We´ve ruled out an early morning venture into Bolivia because of some fear of being recognized as foreigners and hassled by the police. As if the 5 of us do not look Brazillian. Why, just the other day I saw 5 red heads in the grocery store who spoke perfect english and live here. Granted those are the only red heads I´ve see outside of mirrors here, oh well, I would rather not have to deal with any kind of harassment anyways, and Xapuri should be interesting enough for one day right?
I ride with Giorgia who is the alternate for the group going to Georgia. She is a pharmacist and her husband is an orthopedic surgeon. Her English is very good and I spend most of the car ride explaining be verbs to her (which she picks up in less than an hour while it took me the better part of 16 years in America to figure them out). We arrive in Xapuri and realize quickly that many things are closed because it is a Federal holiday. No worries because the main reason to go to Xapuri is because of a local hero named Chico Mendes who is considered to be the original advocate for protecting the Amazon rain forest here in Brazil, and his home and Foundation center are open today.
Who is Chico Mendes you ask? Well I am glad you asked because he has a facinating story. I am going to now rip off a history of Chico Mendes for your viewing pleasure:
``Mendes grew up in a family of rubber tappers in Acre State, Brazil, and when he was 9 years old he continued on in the family tradition. However, rubber prices had collapsed in the 1960s, and many landowners were selling their properties to the highest bidder - which in most cases, meant cattle ranchers. Rubber tappers were finding themselves pushed out of their lands.In the 1970s, he joined the rubber tappers of the forest. They would march down logging trails, overrun forest clearance parties, disarming guards and attempting to convince the ranchers' workers not to continue. In many cases, they were successful at doing so, despite resistance from the ranchers - in 1980, Mendes' ally Wilson Pinheiro was assassinated.
On the evening in Thursday, December 22, 1988, exactly one week after his 44th birthday, Chico Mendes was assasinated by gunshot at his Xapuri home. In December, 1990 rancher Darcy Alves Pereira, his son Darley Alves and their ranch hand, Jerdeir Pereia were sentenced to 19 years in prison for their part in Mendes' assassination. In February, 1992, they won a retrial, but remained in prison. In 1993, they staged an escape, but Darcy was recaptured and as of 2004, was still in the jungle. Some local ranchers are still being investigated.
The murder of Chico Mendes made international headlines, including the front page of the New York Times. Thanks in part to the international media attention surrounding the murder, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the area where he lived. There are more than 20 such reserves now, along the same lines as Mendes had proposed, covering more than 8 million acres.´´
In my opinion, if Chico Mendes had not been murdered, Acre and much of Brazil would look completely different. The Rain Forest flows into this city and makes it unique in a way that neither explanation nor pictures can really explain, at least from my explanations and my pictures. His assasination sparked a huge international awareness of how important preserving the rain forest is, much in a similar way that Martin Luther King Jr.´s assasination hurried the mending of race relations in The United States. Although the response to fixing the deforestation here happened a lot quicker than the race relations were mended in the US. It makes me nervous to think the how effective Martyrs can be, but as I look out the window from the 12th floor of this condominium I can easily see where the city ends and the forest begins here, and at the same time know the US is presided over by an African American President and I shiver at the thought of how necessary both men´s sacrifices seem.
The evening was spent quietly by all as we get prepared for our big presentation tomorrow.
Taken from the trustworthy source of Wikipedia. More complete information can be found here, but may not be in English.
Chico Mendes Vive! (Chico Mendes Lives!)-Everett
P.S. For those who catch it in the video, I had little to nothing to do with the quick history of Macon, especially the part the says Macon was founded by Thomas Jefferson, apparently he ordered Fort Benjamin Hawkins to be built there, but I´d hardly consider that founding a city. I thought it was founded by the Little Richard, Otis Redding, and The Allman Brothers Band, but honestly I never looked into it until today. WikiMacon
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