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Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈʃiku ˈmẽdʒis]; 15 December 1944 – 22 December 1988), was a Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader and environmentalist. He fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and Indigenous peoples. He was assassinated by a rancher on 22 December 1988. The Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade or ICMBio), a body under the jurisdiction of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, is named in his honor. Early life Francisco "Chico" Alves Mendes Filho was born on 15 December 1944, in a rubber reserve called Seringal Bom Futuro, outside of Xapuri, a small town in the state of Acre. He was the son of a second-generation rubber tapper, Francisco Mendes, and his wife, Iracê. Chico was one of 17 siblings—only six of whom survived childhood. At age 9, Chico began work as a rubber tapper alongside his father. At the time, the rubber industry across the nation was in decline, and land was frequently sold and burned for cattle pastures. Rubber tappers additionally faced a severe lack of education. Schools were frequently forbidden on and near plantations, as the owners did not want the workers to be able to read and do arithmetic. For this reason, Mendes did not learn to read until he was 18 years old, when he sought out help interpreting his bills. Mendes was taught to read and write by a man named Euclides Fernando Távora, an activist turned rubber tapper. Most of his practice came from newspaper clippings on social and political issues within Brazil. These articles opened Chico's eyes to the widespread injustices in society, adding to his dissatisfaction with the treatment of seringueiros. After learning what he could from Távora, Mendes became a literacy teacher in hopes of educating his community. As his fellow workers became more aware of unjust treatment, they formed the Rural Workers’ Union, and the more localized Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union. Both of these organizations worked through peaceful protest to stop the logging and burning of the rainforest that acted as their livelihood. By the mid-1980s, Chico was known as both a radical unionist and an activist, though he also ran for several local political positions such as state deputy and city councilor. Activism At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity. To save the rainforest, Chico Mendes and the rubber workers union asked the government to set up reserves as they wanted people to use the forest without damaging it. They also used a very effective technique they called the 'empate' where rubber tappers blocked the way into rubber reserves, preventing their destruction. The Rubber Tappers' Union was created in 1975 in the nearby town of Brasileia, with Wilson Pinheiro elected as the union's president and Mendes as its secretary. Mendes also played a central role in the creation of the National Council of Rubber Tappers in the mid-1980s. Mendes' group also had strong ties with the National Campaign for the Defence and Development of the Amazon, and helped organize local Workers' Party support. When the first meeting of this new union was held in 1985 in the capital Brasilia, rubber tappers from all over the country came. The discussion expanded from the threats to their own livelihoods to the larger issues of road paving, cattle ranching, and deforestation. The meeting also caught the attention of the international environmentalist movement, giving the rubber tappers a larger audience for their grievances. The group embraced a larger alliance with environmentalism, rather than strict Marxism, in spite of the bourgeois associations of the former. Another result of these discussions was the coining of the concept and the term "extractive reserves". In November of that year, Adrian Cowell, an English filmmaker, filmed much of the proceedings of this meeting as part of a documentary he was making about Mendes, which aired in 1990. Mendes believed that relying on rubber tapping alone was not sustainable, and that the seringueiros needed to develop more holistic, cooperative systems that used a variety of forest products, such as nuts, fruit, oil, and fibers; and that they needed to focus on building strong communities with quality education for their children. In March 1987, the Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation flew Mendes to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to convince the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, and U.S. Congress to support the creation of extractive reserves. Mendes won several awards for his work, including the United Nations Environmental Program Global 500 Roll of Honor Award in 1987, and the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Achievement Award in 1988. In 1988 a man named Darly Alves da Silva bought part of a rubber reserve called Cachoeira, where relatives of Mendes lived, and which was affiliated to the local Rural Workers Union in Xapuri. While the sale of the section was disputed by the family of the vendor, who claimed he had no legal right to sell it, Silva tried to drive them off their land and increase his ranch holdings. The rubber tappers of Cachoeira stood firm and set up road blocks to keep Silva out. In 1988, Mendes launched a campaign to stop Silva from logging the area that its inhabitants wanted demarcated as an extractive reserve. Mendes not only managed to stop the planned deforestation and create the reserve, but also gained a warrant for Darly's arrest for a murder committed in another state, Paraná. He delivered the warrant to the federal police, but it was never acted upon. Assassination Mendes had received death threats for years before his murder. However, in the months prior to his death, various pairs of gunmen hired by Silva observed Mendes from a square near his house and the town union hall. On the evening of Thursday, 22 December 1988, Mendes was assassinated in his Xapuri home by Darci, the son of Darly Alves da Silva. The shooting took place exactly one week after Mendes' 44th birthday when he had predicted he would "not live until Christmas". Around his birthday, the gunmen who had been observing him disappeared completely. Their absence gave the community a sense of impending doom, as they had been constantly present since May of the same year. The timing of their disappearance led many to believe they had unsuccessfully attempted to kill Mendes on his birthday but had failed because of numerous guests present at his house. Mendes was the 90th rural activist murdered that year in Brazil. Many felt that although the trial was proceeding against Mendes' killers, the roles of the ranchers' union, the Rural Democratic Union, and the Brazilian Federal Police in his death were ignored. In Dece.... Discover the Shawn C Smallman Kimberley Brown popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Shawn C Smallman Kimberley Brown books.