, but it was harder or murder priests. They did murder priests, but it was like harder, you know. They also got okay, so they the liberation theologists and the priests basically are on their side. And then they get the unions. The union movement finally made its way into the Amazon, and the union movement

has struggled under the dictatorship. It was very hard to legally be a union. You have some illegal unions like the Communist Party, and you have like legal unions that are very handicapped. But specifically you get the Confederation of Agricultural Workers or CONTAG It's set up shopping. Shapuri, a small town in okre So, Chico. Mendes quits teaching. He

moves to Shapuri and he gets involved. He gets himself elected to town council in nineteen seventy seven, and the church gives him, gives the union a shed to set up the office in. And he is a shitty politician, not in an evil way, just in a yeah, he's not good at it. He's an organizer and he's honest. He's good, he's good with people, he's good with networking. He's bad at speeches, he's never an orator, and he's terrible at politicking because he wears his fucking heart on

his sleeve. This is the ship I really like him for. Yeah, he basically never lies, and he basically never backs down or like runs away in fear. He's fucking smart and he's good at tactics. And the unions and all the small towns come together, which makes sense union and they start organizing together. Hundreds of workers now go to interrupt logging whenever they have an apace and the ampace start getting fierce. They're mostly non violent, but they're definitely not pacifist.

The ability to back up their threats is super important. The main line that they don't cross. So what they do is they like some loggers will set up camp, right and they'll be like living in this like shack with like a tarp and shit, and then the fucking rubber tappers come and are like, hey, like you're gonna go, and then they chainsaw down the shack and yeah, I love it. And the one thing that they don't do is they don't steal from the people that they're driving out,

and these people like poor as shit. There's like at one point where they're talking about they're like eyeing a cow hungrily, right because they're all fucking hungry, and the loggers have some cow and they're like in the middle of like violently confronting them and driving them out. But the still at the end of the day being like, no, these are people. They're trying to make their money like us.

I get it. Yeah exactly. Yeah. And there's a bunch of stories about different times where like part of the reason it works is even they're showing up with force, but they're also kind of showing up being like, yeah, you're trying to make money just like us, but you can't do it this way, we won't let you. In nineteen seventy nine, one of the biggest of these and paches, three hundred tappers armed only with machetes, surround a camp of thirty pistoleros, the hired killers who murder people who

don't leave their homes. Yeah, the murderers, the thirty people, the thirty people with guns run away. Of course they do, ditch their guns. They're running in such a hurry. The tappers confiscate all their firearms and pose for a photo. It's like, now we got guns. I love it. Let me listen. Listen, listen, yeah, listeners, there's there is confidence

goes such a long way, yeah, you know. And and it's because you have to think to yourself, if you're the ones with the guns and these people walk up with machetes, you have to think to yourself, if you're the gun person, that they these people know something I don't because they should be scared of us, and they not. So maybe they know something I don't, you know. Yeah, so that's why they're like, yo, we should probably fall back,

because they they're clearly crazy, you know. And and and especially like when the type of this is I love it because the type of of direct action they're doing is the type that they can always be like, look, we've never stole from y'all. You know what I'm saying. We are we are you know air quotes non violence, I'll burn your house down, yeah, but were not violent, you know what I'm saying. So then the legend does the work for you to where it's like, how do

these people without hurting? Nobody just hurt people? Let me fall back, you know, and it works. Listen, it works. It probably works. Look it looks it works. Yeah, it's a tactic that works. It's a tactic as a confidence man, it goes a long way. Yeah, and you know, also you can be confident and there's these savings capitalism and we're back. So while all this shit's happening, Chico and a priest start traveling around all the rural areas outside

Shapuri recruiting tappers. And they don't do it with fiery speeches. Actually the priest kind of does. He like sets up a meeting and he's like, yeah, of course, you know, and then that's my impression of a priest. I don't know, I'm not an impression girl. Yeah, Like so but instead Chico just shows up and just starts fucking listening to people about their problems um and connecting with people one

on one. And there's a new left party on the scene in nineteen seventy eight called the Workers Party or it's founded by Lula, the guy who's currently the president of Brazil, and it is not popular at first. It is a leftist opposition party. Chico is setting up the Aukry branch of it. He actually started off joining the Illegal Communist Party because but he's a practical man at heart. More than he's a communist, he's a I'm get stuff done. Yeah yeah, So the PT is doing more for people,

so he switches. Later in life, he actually starts working for the Green Party literally just because environmentalism attracts more international support it does unfortunately. Yeah, that's gonna be a big thing for them, is that they keep being like, why don't you care when it's people dying, and people are like, yeah, yeah, we don't care about people, and it's like, we should care about both. I don't understand why this is such a why is it a zero

sum game? Which y'all, yeah, yeah, exactly. So by the late nineteen seventies, the ranchers, the sort of right wing, the big owners. They come up with a very effective tactic as well. It's called murder. They just and they moved from killing just random peasants, which I guess they were already doing. Murder. Strategic murder is what they moved to. Instead of just killing random peasants, they start killing movement leaders, priests and union leaders and stubborn squatters all wind up dead.

At some point during all this, Chico Mendez is kidnapped into a car, hooded and beat by the side of the road, but he's not killed, not yet. The spoiler, the union president in the region, is a guy named Wilson Pinnaro, and he's gunned down in nineteen eighty after receiving such a threat of that he's gonna get murdered. Chico probably maybe only survived this by being out of town. No one really knows, but he was out of town what happened, and the workers were mad, like like real mad.

So a thousand mourners come to see his body, and Chico is a little bit like, hey, we probably shouldn't fall unto revenge killing. It'll go bad. But everyone's like, no, we're going to do revenge killing. So several dozen arm tappers go to the suspected rancher's house, the suspected murderer. They ambushed on him on his way in. They put

thirty to forty rounds into him. He's dead. None of these various murders on either side gets solved, including there's some revenge killing for the revenge killing, which is the problem with revenge killing to be fair. Yeah, Chico goes into hiding for months, but eventually he comes out of hiding. He gets elected leader of the union, and their movement just keeps growing. A bunch of communists have been hiding out in the jungle. That other guy wasn't the only one.

They join. The liberal newspaper becomes a labor newspaper and it outsells any other paper in the area by like twice over. Folks who who could read would read it to everyone else in big public meetings, and direct action was only part of it. A newspaper was only part of it. They also set up schools and worker cooperatives,

which is again part of the Like this movement fucking ruled. Yeah, they were like, we're going to bring education and financial independence to the rubber tappers, and the cooperative model they wound up with was borrowed from a model that indigenous folks in the area had been using alongside outside help to set up their own cooperatives. But basically it was like, we're going to cut out the rubber bosses, we're going to sell directly to the merchants, and we're going to

stop being exploited that way. Yeah, the schools get started by this grad student. It's kind of funny. This is a very movie part of it. There's this like Mary Helena l. Gretty and she shows up to do field work. She's like, Oh, I'm going to go study these people. And then she's like, oh, this place fucking sucks, like literacy is forced onto people. So she decides to set up some schools. But she doesn't do it in the colonisty way that could easily happen, right, She doesn't say

I know how to do this. She goes to Chico Mendes and she goes to the union and she says, how do I help this happen? How do I make this happen the way that works with you? While um and so she stays part of the movement and one of the movement leaders for the rest of the fucking time. And she does it so not so not so dangerous mindset. Yeah, I haven't seen us a kid um good Yeah kids, Third and most learn. I love that song when I was in middle school. It's a great song. Yeah around it. Yeah.

But yeah, so she's I couldn't remember whether Michelle Feiffer does it in a good way or bad way in that movie. So no, she's white Savior. Yeah. Yeah, she's moving to the Ander City School and she whips them all into shape. Yeah that makes a yeah. Yeah, and so that's not what Ali Gretty is doing. I believe how it happens. Yeah, Chico mendees it. During all this time, he's like, I'm gonna be a politician. He's convinced. All of his friends are like, you suck at that be

an organizer. He runs for Mary, No, he runs for Mary, runs for states senator. He runs like so many different races, and he keeps fucking up his organizing by like, oh, I gotta leave because I gotta go fucking go hilarious campaign or whatever. He never wins a race besides the town council race. He wants won a quarter. Only a quarter of the potential voters in the region were registered because and most and so it's like the rubber tappers and the poor folks who would be on his side

were not voters by and large. Yeah. Sorry. They also don't even like the Workers Party, most of them. They like the Union, they like the empaches, they like fucking up things and getting things done, but they're not like, oh, yeah, the Workers Party, that's for us. So yeah, his friends keep trying to talk him out of it to the day he dies. He keeps running for shit, keeps losing. Maria Helena Michelle Pfeiffer is back in the city and she's fighting like hell for land reform and better treatment

of indigenous people and all kinds of cool shit. She keeps her connections to the Amazon, and she basically sets herself up as like a way to channel what's happening in the Amazon out to first the rest of Brazil and then internationally. And yeah, it's through her that Chico and the unions start doing nationwide and international shit. Chico

starts traveling to the US and ship to network. He winds up like putting pressure on the World Bank to get them to like cancel loans unless they treat people better. And during all of this they get yet another ally to their movement. They get the environmental movement. And obviously for them it wasn't this abstract preserve the environment thing, but they had to learn the language of basically like

us environmentalism in order to get support and money. Yeah, and they're all kind of mad about it because they're like the only way that we come across as important to you is if we're like seen as charismatic megafauna, you know, especially the indigenous people are like, oh yeah, you'll put us on the cover of National Geographic or whatever. But like we're just fucking people and we live here,

you know. But yeah, it has to be like this, like yeah, this like sage ancient wisdom that yeah, this like Mystic Woman who is almost like Avatar esque, like the movie, like I'm at one with this thing and now you like it, rather than being like yo, I just they shouldn't burn down my land. I live here, Yeah, yeah,

yeah exactly. But they do actually also take some stuff from the environmental movement a positive way besides just like financial support and attention, and specifically it helps them frame

at Chico at least talks about this. Maybe it's just talking bullshit in order to get attention, I don't know, but like it helps them frame their struggle as not just a local struggle, but like an international struggle, a global struggle, because there's like this, people are being like, oh, it's actually around the time people start pay attention to

global warming. They ignore it, including to the present day, but it's like when they start being like, oh, this is going to cause them like real shit if we burn down the lungs of the earth or whatever. Yeah, and so like Chico talks about being like I started off fighting for my people and now I'm fighting for

you know, the world or whatever. They also during all of this set up one of the coolest things that they do this concept of extractive reserves, which is preserve the forest but continually but continue to be able to sustainably harvest things like rubber and brazil nuts from it. And it's basically this idea of being like humans are part of nature, and it kind of presages what we talk about now with environmentalism. You know, Um, yeah, that's

what that's what I was going to. That's what I was definitely going to bring that up because I'm like, the more you understand, like indigenous communities, they don't have this separation between human and nature, like we are, we are, we are, we're all. It's all nature. Yeah, and like these aren't two separate, it's the same. I don't understand how y'all separating the two is they are one thing?

And also, uh, something interesting that you that you you're kind of bringing up to is is the reality of how do I say this, like which you probably are going to get to later, but like just the view in sort of like uh, climate change in environmental circles to where it's like you have the one side that's like, let's try to get this back to like Garden of Eden energy to where it's like before humans touched it, right, Yeah, And that's one view and then the other view is

like that's literally impossible because we don't know how that was Number one and number two humans exist, you know what I'm saying. And it's like and we we we live on the planet. You know, we don't have to be a parasite though, like there's there is a way to be on the to be on the planet, to understand that we are one of many creatures on it, you know, and no other creature depleted the land like this.

You know, we don't have to be that. There's millions of other creatures here that have not destroyed their environment. Yeah yeah, And there's like millions of other cultures of humans that have not destroyed their environment, you know exactly. Yeah. They have lived thousands and thousands of thousands of years. Yeah, they ain't every day, know what I'm saying. They did look for it's still here. Yeah, they live here the

whole time. Four's still here. Yeah. No. It's funny because like more and more, finally people and whatever Western folks are realizing that all throughout even the Amazon rainforest, they're running across these like stands of brazil nuts and all this stuff that we're like, we're clearly planted. It was clearly like yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like they work. We had the environment. Yeah, yeah, we had guardens, we had farms. Yeah, that's that's um. I know you you're

probably gonna get to this too. But that's an interesting side not even about like American sort of Native American history, where people would be like you know, even around the time like the Teddy Roosevelt and just being like, we want to preserve our great American outdoors. Look at this untapped, you know, untouched pristine forests, and the natives are like, no, that's our garden. That's what are you talking about. We grew, we grew strawberries. There is what do you mean untouched.

We've been harvesting this land since five hundd BC. What did you talk about? Yeah, yeah, we put so we just take it. And you're claiming, Yeah, it's just like we just take care of it. Like I don't under stay at what you're saying. Yeah, it's like walking into someone's house and it's not trashed, a trashed bachelor pad, and being like, no one lives here because if you live here, you get pizza boxes everywhere. And it's like, no, I I grew up and I learned how to throw

my pizza boxes away. Yeah it's just simple. I just I just threw off the trash. It's just yeah, look at this beautiful untouched house. No I live in it. What do you think? I just cleaned up? What are you talking about? I just cleaned up after myself. Yeah, so yeah that's what. Um, that's and I love that they they they kind of presaged that, like it's stuff that the environmental movement in the North was having didn't

quite get yet, at least the non indigenous one. And they end up so they end up opening a bunch of these fucking reserves, these extractive reserves as a way to save the forest and also participate in the economy and feed themselves and all this stuff stuff, And they make one other really important ally during this time, the indigenous people of the Amazon. And this was the biggest deal, right.

I Mean, it wasn't the thing that changed everything financially or whatever, but from my point of view, is the biggest deal because because despite all the like intermarrying and like some connections or whatever, the rubber tappers and the indigenous people have been at odds for a machete point for like centuries, right, Yeah, but they navigated it. They created the alliance of the peoples of the forest. And

Chico is a big part of this. But I think I think that the initial push actually came from indigenous folks because I read about I read them saying, hey, we should probably do this, and then like and then I read about like Chico doing it, but like the movement did it, and Chico was a big part of it. I don't want to to play that, but I just don't want to play it up too big. And they

meant it though. They made this alliance. And at one point the I can't remember it was a World Bank or someone, someone's like basically like, hey, what if we sell out the indigenous people but give the rubber tappers what they want? How about that chic and she goes just gets up and walks out of the room and like stops them. No, they meant it. They like created this alliance and they fucking meant it. Yeah. But there was one group of people. The Chico Mendes wasn't excited

about working with women. Women. Women rudic for you, I know, I know. So women started coming along to them paches, and they had to disapointed right now, you know, because I really there's so many things you're so good about him. So the women had to fight the men fairly hard. Oh my god, I know, I know. Margaret. Margaret texts me so mad yesterday. Yeah. She was like she was like, I was eighty percent through and then I found out this horrible thing and I was like, yeah, I mean,

he's a man. So there was a good chance yeah at this time, you know. But yeah, which is why we're working on developing our Cool Wife Guys of History podcast. Yeah, about men who actually cared about the women who were part of their lives. Yes, so the women had to fight like hell against the men. Not all of the men to come along on the apaches, but one man in particular stood in their way. That man was Chico Mendez,

who went point damn it. Yeah, who around this time starts sleeping with that fifteen year old Oh, when she turns nineteen, they get married. Soon he is cheating on her, and then when she cheats on him, he threatens to shoot her and he has to be talked out of it by his friends. And he only sees her a couple of days a year because he's always off doing activist shit. And she wants to join the movement and come with him the whole time. As far as I can tell, she's like, no, I want to just actually

be part of your life in this movement. He tells her things like, quote, my work is not play, which gets out what you're talking about earlier, being like you're mad at someone for being childish, then don't marry children. Yes, And the other quote is this is this is business and you can't keep a secret. So his wife is not part of the activism. She is at home with the kids. Okay, but if you're stuck at home with the kids and you should try buying stuff, how's that?

So if he's not excited about this, it's been a rough one for ad transition. I mean that's kind of what happens, man, you know. I mean me being the opposite of him and totally loving my wife and totally respecting her. And she's not a teenager that shout. Do you know what I'm saying. I do find myself at home with the kids sometimes, and you do be buying stuff. Yeah, exactly.

So here's some stuff and we are back and yeah, no, I yep, I actually think once again another reason you're a good guest for this particular Yeah, you're a big wife guy. Yeah. How you released a song? I released a song just now, like a video and it's just me and three homies and just a bunch of pictures of us with our wives being in love with him the whole video. Yeah, Yes, I love the thing that

shouldn't be that shouldn't be a high bar. You know. No, it's just like even in like traditional masculinity and machiesmo carrying and protecting as part of it, and that's good. I just that, Yeah, there's certain there's certain aspects of stupid masculinity that I just I didn't get that germ like that. I'm like, and I don't get it when I see it that whole like I'm more prone to

and try to impress the homies than I am. The girl is like, I don't get that part, you know what I'm saying, where you're in a pissing contest in everything. You know, also, don't get the idea of being like, no baby me alone. I'm with the pros. I'm like, yeah, I'm looking at the homies like, uh, I see you dudes later. I spend time, but I'm gonna goes. I actually like this woman. I think she's incredible. I'm gonna go spend time with her. Yeah fu yeah, I'll be

at the creative homie. So back to his activism, pretending like all this other stuff doesn't well, I mean, obviously we don't actually pretend like this other stuff didn't happen, but you know, it's a context worth understanding about him, but they the movement, including him, are doing amazing shit. At this point, they drive out several of the biggest ranchers out of the area, including some guy named the cattle King who also owns ranches in the fucking us

and that guy that guys are used car salesman. Yeah. I hate that guy, the cattle King. Yeah. And they do it by basically being like, look, it is just not worth it to you, like the return on investment of cutting down this forest, dealing with us, did I mention the part where we're here and we have guns, Like it makes it just not fucking worth it for people.

And so financially, they're all finally like fuck it, I'm gonna get out of here, and so they start driving away more and more ranchers, but not all of the ranchers are leaving. There's one particular group of ranchers that doesn't leave, and they tend to be the we call ourselves ranchers, but we mostly run drugs type of ranchers. Oh, I like those guys. Here we go, here we go. So the most murdery of the rancher families in the

area was the Alvez family. They were like, oh yeah, we're totally definitely ranchers, not a criminal network of murderers who moved cocaine. But everyone knew they were lying, because they didn't care that everyone knew they were lying. Darley Alvez da Silva lived on a ten thousand acre ranch, which is really fucking big. I live on five acres and I have more land than almost anyone I know. Yeah, he lived on that ranch with his brother, his dad, his four wives, his thirty kids, and about a dozen

hired gunmen who occasionally did ranch work too. They were super murdery, murdered anyone who looked at them funny, mostly random workers and shit, including their own workers. Later, at one point, they try to hire this gunman to kill Chico, but he actually backs out and goes and warns Chico because he doesn't mind being hired as a murderer. But then he finds out that this would be employers of a tendency to murder their own employees, and he's like,

I'm not gonna work for this guy. Like, if I go, says someone, I'm gonna fucking die. I never understood that. Whenever you're watching some movie and they like they show the bad guys really bad by having him like kill one of his subordinates. Like, that's a terrible leadership. How do you run an autocratic regime killing everyone? It doesn't on your side anyway, it's not functional. Yeah, the Elvis family had moved recently to the jungle because them and

run out of everywhere else for murdering people. Once there, they start providing muscle for cocaine transportation. Most of the stuff I read about doesn't really focus on the drug running part. I only found one reference to the fact that they were running drugs, But to me it clicks

and makes everything else makes sense. And so I don't know whether the books I was reading just like kind of didn't want to get into the drug trade stuff, or like didn't know about it, or they were written during a time when it would be a bad idea to talk about it, or maybe it wasn't as big a deal part of their deal it seems like it, But it seems to me like it was a big part of it. The other batty for this episode, the Tappers get a union. How come rich landowners and ranchers

can't have a union, so they they form one. They form the Rural Democratic Union, which is affront for doing all the violent stuff against Robbert tappers, small farmers and landless folks. Yeah, there's no white entertainment television exactly. Yeah, much like white entertainment television. Their motto is tradition, family and property. Oh god, not the property. Yeah, tradition, family

and property and blood and soil. What's so funny about Like, I know that they're hypocrites about everything and everything's fucked, but like they are not the traditional inhabitants of the Amazon, not even the white settle are traditional. Like this would Yeah if Texas Nazis moved to Appalachia and started murdering the folks here who live here and then started talking about tradition, that's how it. Like, Oh, they're not fucking from here. They're not even the white people who are

sort of from here multigenerationally or whatever. You know. Yeah, their main point of activism was that the ranchers had the right to use violence to defend their property. Their main activism was to buy all the ranchers more weapons. They'd have big fundraisers like I'm making this up, but like Bingo night for guns for ranchers and the ranchers tried to ambush Chico Mendes like multiple times. Like I've read different numbers of the numbers of times that people

tried to kill him. Five ish seems to be the general median. The ranchers themselves usually not doing this attempted murder, usually attired killers. Chico Mendes goes out and gets himself a pistol permit and a pistol for obvious reasons. So Darcy Alvez, he's hired to clear out the rubber tappers from where Chico Mendez grew up, and hundreds of rubber tappers show up and occupy the place in a in their classic semi peaceful way, armed non violence. I guess

they hold the place for months. Darcy gets told by the military police that if shit goes down, people will no doubt die on both sides, and Darcy will be held responsible, so he doesn't attack. Darcy tries to buy Chico off Chico's like, hell no, doesn't. He won't even shake the guy's hand, And the rubber tappers win. And as there's a standoff in which against the police where there's like about to be a massacre, this is this

is the way it gets told. I don't totally believe this story because this two pat But there's a big standoff with the police and they're all about to die. And then all the little kids who are part of the mpare starts singing the Brazilian national anthem, and then the cops join in and they all sing the Brazilian national anthem together. Oh, nice little movie moment. Yeah, no,

it might have happened. Weird shit happens. Then tens of thousands of acres are turned into an extractive reserve and the Alves family is denied their job of driving out and murdering everyone. And because of this success is like one of the biggest successes they've had. The tactics starts spreading this like occupation tactic, and soon no new ranchers are setting fire in Shapuri. Some of his activist friends

buy a house for Chico's family in town. At this point because check this out, he literally hadn't bothered having a house, so his wife and his kids had to live with his wife's family and ship before that. Of course. Yeah, these guys that are so driven by the movement, Yeah yeah, yeah, And I have a I've thought about this. I stayed up late angry about this. If you want to be I'm committed to the cause and not my family type of guy, you can be that. All you have to

do is follow this one simple trick. Don't have a family. It's I don't understand why that's so hard to understand. Yeah, well, if you listen, he think, if you just don't have wife and you just don't make babies, just don't make other humans. Yeah, you ain't gotta worry about him. Yeah, yeah, it seems so simple. I know we could. We could. You literally work at a rubber place. You're literally where rubber literally you can figure out. Yeah, you could have

the freshest condom in the world. Bro, you can, Yeah, right out of the tree. Yea. Darcy Alvez is fucking mad. Not about Chico being a bad husband. He's actually worse. Um we'll talk about why to his four wives later. Oh my god, he's mad because the activists are winning, so they double down on the violence thing, and more and more pistoleros start marching through town. Someone shoots some teenagers during a sit in a leftist church. Guy who's

running for town council gets murdered. Mendez starts being surrounded by bodyguard at all time, and basically he's like, I'm going to die. He doesn't want to die, but he also doesn't want to leave town. He doesn't want to be a martyr. He refuses to leave. All of his friends are like, hey, like it's cool and all you could go somewhere else for a while. They're going to murder you, and he's like, no, no, it's fine. His quote around this time is after death were useless. Living

people achieve things. Corpses nothing, gosh. Yeah. So he starts digging up dirt on the Alvezs and he like uses new activist connections to dig up the fact that they're wanted in another state. He can't go to the local police because the local police are in the Alvez's pocket, of course, so he goes to the federal police, who

take their sweet time writing the warrants. They take more than a month to do, so the Alvez's catch wind of the fact that he's now snitched on them, and the Alvez skipped town so that they don't get arrested. And while they're out of town, Yeah, like what they're doing makes sense from their you know, yes, and they planned Chico's death. He turned forty four. On December fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight, he said he wouldn't live to see Christmas.

The UDR, the Rich People's Union, they're pouring money into the problem, because of course they are. They've already bought most of the newspapers, using them to talk shit on Chico, the Union, the Worker's Party in the church. Now they're openly raising money for the reward for to murder Chico Mendez. Hey green light, Okay, Yeah. The local cops who are in the pocket of these folks, they take away Chico's

pistol permit. He stays armed illegally, and right up to the end, he's running around organizing people and joining getting people to join the union. He's running off to cities to be the face of the movement in the network, but he won't leave town for good. On December twenty second, he's with his family and two bodyguards and his kids, and he goes into his backyard to take a shower at the sort of outhouse shower area. Two men had been camped there, possibly for like a month, basically waiting

like they were hunting. Later, they found all the like food cans and shit piled up there. Oh, so gross. A man with a twenty gage shotgun murdered him. It was likely Darley Alvez, Darcy's son, or it was an accomplice. Darley confessed later said steadfastedly it was only him because he was a murderer, but he was not a snitch. Yeah, of course. Chico Mendez was one of nine hundred eighty two union organizers and land rights activists killed in Brazil

between nineteen sixty four and nineteen eighty eight. Day he was the fifth rural union president to be murdered in Brazil that year alone, and usually in Okra. The you know that state, if you kill a guy, nothing bad happens to you. But what they didn't realize, what the killers didn't realize, You know that, like I don't know this happens to you. Then no one's a hero in their hometown. Thing, where like people from your hometown never

quite understand the level of fame that you've acquired. Yes, yes, yeah, which is great. It keeps you honest, but sometimes it's really frustrating when people are like, yeah, whatever, anyway, do you little music bang? How you little music thang going? Yeah? Yeah exactly, Like I feel myself that way. Fuck you number two on the Billboard charts. Yeah, that's how it's going. Yeah,

it's a little yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it turns out Chico Mendez was real famous, like international famous, like had been in the New York Times famous, and killing famous people is way harder to get away with. Yes, So the Fed's investigated and the Alveza is spent nineteen years in prison. Oh and they suck, but they kind of suck in a cool, badass TV villain kind of way. Yeah. There are multiple armed standoffs involved in arresting them. Several cops get shot in the process. They all break out

of prison for a while before getting recaptured. Witnesses and prosecutors at their trials late wind up dead or quit their jobs. Like there was this like paratrooper, judo instructor or something who was like one of the prosecutors, and then he's like, I have decided to prioritize my time with my family and then he left the job. Okay,

sucker shit, yeah all right. And then my evidence for this idea that this man was bad to his four wives is that one of Darley's four wives killed herself because she'd talked to police and she was afraid of darl and what he might do. Oh my gosh. And that's the end of Chico Mendez. A thousand people came to his funeral a few days later, including Lula, the current president of Brazil. Some people flew from the States.

The priest was there, the town's priest, Luis Seppi, and he was an Italian immigrant and a member of the Italian Communist Party. And I just think that's funny that their town priest was this Italian communist. Italian communist. Yeah, amazing. His death changed him shit. And most of the stuff I've read has been like he was a brilliant martyr and it changed everything. But like I honestly think on a longer timeline, like I think his life changed more.

I think he was right. He was an all right martyr. You play the hand you got. But he was a really good organizer. Other people kept going. The fight for the rainforest continues, indigenous people leading the way. It's still getting burned. An ecology guy named Jose Lutzemberger as a quote in the environmental movement, our defeats are always final, our victory is always provisional. And I have a short afterwards.

I know, and it's it's kind of the inverse of like, I like the inverse when the IRA told I think, Margaret Thatcher, you have to get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once, yep. But unfortunately, with fucking protecting the rainforest and the earth itself the opposite, we have to get lucky every time. Yeah. So two hundred environmental activists were killed around the world in twenty twenty one. Mexico wins the Dubious Award for most environmental

activists killed fifty four. These murders include a ton of politicians, even who do things like opposed New Minds. Latin America has more than three quarters of these murders, and more than forty percent of these murders are of indigenous people. The group that tracks this all the way, by the way, if anyone feels like supporting them, is called Global Witness.

I don't know a ton about them, so I'm not trying to be like this is the most important organization, but they are the people who track this, and that's good that people track this. There have been a bunch in the US also. The first one I know about is a guy named Guy Bradley, who was a game warden who was supposed to enforce all the anti poaching laws in Florida in the early nineteen hundreds. He was left entirely alone with no backup and supposed to like

protect the egrets. He got shot at a bunch of times, but he kept going. In nineteen oh five, a Confederate veteran named Walter Smith murdered him and left him on the beach. Walter got found not guilty. On the plus side, Bradley's brothers torched the guy's house. Two more bird wardens were murdered over the next few years. In nineteen ninety someone probably the FBI, car bomb two Earth First activists in California, Judy Barry and Darryl Cherney. I'm working on

an episode about them now. They survived and they proved in court that the FBI had violated their civil rights during the investigation. In nineteen ninety eight, there was another Earth First activist named David Chain. His forest name was Gipsy. He was trying to defend old growth force in California from clearcutting. A logger dropped a tree on him and killed him. WHOA yeah, okay. No charges were ever filed

against the logger. He was like, oh, it was an accident, but he had been like screaming threats at the activists shortly before it. After his death, the company was found to be logging illegally in the first place the protesters, which is what the protesters has been saying the whole time.

Pacific Lumber lost its logging license in California, and then on eighteenth of January in twenty twenty three, a non binary indigenous anarchist named Manuel Torts Tehran was shot by the police during a raid on a protest camp in Atlanta, Georgia, And this episode is dedicated to them and their memory and the people who are trying to fight another example

of like intersectional environmental protection. They're trying to protect the forest in Atlanta and also stop the cops from expanding their capacity to Yeah, yeah, sorry, it's kind of a bummer of an episode. Man. I was so looking forward to today. I was like, oh, great, man, I could talk about some dope stuff. They did good ship though,

they did. They really did. They saved fucking millions of acres by like, yeah, just banding together and showing up with shotguns and being like you can't fucking do it. Yeah yeah, yeah, so dope, and they change the conversation. But you picture like and it's it's a it's definitely like a I feel like a uniquely like Western kind of American sort of trope when you pitch or environmental activists like you just yeah, it's like Berkeley Granola, like you picture some like you know, kind of like on

you know, white girl with dreadlocks. You know what I'm saying, Like, yeah, just that trope of like that that they're so far away from mikespe like I care about the earth, you know what I'm saying, But they're so far away from my experience and not the type of person that like, yeah, I'm not gonna strap myself to a tree, like yes, you know, Like but when you have stories like this that bring it more closer, especially as a person of color, that bring it more close to like naham like this,

we're affected by this and we're actually involved, you know, and especially down there in Atlanta, you know, in the in the whole cop you know, cop Town, like it turned out like I didn't know, like I turned out I had like homies a part of that movement down there, Like I was like where my homeboy, like and I never put two and two together, you know, but just the the intersection of like you said, just the intersection of like this this non binary person inside of Atlanta,

you know, one of the blackest cities in America, you know what I'm saying, and like and how all that stuff kind of work together. It's, um, it's just important to see, you know, which was some of the drive behind my last DP was called The Soil DP, and it was about the soil being sacred, you know. And

then this song Forests. You know. What I'm saying is like it's all trying to put kind of finding myself and hopefully inviting you just sort of like city black and brown people into this conversation that it's like it's also a part of our our fight for freedom and equality,

you know. Yeah yeah, and like yeah, and it really shows to me that as that movement as it just as it gathered allies and I don't mean allies and the like I am an ally way, but like people who are throwing down together, it's like, yes, how it gained fucking power, you know, And yes, yeah, and I've been impressed by I've been impressed by the Atlanta stuff um or geeze man, Yeah, fools or cheese. Yeah, well yeah, uh shout out of Brazil. Yeah, fucking fighting for Sha

cherries amazing years. Yeah, that's to reduce them to Jimmy cherry is ridiculous out there. You got anything to thank market to plug here at the end. Yeah, speaking of Brazil, they also grow good coffee which was indigenous and well no, it's just been there a long time. But yeah, I got a cold brew company called Terraform Cold Brew. It's a canned cold brew. You can go to Terraform called brew dot com and get you some get you some

caffeine for the weekend. It's delicious. Um. Also do a pod on this same very network called Politics with prop Uh. It's a fun time, man, It's like, well it's getting fun because of how our new cycle has kind of like gone into absurdity, Like really, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, nothing feels real. It was hard when we were talking about like you know, Yemen and like you know Ukraine and like African or like the Ethiopian like civil war.

It was hard. Then now we're just talking about shooting down balloons. Yeah, Like shit is funny. You know what I'm saying, Like, this is you spent you spend it? They spending multiple millions of dollars scrambling jet planes for a balloon. Yeah, like this this is funny, this high tech balloon. And the fact that you think once you shoot the thing down and you're trying to get its material, like in the age of the Internet, you think they didn't already got You don't think they already got we

can control a rover in Mars. You think they don't already have the information they need? You know what I'm saying. I mean the information would be like well they're a mess. Yeah yeah, and also like yeah they look the information is they ain't got ship were good? Yeah. I think part of the reason that people are like actually don't actually care is that I'm like, well, I don't know my government spies on me, Like if it's fine on us the whole time? Yeah, what you want to know?

Open up the app? Open up my phone with my face I've gil tagged. What do you want to know? You already know my search injury information? What don't you know already? Yeah? I have saved all my passwords on Google Chrome. What don't you know? I mean, Instagram knows who I have a crush on before. I know Instagram here, what are you like? Yeah? You know what I'm saying. Yeah, they don't you're a feel They don't know, they know your porn taste like this, Like dope, there's nothing. What

don't y'all know? Yeah? Yeah, Magpie. Don't you have a book people can order? Oh? Yeah? My book is called Escape from Insall Island. It is about people trying to escape from an island full of in cells and it's out for real. Let's go. Yeah, Escape from Insell Island. All right, it's fun. You can read it in an afternoon. I write real short books most of the time, so that was a short span. And what else? I have a podcast? No, you're listening to it? Oh? I have

another podcast. It's called Live Like the World Is Dying. It's a preparedness podcast. It's trying to take preparedness away from the right wing. I really like stealing ship from the right wing. It wasn't airs anyway, you know what I'm saying that? Yeah? Yeah, and yeah, you should check out all the other shows on cool Zone Media based, especially check out hood Politics and actually, if you want to know more about tort who I dedicate this episode two.

There's um a whole bunch of If you listen to the recent episodes of It Could Happen here, you'll hear a lot more about Stop Coop City and about the life of this person who died. What do you? What do you got, Sophie? Now you did it? Oh? Okay, well did all the things. I guess. We'll see you all next week. Hi, Hi, cool people? Who Did Cool Stop?

Is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.