activist Chico Mendes, who led Brazil?s rubber tappers until his assassination
in 1988.
Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes
Struggle for Justice in the Amazon
By Gomercindo Rodrigues
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.
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
Gormecindo 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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