Dream of Chico Mendes
While the COPs fail, Chico Méndez’s tangible utopia lives on: the Amazon as a public good, not a haven or a commodity.
By Leonardo Boff*, in the book The Earth is Round.
1.
The 30th COP in Belém ended with unsatisfactory results. There is no commitment in the final document to phase down fossil fuels and fragile decisions in financing policies for reducing greenhouse gases.
This has led many scientists and environmentalists to say: “Suppressing mention of fossil fuels is a betrayal of science and the most vulnerable people and is inconsistent with the 2030 goals.”
But some progress has been made, especially on the 59 adaptation targets, the inclusion of racial inequality as a component of the climate crisis, the valorization of women, people of African descent and indigenous peoples in defense of life, and mainly the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF).
The problem that has never been solved is that of financing, because the industrialized and rich countries, the main causes of global warming, refuse to cooperate in a truly effective way.
In a general context of the dead end facing the accumulation of crises that could threaten the future of life and the human race, we recall those exemplary figures who inspired new paths and gave us hope. One of them is certainly Chico Mendes, who is world-famous like Pele.
He was a true representative of the forest people and an attentive observer of the logic of nature.
We who know him and are friends with him know his deep connection with the Amazon jungle, with its enormous biodiversity, with the rubber plantations, with the animals, with the slightest sign of life in the jungle. San Francisco was secular and modern. He divided his time between the city and the forest.
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But when he was in the city he heard the urgent call of the forest powerfully, in his body and in his soul. He felt like an integral part of it.
For this reason he returned from time to time to the rubber plantation and to the natural and cosmic company. And then he felt at home, in his real home. I had the privilege of making some forays into the Amazon rainforest in Acre, and on this occasion I was able to admire the environmental spirit of Chico Mendes.
But his environmental awareness led him to leave the forest for a time to organize rubber tappers, form union cells and participate in resistance struggles (the famous “pull” strategy by which rubber tappers, along with their children, the elderly and other allies, stand peacefully in front of deforestation workers and their machines, preventing them from felling trees).
2.
Given the environmental crisis imposed on the Amazon region, he proposed, on behalf of the Forest Peoples’ Movement, the establishment of extractive reserves, which was accepted by the central government in 1987.
He was very realistic when he said: “We realize – the rubber tappers understand – that the Amazon forest cannot be turned into an untouchable sanctuary. On the other hand, we also realize that there is a very urgent need to avoid the deforestation that threatens the Amazon and threatens the lives of all people on this planet. That is why we thought of an economic alternative to preserving the forest. So we thought of creating an extractive reserve.”(1)
He himself explains how this mode of production works: “In extractive reserves, we will market and manufacture the products that the forest generously offers us. The university must come and monitor the extractive reserve. It is the only way out so that the Amazon does not disappear. And what is more: this reserve will have no owners. It will be a general benefit to society. We will have use and fruit, not ownership” (2).
In this way, an alternative can be found to unbridled extraction, which only brings advantages to speculators, especially during the government of Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned for an attempted coup. The price of a mahogany tree cut in Acre ranges from 1 to 5 dollars. Selling it in the European market costs about 3 to 5 thousand dollars.
On Christmas Eve 1988 he was the victim of the wrath of the enemies of nature and humanity. He was killed by five bullets. He left Amazonian life to enter global history and the collective unconscious of those who love our planet Earth and its enormous biodiversity.
As an archetype, Chico Méndez encourages the struggle to preserve the Amazon rainforest and the people of the forest, in which today millions of people around the world participate.
A poet from the Pará jungle sang well: “Ay! Amazon! Amazon! They buried Chico Mendes, you just don’t bury hope” (João de Jesus Paes Loureiro).
This hope became hope (Paulo Freire), that is, creating the means and conditions to achieve what some call the Land of Good Hope, the Land that it respects and considers the Great Mother.
*Leonardo POV He is an ecologist, philosopher and writer. The author, among other books, L Sustainability and care: how to ensure the future of life (Freedom Liberation). (https://amzn.to/3MtoMJG)
Notes
(1) See. Grzybowski, C., (org.) Testimony of the Jungle Man: Chico Mendes himself, FASE, Rio de Janeiro, l989.
(2) See Jornal do Brasil, 12/24/1988.