We invite you to the inspiring story of courageous labor and
environmental activist Chico Mendes, who led Brazil?s rubber tappers
until his assassination in 1988.
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| | |
| | |
| | Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes |
| (Embedded image | Struggle for Justice in the Amazon |
| moved to file: | By Gomercindo Rodrigues |
| pic19095.jpg) | Edited and translated by Linda Rabben |
| | |
| | A close associate of Chico Mendes, |
| | Gomercindo Rodrigues witnessed the struggle |
| | between Brazil?s rubber tappers and local |
| | ranchers?a struggle that led to the murder |
| | of Mendes. Rodrigues?s memoir of his years |
| | with Mendes has never before been translated |
| | into English from the Portuguese. Now, |
| | Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes makes |
| | this important work available to new |
| | audiences, capturing the events and trends |
| | that shaped the lives of both men and the |
| | fragile system of public security and |
| | justice within which they lived and worked. |
| | In a rare primary account of the celebrated |
| | labor organizer, Rodrigues chronicles |
| | Mendes?s innovative proposals as the Amazon |
| | faced wholesale deforestation. As a labor |
| | unionist and an environmentalist, Mendes |
| | believed that rain forests could be |
| | preserved without ruining the lives of |
| | workers, and that destroying forests to make |
| | way for cattle pastures threatened humanity |
| | in the long run. Walking the Forest with |
| | Chico Mendes also brings to light the |
| | unexplained and uninvestigated events |
| | surrounding Mendes?s murder. |
| | |
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
3:30 p.m.
World Bank J Building, J1-050
701 18th St. NW corner of 18th St. and Pennsylvania Ave.
Presented by author
Gomercindo Rodrigues
Gomercindo Rodrigues served as an adviser (assessor) to Chico
Mendes and the Rural Workers' Union in Xapuri, Acre, a small town
near the Bolivian-Brazilian frontier on the far western edge of the
Brazilian Amazon. Most of the rural workers in Xapuri are rubber
tappers?extractivists and sellers of natural latex from the rubber
trees indigenous to the region. During the decade following Mendes's
death, Rodrigues became a lawyer, defending the workers in the
rubber tappers' movement that Chico Mendes had led until his
untimely death.
Comments by
John Butler
Principal Social Development Specialist, IFC
John Butler is Principal Social Development Specialist in the
Environment and Social Development Department of the International
Finance Corporation (IFC). He has over 20 years of experience
working on issues related to community social development and
environment. He carried out his Ph.D. field work in Anthropology in
the area of Sao Felix do Xingu and Tucuma in the Brazilian Amazon,
and worked for 10 years with WWF-US, including 6 years in the
Brazil-Amazon program providing support to a range of conservation
efforts from extractive reserves in Amapa State to the development
of the management plan for Jau Narional Park, on the Rio Negro,
Amazonas State.
Linda Rabben
Translator
The translator and editor of Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes,
Linda Rabben made many trips to Brazil to do field research on
grassroots social movements after training as an anthropologist at
Cornell University. For more than a decade she was a human rights
activist for Amnesty International and has worked as an editor,
writer and researcher for nongovernmental organizations. Her books
include Brazil?s Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization: The
Yanomami and the Kayapó and Fierce Legion of Friends: A History of
Human Rights Campaigns and Campaigners.
Moderated by
John Garrison
Senior Civil Society Specialist, World Bank
John Garrison joined the World Bank in 1996 as a Civil Society
Specialist. He spent the first five years working in the Bank?s
office in Brasilia, Brazil where he had contact with Amazonian civil
society organizations. In 2002 he joined the Bank?s Civil Society
Team (CST) which coordinates the Bank?s civil society engagement
work at the global level. Current activities include working to
formulate Bank-wide strategy, providing advice to senior management,
reaching out to international civil society networks, and
disseminating information on the Bank.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
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