Activist, environmentalist and rubber tapper, Chico Mendes, reaches out to the Indigenous communities in Brazil to help his cause in the forest, a resource on which they both rely.
Chico reaches out to the Indigenous communities to help his cause in the forest, a resource on which they both rely. Similarly, Graham and JIm contact the Surui tribe, who have their own innovative way to combat deforestation. In the end, Chico sees that he must take his message to the international stage — but he has doubts.
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Cold Open
[nat sound/sound design/news clip/etc]
After the assassination of Brazilian union leader Wilson Pinheiro in 1980, the next five years
were a blur of violent and political conflicts in Acre state. The war for the forest was in full swing,
and Chico Mendes was fighting tooth and nail for his family and the rubber tappers, looking for
every possible way to slow the onslaught of deforestation and development that was destroying
his way of life. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
Murder became a big business, with its own brutal economy propped up by land speculators,
mineral companies, real estate firms and ranchers, executed by pistoleiros like the Alves family.
Everyone had a price: a Union Leader like Pinheiro cost a few hundred dollars, while judges and
religious leaders could be more than twenty thousand. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
Chico Mendes received his first death threat in 1977, and they continued regularly after that
(Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). But still, he was gaining steam as well. He was elected
president of the local workers Union - his first official leadership position. Suddenly Chico
represented 30k rubber tappers in the Xapuri area, and was more determined than ever to
avenge Pinheiro’s death. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
[music]
By 1985, Chico and the tappers had staged 45 empates (Mendes, Spin), the non-violent
resistance that he created in the seventies with Pinheiro. This had become Chico’s strongest
weapon, and led to the preservation of 1.2 million hectares of forest, drawing the ire of ranchers
all over western Brazil. But the empate wasn’t a silver bullet - out of the 45 they conducted, 30
had failed.
However, Chico had managed to keep the empates non-violent - for now. (Mendes, Spin)
Then came the birth of the UDR - the Rural Democratic Union, a criminal syndicate financed by
world banks and the Brazilian government to bring more resources to Chico’s enemies, and
clear the way for the development of the Amazon (Revkin, The Burning Season). They put guns
in the hands of rural militias and promoted a romantic image of the Brazilian cowboy, like John
Wayne on his horse shooting from the hip. They infiltrated the police and news outlets on the
local level, turning the Amazon into an oligarchy of rich landowners controlling the population
with propaganda and intimidation. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
A UDR, União Democrática Ruralista foi uma entidade fundada em Goiás, para reunir os
fazendeiros. Uma união de fazendeiros.
Grandes proprietários de terra, visando expulsar, organizar para expulsar posseiros em todo o
Brasil.
Jim Translation: UDR was an entity founded in Goiás, to gather farmers. A farmers' union. Large
landowners, aiming to expel the people of the forest. They began to organize and spread
throughout Brazil.
Jim VO: The central question remained: how long could the rubber tappers last against such a
powerful, well armed enemy?
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520
O Chico, ele tinha uma visão que era necessário ter cada vez mais aliados. Então ele
conseguiu aliados entre ambientalistas, professores universitários no Rio de Janeiro, em São
Paulo. E nesses encontros que ele participou, ele encontrou lideranças a nível Nacional
Indígenas, da União das Nações Indígenas
Jim Translation: Chico, he had a vision that it was necessary to have more and more allies.
University professors in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo. And in those meetings he attended, he
met leaders with the Union of Indigenous Nations.
Jim VO: Eventually, even the “peaceful” empates became more violent as the tappers were
radicalized, sinking to the level of the pistoleiros. They started removing workers from the forest
by force, threatening them with guns and even burning down their homes - an eye for an eye.
(Revkin, The Burning Season)
Violence was seeping into every corner of Acre, and even Chico was not immune. After learning
that he was placed on the UDR’s secret “hit list” and a number of federal watch lists
(Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair: Murder in the Rainforest), he caved in and got his own gun - just for
protection. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
To make matters worse, another round of northern migration began in 1981, funded by
hundreds of million of dollars that brought 65 thousand new settlers to the Amazon every year.
(Revkin, The Burning Season)
Chico and the rubber tappers were simply outnumbered.
Not only that, the fires were getting worse - each year set new records for the number of acres
lost. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
All of these forces were quickly spiralling out of Chico’s control (Revkin, The Burning Season).
[Theme Song]
Intro Monologue
Graham VO: Welcome to Wildfire, a podcast series about fire in our world’s natural spaces,
hosted by myself, Graham Zimmerman - I’m a producer and professional climber - and Jim
Aikman, writer and filmmaker.
This is episode four in a six part series exploring the complex history of fire in the Amazon
Rainforest.
In episode three, we spoke about one of the most violent eras in the burning of the Amazon,
and Chico Mendes’s call to action.
We also learned more about the villainous Alves family, the perpetrators of Chico Mendes’s
murder, their history of violence, and final settlement in Xapuri, just down the road from Chico’s
home (Revkin, The Burning Season).
We examined the two sides of the conflict in Brazil, the war between the rubber tappers and the
ranchers, learning that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed (Revkin, The Burning Season).
By the end of the last episode, Jim and I were both wondering how things could possibly
improve for Chico Mendes, as the walls were closing in on the rubber tappers (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
But in this episode, we’ll learn about the next chapter in Chico’s resistance - his expansion
beyond the rubber tappers to a community with even deeper roots in the Amazon Rainforest:
the indigenous people (Revkin, The Burning Season).
We’ll learn about the many indigenous communities that have called the Amazon home for
thousands of years, and why their knowledge and perspective are so important, both to Chico
and today (Surui, Save the Planet).
And finally, we will visit an indigenous Amazonian village where the Surui tribe found a unique
solution of their own (Surui, Save the Planet).
Thank you for joining us on season two of Wildfire.
Story Beat (Jim)
Jim VO: Graham and I boarded a rickety bus out of Xapuri and Acre state, headed for the city of
Cocoal in the neighboring state of Rhondonia, where the worst of the deforestation in the
eighties had occurred (Revkin, The Burning Season). As I took my seat next to a window, my
head was spinning. I couldn’t make sense of all the different angles, ups and downs, good guys
and bad guys - everyone just scrambling to survive. And one man at the center of it all, whose
own perspective we could never hear.
[sad music]
We quickly exited the dense forest and got a first hand tour of the most disturbing landscape I
had ever seen. As the bus rolled along the choppy asphalt for our 18 hour trip, weaving around
car-sized potholes, we passed hundreds of miles of deforested earth. Burned up tree trunks
were frozen in place, black and twisted like ancient statues. Without the forest holding the soil
together, the land had turned marshy, so the dead trees emerged out of muddy water in ghostly
poses. It was a graveyard.
Our bus broke down half way into the journey, but another one arrived and we finally made it to
Cocoal. I was struck by the modern, urban environment that would be our portal into the
indigenous world. This was a major city with modern hotels and industry. A bumpy three hour
drive into the forest would bring us to the indigenous reserve, but that felt pretty far away - we
might as well have been in Detroit.
And back in the eighties, as the violence tightened its grasp on Amazonia, Chico had more and
more frequent encounters with the UDR and their henchmen. At one point, he was kidnapped
and blindfolded, taken away in a van, then badly beaten by pistoleiros - but they didn’t kill him. It
was almost like they wanted him to survive, to break his spirit. To see him crumble. (Revkin, The
Burning Season)
With his back against the wall, Chico realized that he still had one group of forest dwellers that
he’d yet to recruit to his cause. But he would need a plan.
Body 1
Graham VO: It’s time to take a broader look at the indigenous populations of the Amazon. Who
they are, what they have been through, and what they represent.
In the city of Cocoal we rented another pickup and worked on the best way to access the “7th of
September indigenous reserve”, the home of the Surui Tribe, named for the date in 1969 when
they first made contact with the outside world (Surui, Save the Planet).
We had discovered the story of the Surui’s work while investigating Chico’s negotiations with
indiginous communities and it was very exciting to be just outside of their territory (Surui, Save
the Planet). We hoped to learn from them about their past and their vision for the future.
In preparation for our arrival at the reserve, I had researched the indigenous communities in the
Amazon and was not surprised to find that they have an important and rich history of their own.
This said, there were some components of my research that had caught me off guard, there was
certainly more to this story than I had anticipated (Mann, 2019).
[Pause]
When we think of the pre-colonial societies of central and south America, we generally focus on
the great civilizations encountered by the colonial powers as they forced their way into these
areas (Mann, 2019).
Classic examples are the Aztecs of what is now Mexico (Mann, 2019) and The Inca of Peru
(Mann, 2019).
There is, of course, also the great mystery of the Maya Civilization that disappeared from the
Yucatan Peninsula, leaving behind an incredible architectural legacy (Mann, 2019).
But Amazonia has traditionally been approached differently (Mann, 2019).
It’s been relegated to the idea of what’s been coined by archaeologist Charles Mann as “The
Pristine Wilderness myth” (Mann, 2019).
The central idea contained within this myth is that landscapes like the Amazon were largely
untouched prior to Europeans’ arrival on the continent (Mann, 2019). The communities that
have inhabited the basin for thousands of years were seen to have been small and to have lived
alongside the forest in symbiosis - leaving the forest ripe for the colonial taking. (Mann, 2019).
And the permission granted by this myth was essentially the same force that Chico Mendes was
faced off against as he tried to protect the forest (Mann, 2019).
But this perspective of the “The Pristine Wilderness myth,” is deeply flawed.(Mann, 2019).
In fact, the pre-colonial societies of the Amazon were large and had a dramatic impact on their
environment as they sustainably managed the forests (Mann, 2019).
The first evidence for this came from the colonial conquistadors themselves in a story first told
by Gaspar de Carvajal (Mann, 2019).
With a group of soldiers, he crossed the Andes from Peru and entered one of the tributaries of
the Amazon (Mann, 2019). Subsequently, they decided to continue East, blindly following the
river and they were the first Europeasn to travel the length of the Amazon (Mann, 2019).
His manuscripts hold many observations like these:
“The farther we went, the more thickly populated and better did we find the land”
“Numerous and very large settlements and very pretty country and very fruitful land”
He described towns
“that stretched for five leagues”
or nearly 18 miles
“without there intervening any space from house to house”
He also said that
“Inland from the river, at a distance of one to two leagues there could be seen very large cities”
These scenes described by Carvajal present strong observational evidence for a robust
civilization in Amazonia. But his manuscript was virtually ignored by scholars at the time,
dismissed as fabrications and propaganda (Mann, 2019).
But evidence today in the form of archaeological and ethnographic studies has caused a
re-evaluation of these assumptions (Mann, 2019).
To learn more about this, I talked to Dr Sussana Hetch, the author of “Fate of the Forest” (Feb
2020, Hetch and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest):
200116_Susanna Hetch:
“I'm a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles”
“I've been working in Amazonia since the end of the 1970s. I worked on the dynamics of land
use change”
Graham VO: She dove straight into what she had learned about indigenous communities
through this work.
200116_Susanna Hetch:
“working with indigenous people and traditional people, what you realize is that while they may
not have textbooks signed by them, they have an extraordinary knowledge that uses the forest
and domesticated landscapes as the platform for very complex, very sustainable, very resilient
kinds of land use management across lots of different things.”
Graham VO: Thinking back to Carvajal’s manuscript, you might ask, why have we not found
these robust communities in the Amazon since? And the answer is as simple as it is terrible
(Mann, 2019).
The same epidemics that wiped out the Native Americans of the United States devastated the
communities of the Amazon. Studies have found that up to 90% of the population was wiped
out.
So by the time further exploration of the Amazon basin took place, Europeans were only seeing
a post-apocalyptic version of these communities (Mann, 2019). Small bands of people left over
from the devastation (Mann, 2019).
200116_Susanna Hetch:
“what's very clear is from the archeology and from the historical ecology, what's emerging is
one, that these were very complex, very interesting, very different kinds of societies from the
ones we know”’
“What we have in the Amazonian case is a situation of indigenous management that wasn't
based on management, on monoculture but on complexity.
This resulted in resilient and sustainable agricultural systems.
“there are artistic masterpieces from the past. There are a historical ecology that we're just
beginning to decipher.”
And this brings us back to fire which had a key role in these indigenous land management
practices.
200116_Susanna Hetch:
“Amazonians have been burning for probably since they occupied it, for about 14,000 years.
Graham VO: And evidence shows that it was something they did and continue to do regularly,
but with a different methodology than the larger modern fires. (Mann, 2019)
200116_Susanna Hetch:
“they're small fires and they create a kind of landscape mosaic. It starts to be resistant to fire. So
the kinds of things that we see now really reflects the lack of indigenous engagement in these
landscapes.”
“So, in this sense we have a completely different kind of fire feeling, if you will. cool fires, friendly
fires, mosaics produced from fires”
Graham VO: In his book “1491” Charles Mann builds upon these discoveries asking us to shift
away from the view of Pristine Wilderness to a perspective of the Amazon as a well tended
garden (Mann, 2019). A place where fire and ancient nutrient fixing practices were used to
cultivate an ecosystem that provided indigenous communities with everything that they needed
not only to survive but to thrive (Mann, 2019).
And this was all on my mind as we entered the Surui’s “7th of September indigenous reserve.
I was also thinking about Chico, who in the 1980s was starting negotiations with the indigenous
communities around Acre (Revkin, The Burning Season).
Body Block 2:
Jim VO: With the city of Cocoal behind us, Graham and I left the truck and boarded a small
canoe for a river crossing.
Surui_Boat Musings.wav
1:30 - 1:38 Canoe paddle in water nat sound
This was the only way in to the center of the Surui village, which had no roads or electricity,
besides an old gas powered generator that had recently broken down. I realized that this
physical divide between the city and the reserve was not a simple border line on a map - it was
a socio-political chasm that could only be bridged by a common understanding.
And that divide was even greater when Chico Mendes tried to bring the indigenous peoples into
the fight for the forest in the mid 1980s (Mendes, Fight for the Forest).
[music transition]
The rubber tappers and indigenous peoples all over the Amazon had a long history of bloody
conflict - in fact, they had been deadly enemies for more than a century. (Rodrigues, Walking
the Forest)
Dr Marianne Schmink, our anthropological expert from the University of Florida (Marianne
Schmink, University of Florida), helped paint the picture.
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
Chico was very aware of the history of conflict between the indigenous people and the rubber
tappers.
In fact, he used to say that Acre was the only state in Brazil colonized by Brazilians, not by
Europeans.
Jim VO: As we heard from Graham, Brazil’s indigenous peoples suffered a long history of
disease, violence and genocide (Mann, 2019).
What I didn’t know was how much of that violence and oppression actually came at the hands of
the Rubber Tappers.
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
The indigenous people were there before the rubber tappers and when these migrants were
moved in and literally placed in strategic spots in the forest to tap rubber, they often came into
conflict with preexisting indigenous groups. So, there was a history there of violent conflicts
between them over access to those territories.
Jim: And so, were the rubber tappers the first quasi-Westerners that the indigenous people
encountered?
Marianne: Possibly. There've been a lot of explorers and various emissaries of the Western
world wandering the Amazon for centuries, but they were the first certainly to move in and live
there.
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
E aí os seringalistas para ocupar essas áreas, eles iam expulsando os índios cada vez mais
para longe, e matando os índios.
Jim Translation: And then the rubber barons, to occupy these areas, they were driving the
Indians further and further away, and killing the Indians.
Jim VO: That's Gomercindo Rodrigues, lawyer and close friend of Chico Mendes (Rodrigues,
Walking the Forest).
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
E colocavam os seringueiros para fazer esse serviço de matar os índios.
Jim Translation: And they put the rubber tappers to do this job of killing the Indians..
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
porque senão os índios iam matar os seringueiros. E aí os seringueiros viravam soldados, né,
dos seringalistas e eram usados para matar os índios, para expulsar os índios, para acabar
com as tribos indígenas.
Jim Translation: because otherwise the Indians would kill the rubber tappers. And then the
rubber tappers became soldiers, right, of the rubber barons and were used to kill the Indians, to
drive out the Indians, to wipe out the indian tribes.
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
Criou uma desconfiança entre eles e isso perdurou por mais de século.
Jim Translation: Created a mistrust between them, and this lasted for more than a century.
[music transition]
Jim VO: Through this conquest, the tappers learned how to survive in the forest by tracking and
studying the indigenous, learning the ways of the forest, so they understood what a wealth of
knowledge the indigenous possessed (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). And despite that long
history of conflict, Chico knew that the rubber tapper’s current reliance on a healthy forest was
shared by the indigenous - they had a common enemy. (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
011320 Marianne Schmink Interview_cleanfeed:
Jim: Okay. but how didthe
indigenous people of the Amazon and the rubber tappers come to form a unified front?
Marianne: Well, this was part of Chico Mendes' strategy.
So, he was able to take a very conciliatory and open approach to the indigenous people, and
was able to form the alliance of the peoples of the forest, putting those two groups together.
Jim VO: Chico made contact with the Aimoré (aye-more-EH) people, who also lived in Acre
state, via the Union of Indigenous Nations (Revkin, The Burning Season). Like the tappers, they
were also wary of outsiders, but were becoming interested in breaking out of their insular world
(Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
Chico said: “We understand today that our fight is the same one. The struggle of the Indian
should be the same as that of the rubber tappers… We should be together today to fight to
defend our Amazonia.” (Revkin, The Burning Season)
Gomercindo Rodrigues 2_Interview Sync - Portuguese Transcript 032520:
E aí ele começou a conversar com o Ailton Krenak a possibilidade de criar a grande aliança dos
povos da floresta porque havia aquele certo receio entre índios e seringueiros. Mas aí, se nós
juntarmos seremos índios e seringueiros defendendo a floresta.
Jim Translation: And then he began to talk to Ailton Krenak about the possibility of creating the
great alliance of the peoples of the forest because there was a certain fear between Indians and
rubber tappers. But if we join we will be Indians and rubber tappers defending the forest.
Jim VO: Together, the rubber tappers and indigenous groups traveled to Brasilia for a joint
commission in January 1986. They addressed the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, the Ministry of
Agriculture, and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (Miranda Smith Interview with Chico
Mendes, 1988). And they were stronger together than they’d ever been apart.
This was no small accomplishment for Chico - not only had he brought a whole new cadre of
soldiers to the fight, he had brokered peace between two groups that previously hated one
another (TK). His skills as a dealmaker were only getting stronger (Revkin, The Burning
Season).
Then, the tappers and indigenous came up with one of the biggest victories in the history of
preservation in the Amazon: The Extractive Reserves. (Mendes, Fight for the Forest)
Chico and the tappers had long been criticized for taking an anti-development stance, keeping
Brazil in the quote-unquote “stone age” (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest). He realized that he
was fighting against development of the forest without offering any kind of solutions, especially
something that would be economically viable. (Mendes, Fight for the Forest)
He said “We are not against development, but rather developmentism that insisted on classism,
dismantling the rubber tapper’s communities, genoice of the indigenous people, debt to foreign
banks, and environmental degradation.” (Revkin, The Burning Season)
He proposed a “pre-modern lifestyle - hunting, fishing, subsistence farming - with a post-modern
twist - entrepreneurialism, communitarianism, multi-ethnicity - all with an internationalist
framework.” (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest)
Together with Ailton Krenak and the indigenous people, the tappers hatched the idea for
Extractive Reserves, where land would be officially set aside by the government for preservation
and sustainable extraction. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
For context, the Extractive Reserves would operate similarly to the National Forest Service in
the United States (US Forest Service) - land that is officially set aside for preservation but is still
available for certain uses, including various industrial uses: sustainable extraction of medicines,
oils, nuts, rubber, chemicals - even trees, when done sustainably. (Rodrigues, Walking the
Forest)
The reserves would defend the lifestyles and livelihood of these people while also protecting the
trees (Rodrigues, Walking the Forest).
Chico and the tappers were able to demonstrate the economic impact of these reserves,
compared to the clear cut ranches that were wiping the forest out. They calculated that over
twenty years, a rubber tapper could earn just over $70 per acre, while a rancher only earned
$15. Not to mention, the pasture would eventually render the land useless after five or ten years
of trampling by cows. This would be a net gain for the national economy, the people of the
forest, and the environment (Revkin, The Burning Season). Chico began incorporating
economics into his message, making it easier to swallow for businessmen and political leaders
in Brazil. (Revkin, The Burning Season)
It was a win-win situation and a huge victory - for everyone but the ranchers (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
Body 3
Back in the seventh of September reserve, we found that Chief Almir was home. He was the
chief who had led much of the tribes work in keeping the forest standing and he was also the
man who was responsible to the Surui becoming known throughout Brazil as the “Google
Indians.” (Surui, Save the Planet) We were there to unpack that story and he was just the man
we were looking for.
We knew some of his story from his book “Save the Planet.”How his people had initially
described seeing an unstoppable snake destroying the forest. And that snake was in fact heavy
machinery cutting and burning down trees at an alarming rate (Surui, Save the Planet). Later, he
told a how they were then lured from the forest with mirrors and trinkets, leading to their first
contact with the outside world (Surui, Save the Planet).
And this first contact in 1969 brought epidemics of measles, chickenpox, and tuberculosis.
Subsequently, their population of 5,000, plummeted to less than 300 (Surui, Save the Planet)
They were nearly wiped off the map (Surui, Save the Planet).
With this also came intense deforestation to their ancestral lands (Surui, Save the Planet).
And Almir was born in 1974 in the midst of this dark time for his people (Surui, Save the Planet).
Seeing a need for change, the leaders encouraged the younger tribe members to seek
education and look for solutions to their plight, (Surui, Save the Planet)
One of those young members of the tribe was Almir (Surui, Save the Planet).
And it was through this education and the inspiration from men like Chico Mendes that Almir
started to guide the course of his people from one of a slow demise, to being global leaders in
the fight for the forest (Surui, Save the Planet).
Almir Interview Part 1 - English Translation 031021
Almir Interview Part 1 - Portuguese Transcript 031021
“Eu conheci Chico Mendes quando eu ainda era criança”
“em 1988 antes de ele ser assassinado, portanto eu tinha 12 anos.”
‘E foram outras lideranças Suruís que participaram em várias reuniões com eles para fazer
aliança dos povos da floresta junto com outros líderes indígenas do Brasil”
“Eu acho que é luta sempre foi motivadora”
“ a luta que estamos fazendo é para acrescentar e valorizar a luta que o Chico Mendes fez para
Amazônia, para o mundo e para o Brasil”
Graham Translation: “I met Chico Mendes when I was a child,
in 1988 before he was murdered, so I was 12 years old.
And it was other Suruí leaders who participated in various meetings with them, to create The
Alliance of Forest tribes/people along with other indigenous leaders of Brazil.”
“I think the fight/struggle has always been motivating.
the fight we are having, adds to and values the fight that Chico Mendes made for Amazon, for
the world and for Brazil.”
Graham VO: He then shared where that fight has taken him (Surui, Save the Planet):
Almir Interview Part 1 - English Translation 031021
Almir Interview Part 1 - Portuguese Transcript 031021
“A ideia saiu da necessidade de buscar alternativas para essas soluções que desmatam o
território Suruí. “
“E tivemos ideia de buscar alternativas”
Graham Translation: “The idea came out of the need to seek alternatives to these solutions that
deforest the Suruí territory.
we had an idea to look for alternatives.”
Graham VO: Amazingly, this led him to Google which he visited in 2007 while in California as
part of a UN conference (Surui, Save the Planet).
Almir Interview Part 1 - English Translation 031021
Almir Interview Part 1 - Portuguese Transcript 031021
“ tive a ideia de fazer a parceria com Google.”
“ E a ideia de“
“treinar o jovem Suruí, com uso das suas tecnologias, sua plataforma redes sociais, YouTube e
outros mapas”
“Então, a ideia é de que eles podem preparar para que a gente possa ter capacidade técnica e
tecnológica para mostrar os nossos desafios, os nossos planos sobre o futuro do nosso
território e como isso também pode contribuir ao bem comum de todos”
Graham Translation “I had the idea to partner with Google And the idea of training the young
Suruí, with use of its technologies, its platform, social networks, YouTube, and maps.
So, the idea is that they can prepare us to have technical and technological capacity to show
our challenges, our plans for the future of our territory and how this can also contribute to the
common good of all.”
Graham VO: Rebecca Moore the engineering manager of Google Earth Outreach recalled:
“He presented a pretty sophisticated idea of how the Surui people could blend their traditional
knowledge with modern technology — tools like Google Earth, the Internet — to literally defend
the rainforest,”(Surui, Save the Planet)
The Google Earth team jumped at the opportunity and together they stated working on solutions
to monitor and stop deforestation. It was the start of something very exciting (Surui, Save the
Planet).
They mapped the Surui Reserve and set up protocols to monitor the forest’s health along it’s
edges (Surui, Save the Planet).
This then led to the development of a scheme to sell carbon credits to foundations or companies
looking to offset their emissions, therefore creating value from the standing forest.
And it worked:
Almir Interview Part 1 - English Translation 031021
Almir Interview Part 1 - Portuguese Transcript 031021
“vendeu para a FIFA, quando teve a copa do mundo aqui no Brasil.”
“Natura comprou pela emissão e utilização que empresa estava fazendo”
‘Então, esse sucesso que o projeto teve também assustou as pessoas que não querem que o
povo indígena tenha sua própria autonomia.”
Graham Translation: “we sold to FIFA, when had they World Cup here in Brazil.
… Natura bought to offset the company’s emissions
…
this success of the project had also shocked people who did not want the indigenous people to
have their autonomy.”
Graham VO: This story of success, of indigenous communities being able to protect their land
though communication, and storytelling brought us hope for the future of the rainforest in Brazil.
It felt like a huge relief as we started to see solutions to the massive problems that the forest is
facing.
And a few days after our chat with Almir we toured one of the native villages in the 7th of
September Reserve with Almir’s cousin Gasoda. It was in a series of small clearings near a river
in which thatched roofed homes still provided the best shelter from the sweltering rainforest.
But nearby, a solar panel was set up to power lights and a satellite dish provided access to the
outside world.
It was magical to visit an indiginous village, deep in the amazon. At the same time, I was
impressed by the fact that while the Surui people have stepped onto the forefront of the fight for
the forest they have also maintained their traditions (Surui, Save the Planet).
Creating a blend between their history and the modern world that would hopefully carry them
into an abundant future in their ancestral forests (Surui, Save the Planet).
It gave me hope,
Conclusion
Graham VO: In this episode, we turned a corner and started seeing solutions rather than just
violence and destruction.
And as we reflect on the journey of both the Surui and the Tappers it feels like we can finally see
a pathway through which these communities can preserve the forest.
But within both of the stories, there remain massive barriers (Revkin, The Burning Season).
[music begins, let this swell towards the end of the episode]
In recent years, the Surui have faced larger and larger challenges as loggers and miners
encroach on their territory (Surui, Save the Planet).
And back in 1986 while the historic alliance that Chico had brokered between the tappers and
native tribes was widely considered the greatest victory in the war (Revkin, The Burning
Season)
[music builds]
it put them in direct contradiction with the Alves crime family and their pistoleiros (Revkin, The
Burning Season).
And our hero, the leader of this movement, Chico Mendes had a target on his back and the
Alves Family was hot on his trail (Revkin, The Burning Season).
[musical conclusion]
The Podcast “Wildfire: Season Two” is a production of his is an REI Co-op Studios, 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 are by Evan Phillips.
As a final note, if you would like to dig further into the story of the Surui, we highly recommend
checking our chief Almir’s book, it’s listed in the show notes along with the other references from
the show (Surui, Save the Planet).
Sources:
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 Bu
Shoumatoff, Alex. “Murder in the Rainforest.” Vanity Fair, 1989.
Mendes, Francisco. “Antihero.” Spin, September 1989, page 76-78.
Surui, Almir Narayamoga, et al. Save the Planet: An Amazonian Tribal Leader Fights for His
People, The Rainforest, and the Earth. Editions Albin Michel, 2015.
Mann, C. C. (2019). 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Alfred A. Knopf.
Hecht, Susanna, and Alexander Cockburn. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and
Defenders of the Amazon. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
https://www.fs.fed.us/forestmanagement/aboutus/index.shtml