The fight to save the Brazilian rain forests AMAZONIA

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20 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1992 valuable ecosystem to sterile wasteland.

In the peak year of 1987, as many as 8000 fires were set in a single day. As result of this holocaust, species of fauna and flora not yet classified are being lost forever. Indians lose their hunting grounds, their way of life, and their existence as a people. All humanity is threatened by disastrous climate changes.

Partly in response to the crisis in Amazonia, the Earth Summit Conference of 140 countries is being held in Brazil. The drama of the Amazon is a complex story of greed-and heroism—set in the arboreal home of some of the world's last truly aboriginal peoples.

From 1870 to 1900 (when the British began to plant rubber trees in Malaysia) an army of 124,000 poor Brazilians plunged into the forest to milk rubber trees, much as the Vermont farmer harvests maple syrup. Wild rubber trees are widely scattered. As many as 700 acres are patrolled by a single tapper. Even then, the tapper collects only enough rubber for a subsistence living.

The tapper has no property rights. Control is exercised by merchants who buy the latex and transport it. The merchants advance the tapper tools and minimum subsistence for the season, and add the charge to his current account. This means a lifetime bondage of debtor to creditor, as the illiterate tapper cannot read the scales that cheated him or the bosses' books that recorded his growing debt. Unable to escape, one generation follows another along the trails that lead from tree to tree.

Threatened with extinction

In 1953, a nine-year-old boy was learning his craft from his father, who had learned from his father in the same stretch of forest in the province of Acre, part of the most remote area of western Brazil. The boy was Francisco "Chico" Alves Mendes Filho.

Chico Mendes was destined to be a key figure in the campaign to save the rain forest. He also would become its principal martyr. But first, he had to learn to read. It was a difficult task, since there were no schools at that time for tappers in the forest.

In 1956, a revolutionist, Euclid Tavora, took refuge in Acre while fleeing the military. He brought with him revolutionary zeal and the theory of the class struggle. Young Chico, who instinctively rebelled against the injustice of the system, learned from Tavora not only the skills of reading and writing, but the art of organizing and the ideas of socialism. Later, Chico ran for public office on the Workers Party ticket.

In 1975, Mendes helped establish the Rural Workers Union. Later, a thousand tappers attended the founding conference of the National Union of Rubber Tappers. By withholding rubber, and other tactics, the tappers won concessions from their bosses. But now they faced an enemy that threatened all forest dwellers with extinction.

The Brazilian government wanted to relieve the pressure of poverty and population in the East, and to open a vast region for domestic and foreign investment, by settling the rain forest. The Amazon basin was to be a 20th-century version of the North American migration to the West.

But the floor of a rain forest cannot be equated to the fertile prairie of the United States. Once the trees were cut down or burned, the leached-out soil gave out after one or two years. The settlers who were lured to the Amazon by great promises soon gave up farming. Some tried mining, which further degraded the land. Others settled in shantytowns along the highways that were cut into the forest, or drifted to the slums of the big cities.

They were followed by the cattlemen, ENA Brazilian Rubber Workers Union poster: "They are stealing the green from our national flag." (Right) Chico Mendes: "I want to live."

who are a very different breed. They have capital and they have guns. They were granted, or seized, large stretches of forest, and cut down the larger trees for lumber. They burned the rest, and spread grass seed by plane to create pasture for their cattle.

Along with the Indians, the tappers were supposed to get out of the way. But Chico Mendes and the Union were not leaving. Instead, they organized the empate. This was a wall of men and women standing in the path of the men hired to cut down the trees.

Mendes spoke later of this struggle: "We organized 44 empates. About 400 of us were arrested and about 40 of us were tortured, and a few were killed, but we succeeded in keeping more than three million hectares of the forest from being destroyed."

The multi-national Bordon Meat Packing Company abandoned plans for a 10,000 acre cattle ranch, as Indians joined the tappers in opposition.

Environmentalists in America and Europe saw the world-wide effect of the forest's destruction. When leaders of the campaign to save the rain forest arrived in Acre, they found Mendes in the thick of the fight. They adopted Chico and enlisted him in the campaign. He was flown to conferences in Rio de Janiero, Washington, and London, where he was welcomed as a key ally.

Chico's horizon expanded. He saw the role of the World Bank, controlled by the United States, forcing a disastrous policy on Brazil, a debt-ridden country. The Bank pushed the Trans-Amazon Highway to open the region to speculators. They cleared land only to sell it, at a profit, to multinationals, and move on to burn and clear again.

Mendes and others had a counter proposal. It was the "extractive reserve." This meant taking from the forest only the products that nature could replace. Rubber, Brazil nuts, and pharmaceutical drugs— some already known, others yet to be discovered-would return more benefits than cattle raised for hamburgers, the conservationists argued.

Death squads

Such proposals could be discussed in Sao Paulo or Brazilia, but back in Acre the gun settled all arguments. It was like the old American West, but with a difference. In America the rancher, the cowboy, and the outlaw all had guns. In Amazonia the tappers had nothing more than cheap hunting rifles.

The rancher had his private death squad. On his isolated ranch he could murder hired hands and others with impunity. He could then move West if authorities were inclined to prosecute. Such a rancher, Darli Alves da Silvas, arrived with his sons in Acre in 1974, one step ahead of arrest warrants for murder back in Minas Gerais.

The family bought up land and joined the Rural Democratic Union (UDR), the organization of the big ranchers. Here the problem of Mendes and the empates was high on the agenda. The solution was the traditional one for property holders in rural Brazil-kill the people who offended them.

Darli Alves was assigned, or assumed, the assassin's role. He and his sons drove around Xapuri, where Mendes lived, appealed to the local police, who assigned two bodyguards but took away his pistol permit.

Mendes learned of the charge of murder against Alves, and demanded that the arrest warrants be forwarded. They were sent to Xapuri, officials claimed, but were "lost" in the Xapuri police station.

Important leaders of the forest campaign let Mendes face his assassins alone. They sent no delegations to Xapuri to stand beside this leader under siege. The Rural Workers Union failed to organize adequate defense. The city council, on which Mendes once sat, left the way clear for the killers. When an annunciado, a formal warning of imminent death, was issued by the ranchers, a sense of resignation gripped the community. As in a Greek tragedy, the outcome was foretold. Making the threat real, four other Rural Union presidents had been shot to death that year.

In December 1988, Chico warned his brother, "Zuza, you watch out because things are getting very hot. I feel I am not going to make it to Christmas." Chico was right. On Dec. 22, the assassins struck. At dusk, as Chico stepped out of his house, a fatal charge of buckshot tore into his side.

Mendez had not sought martyrdom; he knew it would not advance the cause. Two weeks before his death he said, "Public rallies and lots of funerals won't save the Amazon. I want to live." "The judge was following orders"

Darli Alves was arrested for the murder. At his trial, Feb. 28, 1992, three witnesses testified they saw Alves pull the trigger. Despite this, the judgewho presided without a jury-declared Alves innocent. The official seal of approval was put on the ranchers' death squads.

Osmarino Amanco Rodriguez, who followed Mendes as general secretary of the Rubber Workers Union, denounced the verdict. He said, "The judge chose to believe Darli Alves for one simple reason-the state is directly implicated in the assassination of Chico Mendes. The judge was simply following orders."

The union leader said that it was necessary for the tappers to discuss forming self-defense brigades. He also called on the international workers movement to support a boycott of the Earth Summit.

Beside the Mendes assassination, other changes have rendered the Earth Summit a meaningless exercise. As planned, the nations of the world would have announced cuts in their emissions of carbon dioxide in order to keep CO2 emissions at 1990 levels. As a nation that contributes 20 percent of annual carbon-dioxide emissions, the United States is a key player. But the American ruling class does not intend to reduce CO2 emissions—at least, not on such a timetable. It will cost them money.

But how would it look if the world's worst polluter announced that the United States would wreck the Earth Summit and continue polluting? Not a good scenario. And so Bush exerted this country's clout on world leaders, and the problem was solved. The rest of the world will scrap plans for cutting CO2 emissions so U.S. business can prosper. "This is worse than a compromise, it's a retreat," says a spokesman for the Audubon Society.

Now Bush can fly down to Rio in triumph and sign an agreement that means nothing. This sellout by the world powers further threatens the rain forests. The ranchers and speculators will see a green light to continue to cut, burn, and kill. The tappers and their allies already know that the fight to save the rain forests and the world's environment can only be led successfully by the international working class. Workers in every country must make the cause of the Amazon people their own.