WEBVTT - Part Two: Chico Mendes & the Rubber Tappers Who Fought for the Rainforest 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.080 Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff. 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.840 This is part two of the thing you're listening to, 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:10.480 which is the week with. The first part was before, 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:13.920 and then this is the second part. I'm Margaret. Our 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.000 guest is prop Are you doing prop so? Man? Ready 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:18.560 to hear some good news? You know what I'm saying. 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.400 Hell yeah, talk to me nice. We're gonna have We're 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.840 gonna have some some good stuff happen, um and sad 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.000 stuff unfortunately, but so it goes. I guess with this, uh, 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.080 whoever this, whoever this person is, I'm not seeing a 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.400 picture of him, but I'm assuming he fine is hale 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:41.000 because he's funny. Here he's awesome because he's this like, um, 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:46.360 he's this like portly short guy with him out. No, No, 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:49.280 he's like the uncle you really like. You know, Hey, 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.600 he just a dope Like a picture of him. Oh man, 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.120 he's like a dope somebody man. Yeah, drop a pitch, 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:01.280 Oh yeah, okay yeah nah yeah, No, I mean he's 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.520 somebody's like bad decent uncle. Yeah, he's your decent uncle. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.880 He's not like not a bad he was saddam mustache 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:14.679 growing on the style at the time. I was just 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.119 assuming he was a baddie like everybody else in Brazil. 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.440 Now he's he's all right, we'll gotta do it, all right. 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.040 That other voice is Sophie, Sofie producer. Hi, Sophie, I 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:28.120 guess I knows that as part two, My bad for 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:37.160 Saddam and you Chico. They're very not Saddam. I mean, yeah, 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.479 we'll get to I mean the look though, the look though, 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.000 it's like they probably went to the same like you know, 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.640 disco texts. They probably they probably pointed to the same 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:51.440 photo at the barbershop. It's sorry, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah exactly, 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.880 it's the only photo at the barbershop at this time. 0:01:54.920 --> 0:02:00.800 So yeah, to be fair because communism anyway. Ian is 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.040 our audio engineer on Woman Roto theme Music. Today we 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.600 are talking about the rubber tappers, the Brazilian Amazon who 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.160 fought like hell to save their home, and we're focusing 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.080 on one organizer, Chico Mendez and his mustache, but the 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:16.400 movement itself is the cool person this week, possibly also 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.200 his mustache, depending on your opinion of mustaches. Yep. Where 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.079 we last left off, Chico had just grown up and 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.079 a communist fugitive had been teaching him before disappearing mysteriously 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:29.480 into the trees to foment revolution. No, he died, and 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.000 let's see where they go from there. Hopefully he doesn't 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.640 become a misogynist out of the blue. That would be 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:40.040 really frustrating. Damn it, that's foreshadowing, I know. So it's 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:42.079 not long before Chico is trying to get up some 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.040 political shit. He can read and write, which very few 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.800 people around him can do, and so he starts writing 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:50.760 this is really sweet. His The first political action that 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.320 he takes is he writes letters to the dictator and 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.080 he's like, hey, things are kind of bad here, and 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.480 he includes like lots of information about how everything's bad. 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:03.440 They're like, hey, up out, this doesn't work. So he 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:08.200 starts organizing and being a shitty husband. That's his other thing. 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:10.560 The other thing Chico Mendez is good at is marrying 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:15.200 teenagers and being shitty to them. Yea. When he was 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:18.960 twenty four, he married his first wife, Eunice, who was sixteen. 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:24.200 He complained about it constantly. Yeah, I was hoping you 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.000 were going to be like and she's nineteen, and I'm like, okay, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:32.880 well it's nineteen no, but no, damn no, an actual child. Yeah, 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.920 an actual child, Yeah, he complains, and not even like, 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:38.720 let's see if I could do this. If you're going 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:44.280 to have a child bride, be fucking good, Like I 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.320 don't know, because like they're because there are cultures where 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.400 the ages of marriage are different. Right, yes, but but 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:52.760 be fucking good. What were you gonna say? Yeah, I 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:55.040 was gonna say, like, yeah, you got a sixteen year 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.080 old in your house and you complaining about how she 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:01.960 child ish? You're a dumbass. Yeah, the childish because she 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.800 is one? Yeah, do you say it? Yeah? Yeah, she 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:10.280 don't know how to do those taxes. She can't really cook. Yeah, 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:14.920 she can't go to the bathroom without permission. He's a child, Yeah, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:20.920 has not developed. No, he complains about her constantly. He's 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.360 never home. He spends all of his time rubber tapping 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.000 and organizing. When he is home, they fight, and she 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.080 often ran away to her family's house to get away 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:30.120 from him. To be fair, he also ran away to 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.080 his family's house to get away from her all the 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:36.520 time too. They had a daughter. Okay, his political stuff. 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.640 The rubber bosses are getting weak at this point. Basically, 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.560 the rubber industry is beginning to fall. Lots of bosses 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.600 are bailing, and so Chico goes to his rubber boss, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.000 who's like, not quite as bad as some of them, basically, 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.159 but still sucks. And he's like, hey, you should stop 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:53.119 taking the ten percent off the top, and you should 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.200 start stop charging us rent for the paths we walk 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.360 between the rubber trees because we're your only workers and 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.359 everything's falling apart. It takes about a year of pressuring, 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:10.159 but eventually he succeeds, and you know, so he beats 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:14.440 being at home with your wife. In fact, he entirely 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:16.760 abandons his wife while she's seven months pregnant with his 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:21.680 second daughter, who he literally never bothers to meet. She 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.920 dies at eleven months old, and instead he goes off 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.560 to become a teacher in nineteen seventy one, so he 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.120 even he won't even meet that one. No, no, god, 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.720 damn it. Okay, but now he's a teacher. What could 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:42.360 go wrong? That's a perfectly safe well, I have thoughts. 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:48.360 What great is he teaching? So mostly he's teaching adults. 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:50.279 He teaches tappers how to read and write, and then 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.039 he starts teaching the kids, like a nine year old 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.480 girl who he teaches how to read and write by 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:57.880 taking her aside and teaching her separately. And then six 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.359 years later, when she's fifteen and he's thirty for he 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.080 starts sleeping with her and then marries her when she's nineteen. Shit, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.680 this ship is buried at the back of this biography. 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.400 I was this the protagonist. You were supposed to tell 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.800 me something good today, Margaret. I okay, the original draft 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.400 I was writing said and today's hero, and I went 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:21.159 back through and changed it all to today's protagonist. Yes, 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:26.920 because maybe not the hero, but it's like, okay, it's 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:30.080 you know, I get really annoyed that whenever you read 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.080 about like the big great men in history, no one 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.480 mentions they literally groomed a child to marry them after 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:39.160 ditching his first wife. But in a weird way. I 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:43.080 think it is worth understanding how people who are doing 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.240 a lot of good as organizers and or people who 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.359 are being held up as like figureheads and put on 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:53.880 pedestals are just people, and people suck. It's very important 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.360 to understand that. Yeah, yeah, I would be mad at him. 0:06:57.360 --> 0:06:59.239 I would be mad at anyone who did these things, 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:01.919 but more mad because he's on this pedestal. But the 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.479 reason he's on a pedestal is because of the way 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.760 that we talk about history, the way we talk about movements, 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:12.120 and the way that movements organize. So yeah, okay, around 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:13.720 this time, not when he marries his second wife, but 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.880 ten years earlier, when he's teaching her when she's nine, 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:19.760 Brazila is going through some bad shit. It's going through 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.480 dictatorship and it's going through industrialization. This is where we 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.520 get to the destruction of the rainforest part. Sorry that 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:31.360 you came on this show. Okay, so sure, the leftist 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:33.800 too also wanted to develop the rainforest, but the right 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.640 wing dictatorship like meant it. They're like, we're going to 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.560 fucking industrialize this country, and so they did a lot 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.960 of manifest destiny type fucking conquering of the western frontier, 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.840 which basically means, let's go fuck up the rainforest. Yes, 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.840 why have the world's biggest trunk of biodiversity when we 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.800 can have basically useless soil, Because there's this thing about 0:07:53.840 --> 0:08:00.720 a rainforest, at least this rainforest, there's no fertile soil. Yes, yeah, yes, 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:07.760 the time, Yeah, the nutrients are in the goddamn biomass. Yeah. 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:12.640 So they show up and they keep burning at all 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.480 the fuck down, slash and burn to raise goddamn cows. 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:22.240 And you know, it's like it's now going Margaret, when 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:26.560 you had, if and if you ever have children, just 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:31.000 the desire for them to be like everybody else, no 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:36.680 matter how unique of a situation that you try to 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.200 set up, you know, for your children. They just like 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.199 I remember, there was she like, my kids are out 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.520 of this they're out of My little one she never was, 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.440 but my other one, she's out of this season now, 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:51.360 you know, Thank the Lord. But there was a time 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.640 where I would be like like fam like I wrapped 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:57.040 for a living. I will be bringing home these like 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:02.120 you know, unique one of a like colorways of like 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:05.679 these like Nike dunks or looks like these, like these 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:07.880 things that I would get, you know, because people will 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:09.680 always want to, you know, they would send me stuff 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:11.400 and I would be like, yo, send me a kid's 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.960 version this size, you know what I'm saying. I would 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:16.720 bring home these stuff. I brought home like one of 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:21.480 the first, uh, one of the few um black ballerinas 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.080 like you know world right now. I brought home some 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:25.839 like slippers from her because she happened to be like 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.440 a fan of the music, and she was just like, oh, thanks, 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.960 Like she's just like can I, but can I? I I 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.600 brought it these brand new chucks, like like seriously brand 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.360 new colorway chucks, and she was like, can we just 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.880 go to Target and get these? And she's like, I 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:41.560 feel like those are fake? And I'm like, no, they're no, 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.440 they're not. They're one of a kind. She's just like, yeah, 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.320 I know, but everybody at school has these kinds. And 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:52.439 I'm like, but you okay, and just like you just 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:54.840 you you you make it. You make a Wago steak 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.520 for your child, she want a hot dog. And I'm like, 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.440 so I'm thinking about like why y'all, why y'all want 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.839 to grow cattle? Yeah, like why you want cattle? Like 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:10.280 you no one has a rainforest? Yeah? Yo, say like no, 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:15.360 it's such a good point. Yeah, why you want cattle man? Yeah? Yeah? No, 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.520 and it I mean, we'll get to this later. But 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.439 like at some point during all this, they do the 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.440 fucking math. And if you like rubber tap and collect 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.600 brazil nuts and like collect the things from the forest sustainably, 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:30.600 you get like seventy five dollars worth of value per 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.400 acre or whatever over ten years. And if you do that, 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.440 if you slash and burn and grow cows, you get 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.800 like fifteen dollars per acre. It's not even worth it. Yeah, Yeah, 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.160 that's that's the fucking irony of it all. And then 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:48.240 even during the entire time, Brazil stays a net importer 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:53.640 of beef, like they never actually reach this like grand 0:10:54.360 --> 0:11:01.640 media economy that they like. Yeah, uh so during starting 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.680 in the mid sixties running up until basically today. A 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.040 lot of my research kind of ends after Chico Mendez 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:08.720 dies in the late eighties, but I did a little 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.679 bit after that. But it's fucking depressing. They keep putting 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:14.640 roads into the forest. Everywhere there's a road, there's development, 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:20.600 not sustainable development, but bad development. Families, mostly poor families, 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.040 are getting offered these plots of two hundred fifty acres 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:26.800 if they contain it. Sometimes also through squatting laws, where 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:29.320 if you at that time, if you prove that you're 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.560 using land productively for a year, then you had like 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:34.600 some right to it. And that's actually going to cause 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:36.040 a lot of the conflict that's going to come up 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.439 later as a lot of the rubber tappers are actually 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.280 i think technically squatters. Some of the legal ship some 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.320 of the legal arguments get real complicated. So they go 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.440 and these people who are doing this the slash and burn. 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:51.560 These are mostly poor fucking people. Yeah, they slash and burn, 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.160 they plant grass. Within five years to ten years, the 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:56.760 soil is depleted and they have to move on. These 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.320 people have been called literally surplus population because they've been 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.280 driven out of their homes by the stread of spread 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.920 of industrialization along the coast. And these are the people 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.120 who had been or could be clambering for land reform 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.440 or for revolution. So it's this clever move where it 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:17.040 makes them the the agents of reaction instead of agents revolution. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.440 The slogan, you'll love this slogan was a land without 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:26.959 people for a people without land, even though there's so 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:32.440 many people who live in the forest already. And yeah wait, yeah, yeah, okay, 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.880 all right. And then even white settlers, you know, the 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:40.320 rubber tappers are from Brazil's point of view, white. You know, obviously, 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:45.000 race relations between the US and Latin America are complicated. 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:48.719 So they go and they fuck up the forest. They 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.319 don't harvest the trees, they actually just knock them down, 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:53.760 including all these like old growth mahogany and cedar and 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:55.360 shit that they could sell for a ton of money. 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:58.920 They're doing shit. Let's these are like the big ranchers 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.080 doing this. They'll like two bulldozers and attach an anchor 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.880 chain from a ship between the two of them and 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.760 just fucking plow the rainforest down, leave it to rotten burn. 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.080 They use herbicides that Dowchemical had left over from the 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:17.040 Vietnam War, the same ingredients as agent orange to murder 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.719 the shit out of everyone. They hire poor folks to 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.200 slog through the jungle with chainsaws, and then the rubber 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:25.720 tappers anyone who doesn't get out of their way, including 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.960 actually squatters, they just murder. And you get these cowboy folks, 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.960 the pistolerros, who mimic Turn of the century cowboy culture 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.880 down to the big belt buckles and like the gun 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.120 you know, in the belt or whatever, and the place burns. 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.280 By the nineteen eighties, you get plumes of smoke that 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:46.840 could be seen from space. And Okra is the state 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:51.120 in the kind of southern part of the western chunk 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:54.160 of Brazil. The state called Okray. It's the poorest state 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.439 in Brazil, at least at the time of the stuff 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.000 I'm reading. In the early nineties, it's where Chico Mendes lives. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.840 An Okra. Literally half of its land was owned by 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:07.840 ten owners shortly after this land rush. So there's fire 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.880 and cows and pistoleros and forced removal of rubber tappers 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.079 and all this bad shit just flooding into the state. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:17.840 And in nineteen seventy six, some heroes, actually i'll use 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.800 heroes here, some rubber tappers. They fucking did something about it, Okay, 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.640 And you get this tactic. It's called the impotch and 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:30.359 it's a big demons Yeah. Yeah, it's a big demonstration. 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.160 It's sort of a mix between civil disobedience and a 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.440 mass direct action attack. Over the next decade, the tappers 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.560 stage more than forty of these mass actions. Well they 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:42.400 do it way more than forty, but forty of them 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.480 are big. And they save two million acres of forest 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:49.360 from sauls and fire by way of these direct actions. 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:52.280 So that's the core of how fucking cool these people are. 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:55.080 And I'm going to describe it. I'm going to quote 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.320 from a book called The Burning Season by Andrew Revkin. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.400 The impat has repeatedly been characterized in the press as 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.040 a peaceful sit in, something that Gandhi or Martin Luther 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:07.840 King Junior might have conceived, but in fact it is 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.880 frequently an aggressive showdown, a classic Brazilian confrontation in which 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:14.240 bluff counts for a lot, but it must be backed 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:18.280 up by a willingness to act and as for where 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:22.880 it comes from to continue quoting Andrew Revkin. Although Chico 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.160 Mendes has frequently been credited with creating the impace, this 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:29.440 form of protest was really more of a spontaneous reaction 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.920 from Acre's rubber Tapper community, a communal response to a 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.240 shared threat. Mendes and the other leaders the rubber Tappers, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:38.760 with the help of their new allies from the Catholic 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.200 Church and Brazil's burgeoning Union movement, simply took a crude 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.360 action and honed it into a powerful weapon. And so 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.560 the first one of these, I just think it's really 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.120 funny because like when I first start doing research on 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.080 something and I'll listen to some like I'll kind of 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.320 like I'll listen to a podcast about it, I'll I'll 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.080 find the like little surface level things and you know, 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.200 and they're like in the spirit of literally they're both 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.640 like in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:07.160 these peaceful sit ins. Let me describe it to you. Yeah, 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:08.840 I was like, wait a minute, this ain't gole be peaceful, 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.520 is it. It is peaceful in the way that if 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.880 you show enough force, you can stay peaceful. I love it. 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.040 On May ninth, nineteen seventy six, some rubber tappers whose 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:19.920 whole town had just been bought out from under them 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:22.840 to be converted to pasture. I'm reading this is if 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:24.240 it's a quote, but it's not. I'm actually just going 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.840 back to my script. Okay, they got themselves some shotguns 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:30.240 and some friends. They legally had squatters rights, but only 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.800 if they're putting the land to productive use. And so 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.000 if the land is cut and burned, then they can't 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.520 claim productive use because they can't rubber tap of fucking 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.600 burned field. So they have to act fast. The only 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:43.360 way that they can protect their legal right to this 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.840 forest is contesting the legal right by stopping the fucking burning. 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.360 Twenty seven of them, not Chico yet, surround a camp 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.320 of sixty some loggers with like shotguns and are just like, 0:16:56.120 --> 0:17:03.240 you gotta leave. Okay, yeah, nah, yeah, that that type 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:06.320 of piece got it. I this is the reason you're 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.359 the perfect guest for this is that is that is 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.719 what the fucking rubber tappers are doing this entire time. Yeah, 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:20.439 and the loggers left it, of course they did. Yeah yeah. 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:28.040 It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. These people are like, no, 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.040 we fucking know this place that yeah, and it kind 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.480 of worked like it worked to the tappers end up 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.159 giving seventy acres each, but it's land that's already been 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.560 mostly burned and you need about like I think five 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:43.800 hundred seven hundred acres actually in order to be a 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:48.239 rubber tapper sustainably as like one person. Oh wow. But 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:50.960 so this is useless to them. But what it does 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:53.320 is it starts a movement. It basically shows them that 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.760 they have power, and so they get some allies. One 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.560 of their first allies is liberation theology. Liberation theology is 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.080 running through South America at that time, which is basically 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:08.480 like Catholicism done cool, Like what if we did Jesus 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:10.360 shit instead of like power hung I was like, one 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.920 would argue, yea yeah, it's a lot more like the 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:19.760 Jesus of the book. Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, and 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:21.920 they would make that argument as well, and I think 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.000 did so successfully for a while. Yes, not the entire 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.159 institution of the Catholic Church, but huge chunks of it 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.400 in Latin American particular start moving over towards liberation theology, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.720 including a ton of regional and local players. And there's 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.320 still some priests in Akra who are conservative and working 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.720 for the ranchers. So basically both sides have their priests. 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:43.280 But one of the reasons the church was and actually 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:44.560 one of the reasons that the church was such a 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:46.719 big part of the left in Brazil, is that the 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:50.040 dictatorship had like murdered everyone else, but it was harder 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:52.200 or murder priests. They did murder priests, but it was 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:56.639 like harder, you know. They also got okay, so they 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.760 the liberation theologists and the priests basically are on their side. 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:02.560 And then they get the unions. The union movement finally 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:04.480 made its way into the Amazon, and the union movement 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.199 has struggled under the dictatorship. It was very hard to 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:09.919 legally be a union. You have some illegal unions like 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.159 the Communist Party, and you have like legal unions that 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:18.800 are very handicapped. But specifically you get the Confederation of 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.800 Agricultural Workers or CONTAG It's set up shopping. Shapuri, a 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.199 small town in okre So, Chico. Mendes quits teaching. He 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.800 moves to Shapuri and he gets involved. He gets himself 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.119 elected to town council in nineteen seventy seven, and the 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.320 church gives him, gives the union a shed to set 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.879 up the office in. And he is a shitty politician, 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:40.840 not in an evil way, just in a yeah, he's 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.440 not good at it. He's an organizer and he's honest. 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.960 He's good, he's good with people, he's good with networking. 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.880 He's bad at speeches, he's never an orator, and he's 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:54.159 terrible at politicking because he wears his fucking heart on 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.640 his sleeve. This is the ship I really like him for. Yeah, 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.080 he basically never lies, and he basically never backs down 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.439 or like runs away in fear. He's fucking smart and 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:08.159 he's good at tactics. And the unions and all the 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.199 small towns come together, which makes sense union and they 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.480 start organizing together. Hundreds of workers now go to interrupt 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.960 logging whenever they have an apace and the ampace start 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:22.960 getting fierce. They're mostly non violent, but they're definitely not pacifist. 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.960 The ability to back up their threats is super important. 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:29.040 The main line that they don't cross. So what they 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.760 do is they like some loggers will set up camp, 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:33.720 right and they'll be like living in this like shack 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.000 with like a tarp and shit, and then the fucking 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.400 rubber tappers come and are like, hey, like you're gonna go, 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:46.639 and then they chainsaw down the shack and yeah, I 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.120 love it. And the one thing that they don't do 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.880 is they don't steal from the people that they're driving out, 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:53.800 and these people like poor as shit. There's like at 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:56.040 one point where they're talking about they're like eyeing a 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:58.800 cow hungrily, right because they're all fucking hungry, and the 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.200 loggers have some cow and they're like in the middle 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:03.280 of like violently confronting them and driving them out. But 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:04.560 the still at the end of the day being like, no, 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.439 these are people. They're trying to make their money like us. 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.160 I get it. Yeah exactly. Yeah. And there's a bunch 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.000 of stories about different times where like part of the 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.119 reason it works is even they're showing up with force, 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:18.680 but they're also kind of showing up being like, yeah, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:20.239 you're trying to make money just like us, but you 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.439 can't do it this way, we won't let you. In 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.960 nineteen seventy nine, one of the biggest of these and paches, 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.520 three hundred tappers armed only with machetes, surround a camp 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.520 of thirty pistoleros, the hired killers who murder people who 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.200 don't leave their homes. Yeah, the murderers, the thirty people, 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:42.680 the thirty people with guns run away. Of course they do, 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.439 ditch their guns. They're running in such a hurry. The 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.359 tappers confiscate all their firearms and pose for a photo. 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:52.040 It's like, now we got guns. I love it. Let 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:57.440 me listen. Listen, listen, yeah, listeners, there's there is confidence 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:02.160 goes such a long way, yeah, you know. And and 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:05.160 it's because you have to think to yourself, if you're 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:07.919 the ones with the guns and these people walk up 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:10.360 with machetes, you have to think to yourself, if you're 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.560 the gun person, that they these people know something I 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:15.760 don't because they should be scared of us, and they not. 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:19.920 So maybe they know something I don't, you know. Yeah, 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.280 so that's why they're like, yo, we should probably fall back, 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:26.439 because they they're clearly crazy, you know. And and and 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.400 especially like when the type of this is I love 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:33.920 it because the type of of direct action they're doing 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:36.080 is the type that they can always be like, look, 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.600