Chico Mendes

Chico Mendes was a Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist who organized forest communities against deforestation and land seizure. He was assassinated in 1988 after campaigning for extractive reserves in the Amazon.

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Marina Silva: A Brazilian environmentalist and politician from Acre who became Brazil’s environment minister and senator. Silva worked with Mendes’s movement as a young activist in Acre.
Empate: A nonviolent tactic in which rubber tappers physically block logging crews from cutting trees. Mendes organized empates to resist deforestation while avoiding armed confrontation.
Amazon rubber boom: A period of rapid growth in Amazonian rubber extraction and trade, especially from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth. The boom created the rubber-tapping economy in which Mendes and his community lived.
Environmental assassination: The killing of a person targeted for opposing environmental destruction or defending land and natural resources. Mendes’s murder became a widely recognized case of violence against an environmental defender.
Wilson Pinheiro: A Brazilian rural workers’ leader in Acre who was murdered in 1980 amid conflicts over land and deforestation. Pinheiro’s killing intensified the organizing that Mendes later led.
Extractive reserve: A protected area where communities can sustainably harvest renewable forest products while restrictions limit land conversion. Mendes promoted reserves as a way to protect forests and secure residents’ livelihoods.
Rubber tapper: A worker who collects latex from rubber trees, traditionally in forest settings and often under exploitative labor arrangements. Mendes’s identity and organizing emerged from this occupation.
Amazon deforestation: The clearing or degradation of forest across the Amazon region, caused by activities including ranching, logging, and infrastructure development. Mendes’s campaigns directly opposed the forest clearing that threatened local communities.
Acre: A state in western Brazil, bordering Bolivia and Peru, whose economy and history have been shaped by Amazonian forests and rubber extraction. Mendes organized rubber tappers in Acre, especially around Xapuri.
Rubber tapping: The collection of latex by making controlled cuts in the bark of rubber trees. This forest livelihood grounded the community whose land Mendes defended.