In episode one, hosts Graham Zimmerman and Jim Aikman set off to better understand the Brazilian Amazon. They explore both the politics and biology of one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world.
In December 1988, Brazilian environmentalist Chico Mendes was murdered at his home in the Amazon Rainforest. Chico was a rubber tapper who witnessed the destruction of the forest—of his home—and built a community both in Brazil and abroad to stop the devastation. For this, he was killed in cold blood.
In episode one, hosts Graham Zimmerman and Jim Aikman set off to better understand the Brazilian Amazon. They explore both the politics and biology of one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. They also learn about the history of the conflict in the Brazilian Amazon and why someone like Chico Mendes risked his life to safe it.
Episode sources:
[Sounds of rain, jungle, tropical birds chirping, thunderstrike]
[droning music]
Jim VO: In December of 1988, the Amazon Rainforest was deep in the rainy season. The
ground was perpetually saturated and the many rivers of the Amazon Basin were swollen with
fresh water, gradually funnelling towards the Atlantic Ocean (Revkin, The Burning Season).
And in western Brazil, on the far edge of the Amazon near the border with Bolivia (Revkin, The
Burning Season), the sun was setting on a small, rural town called Xapuri.
[pause]
At that point in history, there was no reason that anyone should have known about this remote
corner of the world - [dramatic] until December 22nd, 1988, when it became the center of
international headlines thanks to a man named Chico Mendes (Revkin, The Burning Season).
[music hit]
This is “Wildfire: Season Two”, an investigative podcast from REI Podcast Network, Bedrock
Film Works and Pod Peak about fire in the Amazon Rainforest. This is episode one.
[music]
It was three days before Christmas in the late eighties, and Chico Mendes was at home in
Xapuri, Brazil, preparing to celebrate the holiday with his family (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
He had recently turned 44 (Revkin, The Burning Season), but he was a young man at heart;
physically, he was short and unassuming, proudly wearing a charming potbelly; his smile hid
behind a bushy mustache . But he had a sparkle in his eye that teased just how sharp his mind
truly was (Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair: Murder in the Rainforest).
His house was a modest bungalow in a lineup of modest bungalows (Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair:
Murder in the Rainforest). As rain pelted his tin roof, drowning out the noise of the jungle - which
was typically a deafening cacophony at dusk - he was joined by his wife, two young children,
and [twist] two bodyguards, who had been assigned to protect Chico and his family (Revkin,
The Burning Season).
[music change]
Because, a hit had been put out on Chico Mendes - there was a price on his head . It could
have been anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands, but it had been
“anunciado” - a Brazilian term meaning “marked for death” (Revkin, The Burning Season).
Hired assassins, known as pistoleiros, had already made five attempts on his life (Shoumatoff,
Vanity Fair: Murder in the Rainforest). He was living on borrowed time. Family members and
close friends asked him to leave the forest for a while until things cooled down, but he insisted
on spending Christmas with his family, in spite of the risks (Revkin, The Burning Season).
It was around 6 pm, and Chico was playing dominoes with his bodyguards - he was fiercely
competitive, even in such a trivial game - when his good friend Gomercindo Rodrigues, or
“Guma” as Chico called him, dropped by to check in.
[pause]
Everyone in town knew that Chico was in danger, so these kinds of visits were not uncommon.
But if Chico shared any of Guma’s fears, he didn’t show it. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Ele gostava muito de jogar dominó.
Jim VO: Guma said in Portuguese, the official language of Brazil, “Chico was very fond of
playing dominoes.”
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
“Goma vamos jogar aqui, eu estou ganhando desses... eles nem sabe, jogar direito”. Brincando
né, com os policiais.
Translation VO (translation fades in over spoken Portuguese): "Chico said to me, ‘Guma let's
play here, I'm winning against these guys... they don't even know how to play it right’." Making a
joke with the bodyguards.
Jim VO: Chico was often smiling and jovial, especially then, surrounded by his family. But Guma
wished that Chico would take the threats on his life a little more seriously - as he did.
(Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Eu disse: “não Chico”. Eu estava muito tenso, muito nervoso. Eu estava assim, angustiado
mesmo. Eu disse não Chico eu não sei jogar isso. “Não mais para ganhar desses daqui não
precisa saber jogar direito não, senta aí”. E eu falei: “não Chico”.
Translation VO: I said, "No Chico." I was very tense, very nervous, and really distressed. He
said, "No, but to beat these guys here, you don't have to know how to play it right? Sit there! "
And I said, "No Chico."
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Eu sentia como se tinha alguma coisa para acontecer e eu não sabia o que era. Eu disse para
ele: “Chico, eu estou preocupado porque eu não estou vendo os pistoleiros”.
Translation VO: I felt like there was something about to happen, but I didn't know what. I said to
him, "Chico, I'm worried [dramatic] because I'm not seeing the gunslingers around town.”
[music beat]
Jim VO: Things had gotten so dangerous in the small town of Xapuri in the late eighties that
Chico and Guma were used to seeing armed cowboys posted up on street corners and in the
local bars, openly displaying their shotguns and automatic rifles with signature Brazilian
bravado. It was such a common sight that their absence was unsettling, like the calm before a
storm. It sounded like a cliche western film, with street signs creaking in the wind and shady
glances under low brimmed hats - the tension palpable. Guma knew something wasn’t right, so
he set out on his motorcycle to do a lap through town. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
E ele falou “então tá, então tá, enquanto isso eu vou tomar um banho. Mas você volta mesmo
que eu vou te esperar para a gente jantar”.
Translation VO: And Chico said, "okay, I'll take a shower in the meantime. But make sure to
come back because I'll wait for you to have dinner."
[sound of a motorcycle turning over and revving away]
[music transition]
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Todos os lugares vazios, nada. Ninguém. Tudo estava as moscas.
Translation VO: All the places were empty, nothing. No one. Everything was left to the flies.
Jim VO: It only took Guma five or ten minutes to do a complete tour of Xapuri before he
returned to Chico’s house (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). Inside his motorcycle helmet, under
the downpour of the rain, he couldn’t hear much outside of his own breath.
[build suspense]
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
E retornei. E quando vinha chegando na casa dele, assim em frente à casa dele.
Translation VO: So, I came back. And when I was arriving to his house, almost in front of it.
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
A mulher dele saiu gritando:
Translation VO (without interrupting Portuguese): His wife came out screaming,
[beat of silence]
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
“Goma, atiraram no Chico”.
[beat of silence]
Translation VO (without interrupted Portuguese): "Guma, they shot Chico."
[Wildfire Season 2 theme song]
Intro Monologue
Jim VO: This is “Wildfire”, a podcast series about fire in our world’s natural spaces. In this
season, we’re going to the Amazon Rainforest - the last place you might think to find a fire - to
understand the phenomenon and find out what happened to Chico Mendes.
[pause]
You’ll be hearing from the show’s two co-hosts: Jim Aikman, that’s me - I’m a filmmaker and
writer based in Portland, Oregon. And Graham Zimmerman.
Graham VO: That’s me. I’m a professional mountain athlete, advocate and producer based in
Bend, Oregon.
In season one, we investigated a fire outside Portland, and the fifteen year old boy who started
it with an ill-fated firework (Templeton, Eagle Creek Fire Perpetrator Ordered To Pay $36.6
Million) - learning that the area was actually long overdue for a burn cycle (Kloster, After the
Fire: A Closer Look (Part 2 of 2).
Jim VO: We discovered that many of the wildfires in North America are perfectly natural, even
playing an essential role in healthy ecosystems. But not long after season one, we started
hearing about fires in a very different environment south of the equator - the Amazon
Rainforest... This felt like something else entirely.
[news byte]
Graham VO: In 2019, thick, black clouds of smoke had grown so large over the Amazon
Rainforest that they could be seen from the International Space Station (Rabie, NASA Satellites
Confirm Amazon Rainforest Is Burning at a Record Rate). Hidden under the layers of smoke
and ash, more than a hundred thousand fires had burned in the Amazon that year (Hoover &
Hanson, 2021), a rate unheard of in the United States (Pasquali, Number of wildfires in Brazil
from 2005 to 2020).
Not only that, leaders around the world were beginning to understand the integral role that a
healthy Amazon plays in our planet’s homeostasis (Borger and Watts, G7 leaders agree plan to
help Amazon countries fight wildfires), trapping carbon and releasing oxygen (Mendes, Fight for
the Forest) - and that it was approaching a tipping point, where the forest that remained would
not be enough to sustain its delicate balance (Rainforest Alliance, Amazon Fires: Crisis
Mobilization Update).
What on earth was going on?
[music hit]
I quickly stumbled upon the name Chico Mendes, a humble rubber tapper who went from one of
the deepest corners of the Amazon all the way to the cover of the New York Times; a warrior for
the forest that changed the course of history in the Amazon, Brazil, and the world (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
And yet, Chico Mendes was somebody that I’d never heard of.
But why? What else was I missing?
[music hit]
Jim VO: Chico’s forest was a very different place than ours here in the Pacific Northwest. First of
all, it is simply massive, covering 40% of South America with 400 billion trees (PBS, The Largest
River On Earth Is In the Sky), two thirds the size of the entire contiguous United States (Revkin,
The Burning Season). The basin contains one fifth of our planet’s freshwater - eleven times the
flow of the Mississippi - and helps sustain the global climate as the “lungs of the earth” (PBS,
The Largest River On Earth Is In the Sky). In other words, we can’t live without it.
So why - and how - was it on fire? And what did that have to do with Chico Mendes?
[music hit]
Graham VO: Throughout this six episode podcast series, Jim and I will be visiting the Amazon
Rainforest to see the devastation for ourselves. We’ll investigate the incredible story of Chico
Mendes, visiting the town where he lived in western Brazil (Revkin, The Burning Season). We’ll
then visit an indigenous community that has lived harmoniously in the forest for centuries (Surui,
Save the Planet). And finally, we’ll look towards the future of the Amazon rainforest and how it
can be saved today.
Jim VO: Thanks for joining us on season two of “Wildfire”.
Story Beat #1
Jim VO: Back in Brazil in 1988, at the house of Chico Mendes, the scene quickly descended
into chaos. Guma pulled off his motorcycle helmet to hear Chico’s wife, who was screaming and
pointing at the house. Guma called for Chico’s bodyguards, but they were nowhere to be found -
and it appeared that the shooter was long gone. Guma was moments too late to intervene in the
shooting of his friend, who was lying bloody on the floor of his living room, struggling to breathe
(Rodriguez, Walking the Forest).
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Ele ia tomar banho, estava sem camisa. Com o lado direito do peito assim... a lateral do peito
direito dele e parte da frente do peito direito dele todo embilhado de chumbo.
Translation VO: He was going to take a shower, so he was shirtless. With the right side of his
chest all shot with lead.
Jim VO: Outside, Guma was calling for help.
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
E aí eu olhei para trás, a polícia... a delegacia ficava a 50 metros o escritório da polícia ficava a
50 metros.
Translation VO: And then, I looked back, at the police... The police station was 50 meters away,
Jim VO: Half a block down the road from Chico’s house was the Xapuri Police Station, a small
outpost of local cops who were conspicuously unresponsive (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Os policiais na frente, e todo mundo parado. Eu olhei e falei assim: “Seus filhos da puta, não
vão fazer nada não? .
Translation VO: The cops were in front, and no one was moving. I looked and said, “You sons of
bitches, you're not going to do anything?”
Jim VO: The police just shrugged, not lifting a finger. Why weren’t they coming to Chico’s aid, or
pursuing the shooter, or calling an ambulance? (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
As these questions raced through Guma’s head, Chico’s neighbors approached the house to
see what had happened - though most of them already knew. What Chico, his friends and family
all feared most had come to pass:
Assassination.
Body Block #1
(light music bed)
Graham VO: Chico Mendes was many things throughout his life, but he was first and foremost a
rubber tapper and man of the forest (Revkin, The Burning Season). Our goal in this show is to
better understand his life and his influence .
(pause)
and to start that journey, we need to understand the setting in which he lived, The Amazon
Rainforest (Revkin, The Burning Season).
Jim and I packed up our microphones and traveled to the Brazilian Amazon at the start of the
rainy season (Feb 2020, Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest).
We arrived in the city of Rio Branco, the capital of the state of Acre (Revkin, The Burning
Season) that sits along the Bolivian border in Western Brazil. It’s an isolated outpost of
humanity, deep in the Amazon basin. Rio Branco is three hours up the road from Xapuri, where
our story from 1988 was unfolding (Revkin, The Burning Season).
From the plane, the treetops spread as far as the eye could see but as we approached town,
sections of grassland appeared with unnatural squared-off corners. And finally, as we landed,
we could see the Acre river running through downtown Rio Branco. (Revkin, The Burning
Season)
The Acre is a tributary of the greater Amazon River that drains the massive watershed
containing the rainforest with the same name. (Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest).
The forests specific to the state of Acre, are known as Varieas (Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate
of the Forest). Dense, well-developed ecosystems with genuinely exceptional biodiversity. In
one forest patch can be found as many as 500 species of plants - ten miles away, another forest
patch will present as many species again. The same is true with the insect species (Hetch, The
Fate of the Forest) that cohabitate with over 1800 species of birds (Revkin, The Burning
Season).
In Rio Branco, we rented a manual four-wheel-drive truck to handle the rutted muddy roads and
before heading to Xapuri we stopped off at the study site of a man named Foster Brown.
Foster is an American, developing strategies for controlling and preventing the destructive
blazes that have become synonymous with these forests (woodwellclimate.org/).
200228_004 - Foster Brown (GZ)
(build in nat sound to set the scene, at this point we are indoors, consider a ceiling fan)
(01:48): “thank you for putting up with us today. Um, this is, this is really, this is really cool.”
(Note: Foster Says welcome in the line above, rough transcription didn’t pick it up)
Graham VO: he set down his work and took Jim and me for a walk in the forest.
(transition to nat sounds from ...Walk and Talk 1)
200228_010 - Foster Brown Walk and Talk 1.WAV
(In this section Evan should use some liberty with both the interview bites and forest sounds)
(All lines from this section are GZ’s transcriptions, they are not verbatim)
(:16) GZ: “Ok so Foster and I are about to wander out into the woods around his study site. ..
Foster: “...this is where we work, it’s called the zopotanda park”
Graham VO: The foliage was overwhelming, a majestic swirl of growth and decay punctuated by
insects’ sounds and bright splashes of color from flowers.
200228_010 - Foster Brown Walk and Talk 1.WAV
(2:04) “here are some trees from the original rainforest, this is the rubber tree.
This is a rubber tree, cool.”
Graham VO: As we walked, the natural space pulled me away from our questions about
gunslingers and fire in the rainforest.
200228_010 - Foster Brown Walk and Talk 1.WAV
(4:43) (Foster:) “what your seeing here is a umm (name) tree that has grown around a palm
tree, this has occurred in the last 30 years.
(Graham:) “To describe what we’re looking at, this tree we’re looking at is so big that Foster and
I could not put our arms around it.”
Graham VO: The growth this demonstrated was enormous. This was a place in which life
thrived.
I realized that I was lost in a perspective on this place that was rooted in admiration for the
ecosystem and had little to do with the humans that live in the forest. Then I asked a question
that had been haunting me.
200228_004 - Foster Brown (GZ)
(bring in forest and walking sounds from “200228_010 - Foster Brown Walk and Talk 1.WAV” so
that this can play as part of the walk)
(02:03) “I would love kind of a description of (words cut) burning in this area. (words cut) Can
you just kind of walk us through what that looks like”
(10:38) “we haven't actually been able to document any natural cause fires in this part of the
Amazon.”
(09:49) “this is deliberate deforestation”
(04:22) “there are ranchers who go in and put in teams and cut down large quantities and can
be, uh, deforesting levels at tens of hectares.
[Pause for reflection, continue nat sound]
Graham VO: I glanced at Jim to see if he was as shocked by this revelation as I was - that humans
were intentionally igniting the fires burning in the Amazon.
[music hit for impact]
These fires in the Amazon were not like those near my home in the Western United States,
where fires are a natural part of the environment (Pyne, Fire In America). Here in the Amazon,
something entirely different was taking place. .
200228_004 - Foster Brown (GZ)
(04:32) “in some cases we've had an example of over a hundred or more, um, uh, hectares that
were burned in, uh, at, uh, at one time.”
(03:13) That would be going into agricultural crops and more and more frequently a pasture.”
(build music)
Graham VO: Looking around at the forest surrounding me, I was forced to pivot my view on this
space.
As a foreigner, with a background in earth science, I saw ecological systems worth fighting to
save. But to others, It was not just a place of ecological diversity. It was also an economic zone -
geographic space that represented dollar signs to ranchers, developers, and farmers (Hetch
and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest). All of this life and complex ecology was something that
was in the way of their success and all they had to do was set it ablaze (Hetch and Cockburn,
The Fate of the Forest).
I thought about Chico Mendes. The man whose story was central to our investigation of these
fires. These fires must have been what Mendes was fighting (Revkin, The Burning Season). A
fight that left him shot and bleeding on the floor of his home in Xapuri (Revkin, The Burning
Season).
Chico Story Beat #2:
[music transition, sounds of rain]
Jim VO: It was well after dusk, and the town of Xapuri was cloaked in darkness. Gomercindo
was scrambling to make sense of the situation, consoling Chico’s wife and scanning the night
for any sign of the shooter. Everyone was in shock - no one more so than Chico, whose
condition was worsening. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
alguém gritou, ele está... a gente precisa de um carro que ele está ferido”
Translation VO: Someone screamed: he is hurt, we need a car.
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Eu perguntei assim, para o companheiro que o estava colocando dentro do caminhão e estava
com ele nos braços, assim... Subindo... Como é que ele está?
Translation VO: I asked my friend who was putting Chico inside the truck, holding him in his
arms... How's he doing?
Jim VO: Chico was bleeding badly from his chest and torso, unable to speak and barely
breathing. (Rodriguez, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Ele não tinha morrido ainda, estava agonizante.
Translation VO: He was alive, but he was in agony.
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
E aí, eles o levaram para o hospital. E eu fui até a minha casa, peguei uma arma que eu tinha,
um revólver. E carreguei o revólver, peguei mais duas cargas de bala. Peguei botei numa bolsa
a tira colo e voltei ao hospital.
Translation VO: They took him to the hospital, and I went to my house, grabbed a gun, a
revolver. I loaded the revolver and took two more bullet loads. I put it all in a bag and headed to
the hospital.
Jim VO: Gomercindo raced to the hospital, ready for a fight - even if it meant joining Chico in the
hospital, or worse. (Rodriguez, Walking the Forest)
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
Porque para mim ele foi meu melhor amigo.
Translation VO: Because to me, he was my best friend.
[music transition]
Body Block 2:
Jim VO: Loading up the truck to leave Foster’s research center, Graham and I were awed by our
first experience in the rainforest, but also shaken. My reverence for the Amazon was under
attack, and we had only just arrived. What other surprises were waiting for us down this rabbit
hole? And how had such an amazing place descended into the chaos that found Chico Mendes
on the sharp end of a shotgun?
[music beat]
We spoke with an Brazilian activist and filmmaker who made a documentary about Chico and
his family back in the eighties.
121919 Denise Zmekhol Interview_Part 1
My name is Denise Zmekhol. I was born and raised in Brazil.
In Sao Paolo. The biggest concrete jungle.
Jim VO: She told us about Brazil’s modern conquest of the Amazon, a great untapped resource
and Brazil’s best chance at becoming an exporting super power (Revkin, The Burning Season).
010820 Denise Zmekhol Follow Up Interview
In the 60s they have the idea that they had to bring progress and development to the North of
Brazil, there were a lot of crisis with small land owners in the South. There are not enough land
for them. So they start spending and opening roads to the Amazon,
So it was really destructive in many ways,
Jim VO: Brazil looked to the United States as a model for conquering the wild terrain of the
forest, beginning its own kind of “Manifest Destiny” (Revkin, The Burning Season). They built
the first major highways straight up the middle of the Amazon, and the floodgates were opened
(Revkin, The Burning Season).
121919 Denise Zmekhol Interview_Part 2
That created a lot of chaos.
Jim VO: Now, [signpost] this is where things in the Amazon went berserk - the beginning of the
modern era of destruction (Revkin, The Burning Season).
New developers, ranchers and homesteaders poured into the forest to stake their claims, and all
they had to do was “cultivate” to claim ownership. THey burned the trees and turned cattle loose
on the landscape (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
[music hit, maybe some sound design, fire sounds and stomping hooves, something to break up
the block]
121919 Denise Zmekhol Interview_Part 2
then you go like, "Wow, what's going on here? They're just destroying all this magic and they're
creating a nightmare for people living there. They're destroying the forest to create pasture."
Everything started getting a little weird.
Jim VO: This period saw some of the largest fires in the world, at the time, (Shoumatoff, Vanity
Fair: Murder in the Rainforest) undoing millions of years of delicate evolution, and upsetting the
equilibrium of the entire rainforest, all in the name of “progress” (Mendes, Fight for the Forest).
But it wasn’t just the natural world that was under attack.
[musit hit]
The ranchers discovered that the promised land was already occupied - by indigenous tribes
and rural workers like Chico Mendes, whose families had lived off the land deep in the forest for
generations. So they started pushing everyone out of the forest using misinformation, violence -
and more fire. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
010820 Denise Zmekhol Follow Up Interview
Burning down houses, [inaudible 00:10:41] houses in the middle of the forest. They're just taking
over the land without permission, without any rights just taking over
Jim VO: Wherever the fires went, violence and corruption followed (Revkin, The Burning
Season). This was not a Planet Earth episode - it was Tombstone.
121919 Denise Zmekhol Interview_Part 1
(Jim:) the Amazon is described as the wild west, that there's bandits and pistoleros running
around reeking havoc, and then these fires are burning everywhere. It just sounds like chaos.
(Denise:) Yeah, it's lawless. It's totally lawless.
Jim VO: The battle for the Amazon had begun, pitting the rural poor against the well-funded
developers in a war of attrition that continues to this day (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
We were only a few hours into our expedition, and my precious dream of the Amazon had been
replaced with a cruel, fiery dystopia - a paradise for drifters, criminals and good old fashioned
greed.
That was the world we were entering as we ventured further into the rainforest.
The world of Chico Mendes.
[music transition - let the gravity of the previous line really land]
121919 Denise Zmekhol Interview_Part 2
I think I was really sad to see how Chico Mendes was leaving his last few months of life
I said, "Maybe you should move to Sao Paulo to leave? We could find a place for you to leave.
You can bring your family and stay away for a few months until things settle down for a little bit
because you can die. You shouldn't die. You are a leader. You're a special person. You're so
important to these people. I think you should really be careful and get away from the Amazon for
a while." He was like, "No, no, no. This is my struggle. I want to be here. I want to stay here."
And I said, "Yeah, but you're a leader. It's very important that you are here all the time with
everybody, with us." He said, "No, no." So, he stayed and two weeks later he was killed.
[music transition]
Chico Story Beat #3
[news byte about Chico’s death]
Jim VO: Chico was the fifth labor union leader to be assassinated in 1988, and another was
killed a week later (Revkin, The Burning Season). Most of the killers escaped prosecution and,
in many cases, there wasn’t even an investigation (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). Rumors
spread about Chico’s murder involving a family dispute gone wrong (LA Times: Making a
Difference), and defense lawyers claiming the CIA or fellow environmentalists were to blame
(Revkin, The Burning Season pg 284, 288). But everyone in Xapuri knew who had pulled the
trigger: The powerful Alves crime family had been threatening Chico for months - it was public
knowledge that they wanted him dead. But the killers had quickly escaped into the Amazon,
protected by the impenetrable jungle and their corrupt friends in the police and courts (Revkin,
The Burning Season).
Portuguese_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 012520:
E a violência continua, todos os anos morrem... Esse ano já morreram…
Como outras lideranças que vieram sendo assassinadas ao longo dos anos exatamente por
defenderem a mesma coisa que o Chico. O direito dos povos da floresta, viverem na floresta e
desenvolverem a floresta sem destruí-la.
Translation VO: And violence continues, every year they die... This year they've died. Like other
leaders who have been murdered over the years exactly for defending the same thing as Chico.
The right of the people of the forest to live in the forest and develop it without destroying it.
[pause]
Jim VO: It would be easy to consider Chico’s death just another murder in the jungle, just one
more victim of this war for the forest. But was it actually something bigger than that? Was Chico
bigger than that? And would his family ever see justice?
[music transition]
Conclusion
Graham VO: The forest in which Chico Mendes lived, and died was certainly a place of
ecological wonder, but also violence, destruction and conspiracy.
[music begins, let this swell towards the end of the episode]
As Jim and I drove further into the forest towards Xapuri, we shared concerns about the
potentially volatile nature of the journey ahead.
We also shared our commitment to understand why people have been burning one of the
planet’s most important natural spaces.
And to investigate the people that decided Chico and those like him needed to die.
Some of whom were still around Xapuri.
[musical conclusion]
The Podcast “Wildfire: Season Two” is part of the REI Podcast Network and is a production of
Bedrock Film Works and Podpeak.
All of our sources and additional links can be found in the show notes.
The Show is written by Jim Aikman and myself Graham Zimmerman.
And it is produced by two of us alongside Chelsea Davis from REI and our audio wizard Evan
Phillips.