While learning more about Chico Mendes' young life, our hosts explore the past of the rubber trade in the Amazon, the rubber tappers' relationship with the forest, and their plight.
In the second episode, hosts Graham and Jim explore the origin story of Chico Mendes. They explore the past of the rubber trade in the Amazon, the rubber tappers' relationship with the forest, and their plight.
More about the show:
In the second season of Wildfire, we’re shifting our perspective from fires in the forests of the American west to those taking place in the Amazon rainforest alongside a story of violence and heroism.
On December 22nd 1988 in the town of Xapuri, Brazil a man named Chico Mendes was shot and killed at his home. He was killed for trying to protect the rainforest from the fires that were burning at an increasing rate; fires that were turning one of the most complex ecosystems in the world into cow pastures.
In this season of Wildfire, hosts Jim Aikman and Graham Zimmerman look into the story of Chico Mendes—who he was, what he was fighting for, and how his legacy lives on. It's a story filled with intrigue and violence but also hope, both for the Amazon and for humankind.
This 6-part series is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episode sources:
Cold Open:
[music or sound design]
Jim VO: When Chico Mendes was killed in the winter of 1988, the fires in the Amazon
Rainforest were at an all time high. Paving crews continued to reach deeper and deeper into the
forest and more than seven thousand fires were burning at one time. The amount of smoke was
so great that it inundated Brazil’s major cities in the south, thousands of miles away, reducing
visibility so badly that major airports closed for weeks at a time. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
And the impacts of this burning was beginning to take its toll: unprecedented amounts of CO2
and other greenhouse gases were being released into the atmosphere and the planet was
experiencing record high temperatures, especially in Brazil (Revkin, The Burning Season).
It was a truly catastrophic era in the Amazon. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
But when Chico Mendes was born in December, 1944, that couldn’t have been further from the
truth. At that point, decades before any major fires, the Amazon Rainforest was a completely
different place, where he and his people lived in harmony with the healthy forest. (Shoumatoff,
Vanity Fair: Murder in the Rainforest)
[sound design]
The state of Acre, where Chico grew up, is so remote that it was the last Brazilian state to be
developed - truly off the grid. In the 1940s, it still contained numerous indigenous groups that
had yet to even make first contact. It remained impenetrable to the western world, as
unexplored as the bottom of the ocean or the surface of the moon. (Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair:
Murder in the Rainforest).
In many ways, it was paradise for Chico Mendes. At first...
[music]
010920 Marianne Schmink Chat:
“in the late 1980s I started working in Acre ... and I met Chico Mendes in 1987.”
Jim VO: That is Dr. Marianne Schmink, an anthropologist from Florida who worked with Chico in
the eighties. (University of Florida).
010920 Marianne Schmink Chat:
“I was there just a few months before he was murdered.”
[music shift after the mention of Chico’s death]
Jim VO: Dr. Schmink has been studying the people of the Amazon for forty years, and one
group in particular: the rubber tappers.
010920 Marianne Schmink Chat:
Jim: Could you describe the people a little bit more? what kind of people are they? What do they
value?
Marianne: A lot of the rubber tapper culture is from northeastern Brazil, which is a very
traditional culture in Brazil, strongly focused on family, very patriarchal for the most part. People
who I think family is the key focus.
They typically share food. If you go and kill a large game animal, that meat would be shared
among everyone in your extended family. Likewise, if you harvest some cassava from your little
food plot, you're likely to work with other family members in a little factory to turn that into
cassava flour that everyone would share. Those were the kinds of arrangements that, over the
generations, kept them going.
Jim VO: She also told me the origin story of Chico Mendes: How he had grown up on a rubber
estate named Cachoeira, which means “rapids”, as the estate was surrounded by pumping
estuaries of the Amazon River basin (Mendes, Fight for the Forest). He was weaned on simple
foods: rice, beans, Brazil nuts, couscous, manioc flour, and wild game - anything from armadillo
to monkey (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). He lived in a pretty basic shelter built from supplies
from the forest, living off of the land (Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair: Murder in the Rainforest). This
simple life was all Chico knew as a child.
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“They know what the medicinal plants are in their backyard. They know which vines will give
them something to drink in the forest. They know which fruits fruit at different times and which
fruits attract different animals at different seasons that they can hunt for protein.”
[sound design]
Jim VO: Once he was big enough to start working, around the age of 9, he joined the family
business - harvesting and processing latex from Brazilian rubber trees (Mendes, Fight for the
Forest). Instead of sitting in a classroom and learning to read, he was learning how to cut
incisions into the trees and collect the “white gold” that would be smoked and pulled into balls of
latex. By age 11, he was working full time (Mendes, Fight for the Forest). In interviews, Chico
described those early years as an idyllic childhood in the forest, developing compassion for all
the living things that made it whole (Mendes, Spin).
[music shift]
But really, life in the forest was far from idyllic. In fact, it was down right ruthless. Just surviving
birth wasn’t easy; only five of Chico’s 17 siblings survived infancy (Revkin, The Burning
Season). And things didn’t get much easier after that - it was all work and no play on the rubber
estates, harvesting enough to pay the rubber merchants that lorded over them like a medieval
fiefdom (Revkin, The Burning Season).
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“Chico Mendes had been illiterate. He didn't learn to read and write until he was 24. That was
typical. The traders didn't provide an education. They didn't particularly want the rubber tappers
to be literate and numerate, because they were able to manipulate the bills more easily.”
Jim VO: It would take another twenty years, but Chico Mendes would eventually come to
understand the vicious cycle of poverty that he and his family were stuck in - long before the
fires arrived - trapped in a cruel system of indentured servitude that had kept generations of his
people starving and in debt (Revkin, The Burning Season).
This realization would be the inciting incident that inspired the work of one of the most important
environmental activists in history.
[WFS2 theme song]
Introduction:
Graham VO: Welcome to season two of Wildfire, a podcast series about fire in our world’s
natural spaces, hosted by Jim Aikman and me, Graham Zimmerman . In this season, we’re
talking about the Amazon Rainforest and the raging fires that have wrought havoc on that
ecosystem for decades.
In the first episode, we learned more about these massive fires and the deadly conflicts
surrounding them, including the death of a rubber tapper named Chico Mendes, who was shot
and killed by an assassin in December of 1988.
Chico’s death had a huge impact at the time, landing him on the cover of the NYT, but today
he’s been largely forgotten - Jim and I had never even heard of him, and I doubt most of our
listeners have either. So naturally, we were intrigued.
We headed down to Brazil to investigate further, and immediately made an unsettling discovery:
that the fires in the Amazon were not started naturally or served any natural function in the
forest - they were being intentionally set by developers who were burning down the forest and
converting it to pasture.
It turned out that this large-scale deforestation has been going on for sixty years, a dark period
of smoke and violence that transformed much of the rainforest into a Wild West of gunslingers
and ash.
So how were Chico Mendes and these enormous fires related? Why was he killed? And finally -
what can this tell us about the past, present and future of forests on this planet?
In this episode, we’re going to continue investigating Chico’s life, starting at the beginning - his
birth and early years in the forest as a rubber tapper. And Jim and I will journey deeper into the
heart of darkness, following a tributary of the Amazon River upstream to visit a modern rubber
estate that is still managed by one of Chico’s cousins, witnessing the devastation of the forests
and the lifestyle of the tappers today.
Thanks for joining us on season two of Wildfire.
Body 1
Graham VO: As Jim and I drove our rented white 4x4 truck Southwest out of Rio Branco, the
city quickly faded, the roads deteriorated and civilization was replaced by rolling grasslands
spotted with cows. In all directions, on the horizon line, we could see a distant ocean of trees.
From our research, we knew that those forests, in which Chico grew up, were composed of a
highly diverse selection of trees, estimated at over 16,000 species across the Amazon basin
(Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest). But there was one in which we were most
interested. The Rubber Tree.
To the untrained eye, they may not appear unique when walking through the forest. But when a
sliver of bark is removed, it reveals the feature that makes these trees one of the most valuable
parts of the standing forest (Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest). From these cuts
oozes a milky white liquid, known as latex (Revkin, The Burning Season).
The process of harvesting latex is called Rubber Tapping. In the Amazon, it is practiced to this
day (Revkin, The Burning Season), particularly on a series of reserves around the state of Acre
(Mendes, Fight for the Forest). This is where Jim and I were headed, to a reserve named after
Chico Mendes.
(pause)
Graham VO: Uncured latex is elastic and waterproof. It has a rich history and was used
extensively by the indigenous communities, particularly in their construction of footwear and
bags (Mendes, Fight for the Forest).
And when Portuguese expeditions arrived in the 1700s these indigenous communities taught
them about this unique substance (Mendes, Fight for the Forest).
The Portuguese saw its potential economic value and brought it home, kicking off the start of the
rubber trade (Mendes, Fight for the Forest). But, it was not until 1839 that rubber had its first
practical application in the industrial world.
In that year, Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped rubber and sulfur on a hot stovetop,
causing it to char like leather yet remain plastic and elastic (Mendes, Fight for the Forest). The
process once refined became known as Vulcanization and it dramatically increased the
economic applicability and value of the raw material (Revkin, The Burning Season). Suddenly,
as parts of the world were starting to engage with the industrial revolution it had a durable,
elastic, and waterproof material that repelled electricity (Davis, One River). Demand exploded
(Davis, One River).
In Europe and the United States, it was used in Tires, Surgical equipment, Swim caps, Chewing
gum, Rubber bands, and Shoes. It became known as rubber when it was started being sold as
pencil erasers and that name stuck. (Revkin, The Burning Season).
This created huge opportunities in the Amazon and totally changed the social and political stage
(Revkin, The Burning Season).
New cities sprung up overnight, featuring some of the most advanced urban engineering
available at the time, all to support the burgeoning rubber trade. The Amazon rainforest was on
the economic map, and there was money to be made (Revkin, The Burning Season).
(pause)
Graham VO: Back in the present day, Jim and I wanted to see this process of tapping for
ourselves, so we headed to a modern-day rubber estate to visit an active rubber tapper - one of
Chico's cousins and closest friends (Revkin, The Burning Season).
We had been directed down an unmarked dirt road to reach the Chico Mendes Extractive
Reserve. It was raining hard as we slowly crept down the road that was deep with mud
occasionally, getting out to inspect tricky sections of the road, trying to ignore the ramifications
of getting stuck.
The entrance to the reserve wasn’t marked with a sign, but with a shift from sparse trees and
cow pastures to overwhelming vegetation and a dramatic change in temperature as we entered
the standing forest’s understory.
Shortly after, we arrived at the home of Raimundo Mendes, Chico’s cousin, who is the caretaker
of the reserve.
His home was a simple house, sitting in a small clearing and built of planks harvested from the
surrounding forest.
He greeted us, a quiet 75-year-old man with a drawn face covered by an unkempt beard. His
hands, calcused and strong, showed that much of his life had been spent working hard in the
forest. But his lack of concern about two young American arriving at his door showed a deep
confidence in the world.
(start nat sounds from “200301_004 - Walk&Talk w Raimindu 2.WAV”, Continue until noted)
Quickly after arriving, he ushered us into the forest to walk the understory and visit trees from
which he harvests rubber.
The voices you’ll hear are Jim and Raimundo alongside our young friend Lailson who was
translating.
200301_003 - Walk&Talk w Raimindu 1.WAV - starting at 7:23
Raimundo: “Premira…” (machete tapping)
Lailson: “This is the first rubber tree on the trail”
Jim: “so he’s showing us the first rubber tree.. There are cuts in it from the ground to about 6-8
feet off the ground. It looks well used and well loved.”
Graham VO: Every tapper has their “Estrada”, an 8-11 mile loop along which they visit the same
rubber trees.
200301_006 - Walk&Talk w Raimindu 4 (CONVO).WAV 1:00
Laison: “Quantos…?”
Raimundo: “Quantos…?”
Laison: “OK, he can work with about 100 trees in a day”
Jim: “Wow”
Graham VO: Raimundo was a man of few words and we followed him through the forest on his
well-worn trail as he tapped the trees for latex. As he walked, it was clear that he was intimately
familiar with the path.
(start playing 200301_004 - Walk&Talk w Raimindu 2.WAV - @ :30 - Audio of cutting/dripping)
To harvest the rubber, they cut “V” shaped lesions into the bark of the tree, below which they
attach a small bucket to capture the latex which bleeds from the lesion as thick white milk.
These methods of harvesting from the rubber trees are sustainable, giving trees time to heal
between harvests. To my untrained eyes, it looked like a lovely existence, at one with the forest,
but it was this work that was so heavily leveraged for an economic gain during the industrial
revolution.
But as we looked at Raimundo’s home and his lifestyle, it was clear that he and his community
had missed out on those gains.
We knew Raimundo had been on the front lines to save the forest with his cousin Chico, but
now he was carrying on a quiet existence in the forest having returned to his rubber trees and
traditions.
200301_006 - Walk&Talk w Raimindu 4 (CONVO).WAV 8:32
Raimundo: “In Portugese”
Laison: “Raimundo is saying that he feels comfortable living here”
Jim: “He said something about violence?”
Laison: “Was before, before they got this place. One of the things that he likes is that he can
breathe the natural air and eat whatever he wants. It is the only place he wants to be forever.”
(fade nat sound)
Graham VO: What we saw with Raimundo shared a beautiful process but, his lifestyle didn’t line
up with the story of development and excess associated with the rubber boom.
Dr Schmink had some key insights as to this disconnect:
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“They weren't indigenous to that region. They were recruited from other parts of Brazil and
brought into the Amazon by traders who controlled areas of forest that their tappers would
exploit for rubber and provide to the traders, who would then trade this through intermediaries to
buyers in Europe.”
Graham VO: During the early days of the rubber trade barons came to power. Most did so by
acquiring control over huge tracts of land and hiring their own private armies to defend their
claims, acquire new land, and capture native laborers (Davis, One River).
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“power was really heavily slanted in favor of the wealthier investors versus the poor migrants”
“they made sure that they charged enough for supplies to keep the rubber tappers constantly in
debt.”
Graham VO: The lives of early rubber tappers were a nightmare. They lived at the bottom of the
social order, known as seringueiros (Revkin, The Burning Season)
They were forbidden to marry or grow their own produce, and they were denied any kind of
education, forced to remain illiterate and innumerate - unable to even count (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
Thousands died every year from disease and malnourishment (Revkin, The Burning Season).
And Chico’s grandfather was one of these seingueiros, having been lured to Acre with his family
near the end of the first rubber boom (Revkin, The Burning Season).
He scraped by as the rubber barons became more and more wealthy off of his labor, and
subsequently, he was stranded alongside the rest of his community in the forest. (Revkin, The
Burning Season) When profiteers made off with the seeds of the rubber tree and successfully
planted concentrated plantations in Southeast Asia at the turn of the century causing a 50%
reduction in Brazilian Rubber production (Davis, One River).
But in this impoverished and inequitable society, he continued to raise a family, including Chico’s
father, Francisco (Revkin, The Burning Season).
Then in the 1930s and ’40s, as Japan invaded SE Asia and the Second World War began, the
Allied nations lost their access to the productive rubber plantations of Ceylon and Malaya at the
same time as their need for rubber, particularly in tires increased dramatically (Davis, One
River).
Their focus shifted back to Brazil causing a second rubber boom to take place (Davis, One
River).
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“the second wave of rubber tappers brought to the region another generation of migrants. These
people, now we're in the 1940s, had some understanding of labor laws and rights; a little bit
different generation of rubber tappers.”
Graham VO: And during this rubber boom of the 1940’s as the rubber barons returned to take
their place ruling over the seingueiros and new ideas were flowing into the area, just as Chico
Mendes was born. (Revkin, The Burning Season).
Body Block 2:
Jim VO: As Graham and I left the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, I was struck by what a
modest operation it was. I had expected some kind of headquarters, maybe an office with some
informational signage, something like the park boundaries in the US. But no - the vestiges of
this reserve showed no signs of financial support or lasting infrastructure, nothing at all that
suggested an ongoing interest in its survival by the city, state or country. In fact, Raimundo
looked kind of abandoned there, left to carry out his days wandering the rubber trails with his
machete and faithful chihuahua.
I realized that despite the fact that it was 2020, with all the modern conveniences I knew outside
of the rainforest, life for the rubber tappers was still not easy in the Amazon.
All of this made me more curious about Chico’s childhood, growing up in the rainforest in the
wake of World War II (Revkin, The Burning Season), which must have been such a far cry from
my upbringing in the suburbs of the midwest. I wished I could have seen him navigating the
trees and doing his thing, but I’d have to make do with more of Dr. Schmink’s expertise.
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
Jim:
“Could you describe the era of that community when Chico Mendes was born and was a child,
and was first exposed to that lifestyle?”
Dr Schmink:
“Yes. He grew up in a period very much like I described when the rubber tappers were isolated
from one another and controlled by the traders.”
“Many of the rubber tappers also left and went back to their regions of origin. But there was a
group that stayed and they became over time the traditional inhabitants of those forests. They
became traditional people as they adapted and learned from the natives that were there and
developed their own ways of using the forest.”
Jim:
“Essentially, just as the generations rolled on, this became home for the rubber tappers.”
Marianne:
“Exactly. Exactly.”
Jim VO: But not long after WW2 ended, the rubber business went bust again and the tappers
were again abandoned by the rubber barons who saw the writing on the wall, leaving Chico’s
family destitute, without a strong economic connection to the world market and no other way to
earn a living (Revkin, The Burning Season).
The rubber tappers were high and dry. Chico was just a teenager but already working full time to
survive. And it was hard work, walking 10-20 miles a day, five days a week of back breaking
labor (Revkin, The Burning Season).
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
“These are not plantations. These are very diverse forests where rubber tappers have to have
an average of 300 hectares, which is like 1,500 acres in order to have enough rubber trees to
make a living, because they're so spread out.”
Jim VO: It was a lonely existence for Chico. He lived on an independent estate, and the tappers
were naturally territorial and untrusting of each other, competing for the same resources, so
there wasn’t much socializing (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). Certainly none of the shopping
malls or bowling alleys I grew up with. Even schools were outlawed until the 1970s (Mendes,
Fight for the Forest).
This lifestyle led Chico to be superstitious and somewhat guarded, knowing that every meal was
hard won and could be his last. He created his own myths and legends about the forest, like his
own sacred religion, and no semblance of formal education to straighten him out... Yet (Revkin,
The Burning Season).
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“Almost no one in the rubber villages, in the forest could read and write.”
Jim VO: That’s Gomercindo Rodrigues, one of Chico’s closest friends and allies, and a fellow
environmental activist. You’ll remember him from episode one as the first responder to the
scene of his murder.
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“Chico Mendes, I always say that I think he had a light of his own”
Jim VO: Gomercindo described how the forest had hardened Chico into a survivor, but how he
always felt like there must be more to life than these narrow trails and towering trees.
It was around that time that Chico caught his first break - a mentor.
In 1961, when Chico was around 16 years old, he met a man named Euclides Fernandes
Tavora. Tavora was a communist rebel that had fled persecution of Brazil’s right-wing
dictatorship by hiding out in the rainforest (Mendes, Spin). He was a refugee of the political
upheaval happening in Brazil at the time that mimicked the McCarthy era in the US (Revkin, The
Burning Season). Tavora had learned a lot about the world and was ready to pass on his
knowledge - and Chico was ready to learn.
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“He asked Chico Mendes' father to let him teach Chico Mendes to read and write.”
Jim VO: Tavora took an early liking to Chico, who proved a quick learner, impressing everyone
he met with his work ethic and quick wit. Tavora first taught Chico to count, which gave him an
immediate advantage in the rubber game (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“And even as a young man, when he was 20, he was awarded as a rubber tapper who
produced the most rubber in the place he lived.”
Jim VO: Tavora then taught Chico to read by looking through old newspapers and communist
publications, taught him some English and Russian by listening to radio broadcasts, and planted
the seeds of revolution in his mind. He taught Chico about Karl Marx and socialism. Most
importantly, he taught Chico about the larger world beyond the forest, and Chico gradually
began to see more clearly what had trapped his people in poverty for so long (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“this learning to read and write, with a communist militant, led Chico to have his first notions of
organization and labor union, which in the Amazon at that time didn’t exist.”
“And he remembered those teachings of the early 1960s,”
Jim VO: Tavora taught Chico the value of his labor and products, and the rubber tapper’s rights
to the land that they occupied (Revkin, The Burning Season). Chico finally saw that the only way
to lift his people out of this horrible system was to pass on that knowledge, and the first place to
start was schools. But that would not be easy.
Translated_Gomercindo Rodrigues_Interview Sync 020220:
“Chico considered first that it was very important that the workers were united.”
Jim VO: The more I learned about Chico Mendes, the more I saw of his world, the more I came
to admire him. This was clearly a special person, who grew up in an environment so different
from my childhood that there shouldn’t have been any connection at all - and yet, I related to
Chico. I respected him. And I wanted to know more.
[music hit/transition]
In his twenties, Chico helped build 18 schools in the Xapuri region to educate the 30,000 rubber
tappers in the area during the 1960s (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). It was a huge step
forward for Chico, finally turning all of the ideas and lessons from Tavora into action. And it was
a huge step forward for the rubber tappers.
Little did Chico know that a much more insidious threat was waiting just around the corner - and
his mentor was nowhere to be found. He was on his own. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
Conclusion
In this episode, we took a step back in time, to the origins of the rubber tappers and the rubber
trade.
And within this history, we found a story of horrific human rights abuses alongside links to our
own lives (Revkin, The Burning Season). We found that the rubber on the backs of our pencils
and in the tires of our cars is intimately linked with the story of Chico and his plight of his
community (Revkin, The Burning Season).
But thanks to the teachings of Tavora, Chico was set on a new path, in which he could visualize
a new future for himself and his people.
It was a testament to the power of education to drive change.
But in 1970, just as Chico arrived at the first major threshold of his journey, ranchers showed up
in his home state of Acre, and began burning down the forest for cattle pastures (Mendes, Fight
for the Forest). Tavora disappeared into the trees, never to be heard from again (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
It is supposed that his Marxist past caught up with him and he was murdered, or maybe he had
an accident.
[music begins, let this swell towards the end of the episode]
But one way or another, it left Chico faced with a choice:
He could forget what he had learned and do nothing while watching his home and livelihood
burn to the ground
Or he could use his knowledge to galvanize his community and stand up to fight against the
encroaching development and violence.
It was a choice that would define the rest of his life (Revkin, The Burning Season).
[musical conclusion]
The Podcast “Wildfire: Season Two” is part of the REI Podcast Network and is a production of
Bedrock Film Works and Podpeak.
The show is written and produced by Jim Aikman and myself Graham Zimmerman, with
additional production support from Chelsea Davis at REI.
Editing , sound design and theme music is by Evan Phillips.
Sources:
Hecht, Susanna, and Alexander Cockburn. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and
Defenders of the Amazon. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Revkin, Andrew. The Burning Season: the Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the
Amazon Rain Forest. Island Press, 2004.
Rodrigues, Gomercindo, et al. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the
Amazon. University of Texas Press, 2007.
Mendes, Chico, et al. Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in his Own Words. Latin America
Bureau (Research and Action) Ltd, 1989.
Mann, Charles C. 1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
2nd ed., Random House LLC, 2005.
Shoumatoff, Alex. “Murder in the Rainforest.” Vanity Fair, 1989.
“Making a Difference : Chico Mendes . . .” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jan.
1989, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1186-story.html.
Mendes, Francisco. “Antihero.” Spin, September 1989, page 76-78.