Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: This is part two of the thing you're listening to,
Speaker 1: which is the week with. The first part was before,
Speaker 1: and then this is the second part. I'm Margaret. Our
Speaker 1: guest is prop Are you doing prop so? Man? Ready
Speaker 1: to hear some good news? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, talk to me nice. We're gonna have We're
Speaker 1: gonna have some some good stuff happen, um and sad
Speaker 1: stuff unfortunately, but so it goes. I guess with this, uh,
Speaker 1: whoever this, whoever this person is, I'm not seeing a
Speaker 1: picture of him, but I'm assuming he fine is hale
Speaker 1: because he's funny. Here he's awesome because he's this like, um,
Speaker 1: he's this like portly short guy with him out. No, No,
Speaker 1: he's like the uncle you really like. You know, Hey,
Speaker 1: he just a dope Like a picture of him. Oh man,
Speaker 1: he's like a dope somebody man. Yeah, drop a pitch,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay yeah nah yeah, No, I mean he's
Speaker 1: somebody's like bad decent uncle. Yeah, he's your decent uncle.
Speaker 1: He's not like not a bad he was saddam mustache
Speaker 1: growing on the style at the time. I was just
Speaker 1: assuming he was a baddie like everybody else in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Now he's he's all right, we'll gotta do it, all right.
Speaker 1: That other voice is Sophie, Sofie producer. Hi, Sophie, I
Speaker 1: guess I knows that as part two, My bad for
Speaker 1: Saddam and you Chico. They're very not Saddam. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get to I mean the look though, the look though,
Speaker 1: it's like they probably went to the same like you know,
Speaker 1: disco texts. They probably they probably pointed to the same
Speaker 1: photo at the barbershop. It's sorry, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: it's the only photo at the barbershop at this time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, to be fair because communism anyway. Ian is
Speaker 1: our audio engineer on Woman Roto theme Music. Today we
Speaker 1: are talking about the rubber tappers, the Brazilian Amazon who
Speaker 1: fought like hell to save their home, and we're focusing
Speaker 1: on one organizer, Chico Mendez and his mustache, but the
Speaker 1: movement itself is the cool person this week, possibly also
Speaker 1: his mustache, depending on your opinion of mustaches. Yep. Where
Speaker 1: we last left off, Chico had just grown up and
Speaker 1: a communist fugitive had been teaching him before disappearing mysteriously
Speaker 1: into the trees to foment revolution. No, he died, and
Speaker 1: let's see where they go from there. Hopefully he doesn't
Speaker 1: become a misogynist out of the blue. That would be
Speaker 1: really frustrating. Damn it, that's foreshadowing, I know. So it's
Speaker 1: not long before Chico is trying to get up some
Speaker 1: political shit. He can read and write, which very few
Speaker 1: people around him can do, and so he starts writing
Speaker 1: this is really sweet. His The first political action that
Speaker 1: he takes is he writes letters to the dictator and
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, things are kind of bad here, and
Speaker 1: he includes like lots of information about how everything's bad.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, up out, this doesn't work. So he
Speaker 1: starts organizing and being a shitty husband. That's his other thing.
Speaker 1: The other thing Chico Mendez is good at is marrying
Speaker 1: teenagers and being shitty to them. Yea. When he was
Speaker 1: twenty four, he married his first wife, Eunice, who was sixteen.
Speaker 1: He complained about it constantly. Yeah, I was hoping you
Speaker 1: were going to be like and she's nineteen, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: well it's nineteen no, but no, damn no, an actual child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an actual child, Yeah, he complains, and not even like,
Speaker 1: let's see if I could do this. If you're going
Speaker 1: to have a child bride, be fucking good, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, because like they're because there are cultures where
Speaker 1: the ages of marriage are different. Right, yes, but but
Speaker 1: be fucking good. What were you gonna say? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, like, yeah, you got a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old in your house and you complaining about how she
Speaker 1: child ish? You're a dumbass. Yeah, the childish because she
Speaker 1: is one? Yeah, do you say it? Yeah? Yeah, she
Speaker 1: don't know how to do those taxes. She can't really cook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she can't go to the bathroom without permission. He's a child, Yeah,
Speaker 1: has not developed. No, he complains about her constantly. He's
Speaker 1: never home. He spends all of his time rubber tapping
Speaker 1: and organizing. When he is home, they fight, and she
Speaker 1: often ran away to her family's house to get away
Speaker 1: from him. To be fair, he also ran away to
Speaker 1: his family's house to get away from her all the
Speaker 1: time too. They had a daughter. Okay, his political stuff.
Speaker 1: The rubber bosses are getting weak at this point. Basically,
Speaker 1: the rubber industry is beginning to fall. Lots of bosses
Speaker 1: are bailing, and so Chico goes to his rubber boss,
Speaker 1: who's like, not quite as bad as some of them, basically,
Speaker 1: but still sucks. And he's like, hey, you should stop
Speaker 1: taking the ten percent off the top, and you should
Speaker 1: start stop charging us rent for the paths we walk
Speaker 1: between the rubber trees because we're your only workers and
Speaker 1: everything's falling apart. It takes about a year of pressuring,
Speaker 1: but eventually he succeeds, and you know, so he beats
Speaker 1: being at home with your wife. In fact, he entirely
Speaker 1: abandons his wife while she's seven months pregnant with his
Speaker 1: second daughter, who he literally never bothers to meet. She
Speaker 1: dies at eleven months old, and instead he goes off
Speaker 1: to become a teacher in nineteen seventy one, so he
Speaker 1: even he won't even meet that one. No, no, god,
Speaker 1: damn it. Okay, but now he's a teacher. What could
Speaker 1: go wrong? That's a perfectly safe well, I have thoughts.
Speaker 1: What great is he teaching? So mostly he's teaching adults.
Speaker 1: He teaches tappers how to read and write, and then
Speaker 1: he starts teaching the kids, like a nine year old
Speaker 1: girl who he teaches how to read and write by
Speaker 1: taking her aside and teaching her separately. And then six
Speaker 1: years later, when she's fifteen and he's thirty for he
Speaker 1: starts sleeping with her and then marries her when she's nineteen. Shit,
Speaker 1: this ship is buried at the back of this biography.
Speaker 1: I was this the protagonist. You were supposed to tell
Speaker 1: me something good today, Margaret. I okay, the original draft
Speaker 1: I was writing said and today's hero, and I went
Speaker 1: back through and changed it all to today's protagonist. Yes,
Speaker 1: because maybe not the hero, but it's like, okay, it's
Speaker 1: you know, I get really annoyed that whenever you read
Speaker 1: about like the big great men in history, no one
Speaker 1: mentions they literally groomed a child to marry them after
Speaker 1: ditching his first wife. But in a weird way. I
Speaker 1: think it is worth understanding how people who are doing
Speaker 1: a lot of good as organizers and or people who
Speaker 1: are being held up as like figureheads and put on
Speaker 1: pedestals are just people, and people suck. It's very important
Speaker 1: to understand that. Yeah, yeah, I would be mad at him.
Speaker 1: I would be mad at anyone who did these things,
Speaker 1: but more mad because he's on this pedestal. But the
Speaker 1: reason he's on a pedestal is because of the way
Speaker 1: that we talk about history, the way we talk about movements,
Speaker 1: and the way that movements organize. So yeah, okay, around
Speaker 1: this time, not when he marries his second wife, but
Speaker 1: ten years earlier, when he's teaching her when she's nine,
Speaker 1: Brazila is going through some bad shit. It's going through
Speaker 1: dictatorship and it's going through industrialization. This is where we
Speaker 1: get to the destruction of the rainforest part. Sorry that
Speaker 1: you came on this show. Okay, so sure, the leftist
Speaker 1: too also wanted to develop the rainforest, but the right
Speaker 1: wing dictatorship like meant it. They're like, we're going to
Speaker 1: fucking industrialize this country, and so they did a lot
Speaker 1: of manifest destiny type fucking conquering of the western frontier,
Speaker 1: which basically means, let's go fuck up the rainforest. Yes,
Speaker 1: why have the world's biggest trunk of biodiversity when we
Speaker 1: can have basically useless soil, Because there's this thing about
Speaker 1: a rainforest, at least this rainforest, there's no fertile soil. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: the time, Yeah, the nutrients are in the goddamn biomass. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they show up and they keep burning at all
Speaker 1: the fuck down, slash and burn to raise goddamn cows.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like it's now going Margaret, when
Speaker 1: you had, if and if you ever have children, just
Speaker 1: the desire for them to be like everybody else, no
Speaker 1: matter how unique of a situation that you try to
Speaker 1: set up, you know, for your children. They just like
Speaker 1: I remember, there was she like, my kids are out
Speaker 1: of this they're out of My little one she never was,
Speaker 1: but my other one, she's out of this season now,
Speaker 1: you know, Thank the Lord. But there was a time
Speaker 1: where I would be like like fam like I wrapped
Speaker 1: for a living. I will be bringing home these like
Speaker 1: you know, unique one of a like colorways of like
Speaker 1: these like Nike dunks or looks like these, like these
Speaker 1: things that I would get, you know, because people will
Speaker 1: always want to, you know, they would send me stuff
Speaker 1: and I would be like, yo, send me a kid's
Speaker 1: version this size, you know what I'm saying. I would
Speaker 1: bring home these stuff. I brought home like one of
Speaker 1: the first, uh, one of the few um black ballerinas
Speaker 1: like you know world right now. I brought home some
Speaker 1: like slippers from her because she happened to be like
Speaker 1: a fan of the music, and she was just like, oh, thanks,
Speaker 1: Like she's just like can I, but can I? I I
Speaker 1: brought it these brand new chucks, like like seriously brand
Speaker 1: new colorway chucks, and she was like, can we just
Speaker 1: go to Target and get these? And she's like, I
Speaker 1: feel like those are fake? And I'm like, no, they're no,
Speaker 1: they're not. They're one of a kind. She's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, but everybody at school has these kinds. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, but you okay, and just like you just
Speaker 1: you you you make it. You make a Wago steak
Speaker 1: for your child, she want a hot dog. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking about like why y'all, why y'all want
Speaker 1: to grow cattle? Yeah, like why you want cattle? Like
Speaker 1: you no one has a rainforest? Yeah? Yo, say like no,
Speaker 1: it's such a good point. Yeah, why you want cattle man? Yeah? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: and it I mean, we'll get to this later. But
Speaker 1: like at some point during all this, they do the
Speaker 1: fucking math. And if you like rubber tap and collect
Speaker 1: brazil nuts and like collect the things from the forest sustainably,
Speaker 1: you get like seventy five dollars worth of value per
Speaker 1: acre or whatever over ten years. And if you do that,
Speaker 1: if you slash and burn and grow cows, you get
Speaker 1: like fifteen dollars per acre. It's not even worth it. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the fucking irony of it all. And then
Speaker 1: even during the entire time, Brazil stays a net importer
Speaker 1: of beef, like they never actually reach this like grand
Speaker 1: media economy that they like. Yeah, uh so during starting
Speaker 1: in the mid sixties running up until basically today. A
Speaker 1: lot of my research kind of ends after Chico Mendez
Speaker 1: dies in the late eighties, but I did a little
Speaker 1: bit after that. But it's fucking depressing. They keep putting
Speaker 1: roads into the forest. Everywhere there's a road, there's development,
Speaker 1: not sustainable development, but bad development. Families, mostly poor families,
Speaker 1: are getting offered these plots of two hundred fifty acres
Speaker 1: if they contain it. Sometimes also through squatting laws, where
Speaker 1: if you at that time, if you prove that you're
Speaker 1: using land productively for a year, then you had like
Speaker 1: some right to it. And that's actually going to cause
Speaker 1: a lot of the conflict that's going to come up
Speaker 1: later as a lot of the rubber tappers are actually
Speaker 1: i think technically squatters. Some of the legal ship some
Speaker 1: of the legal arguments get real complicated. So they go
Speaker 1: and these people who are doing this the slash and burn.
Speaker 1: These are mostly poor fucking people. Yeah, they slash and burn,
Speaker 1: they plant grass. Within five years to ten years, the
Speaker 1: soil is depleted and they have to move on. These
Speaker 1: people have been called literally surplus population because they've been
Speaker 1: driven out of their homes by the stread of spread
Speaker 1: of industrialization along the coast. And these are the people
Speaker 1: who had been or could be clambering for land reform
Speaker 1: or for revolution. So it's this clever move where it
Speaker 1: makes them the the agents of reaction instead of agents revolution.
Speaker 1: The slogan, you'll love this slogan was a land without
Speaker 1: people for a people without land, even though there's so
Speaker 1: many people who live in the forest already. And yeah wait, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right. And then even white settlers, you know, the
Speaker 1: rubber tappers are from Brazil's point of view, white. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: race relations between the US and Latin America are complicated.
Speaker 1: So they go and they fuck up the forest. They
Speaker 1: don't harvest the trees, they actually just knock them down,
Speaker 1: including all these like old growth mahogany and cedar and
Speaker 1: shit that they could sell for a ton of money.
Speaker 1: They're doing shit. Let's these are like the big ranchers
Speaker 1: doing this. They'll like two bulldozers and attach an anchor
Speaker 1: chain from a ship between the two of them and
Speaker 1: just fucking plow the rainforest down, leave it to rotten burn.
Speaker 1: They use herbicides that Dowchemical had left over from the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, the same ingredients as agent orange to murder
Speaker 1: the shit out of everyone. They hire poor folks to
Speaker 1: slog through the jungle with chainsaws, and then the rubber
Speaker 1: tappers anyone who doesn't get out of their way, including
Speaker 1: actually squatters, they just murder. And you get these cowboy folks,
Speaker 1: the pistolerros, who mimic Turn of the century cowboy culture
Speaker 1: down to the big belt buckles and like the gun
Speaker 1: you know, in the belt or whatever, and the place burns.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen eighties, you get plumes of smoke that
Speaker 1: could be seen from space. And Okra is the state
Speaker 1: in the kind of southern part of the western chunk
Speaker 1: of Brazil. The state called Okray. It's the poorest state
Speaker 1: in Brazil, at least at the time of the stuff
Speaker 1: I'm reading. In the early nineties, it's where Chico Mendes lives.
Speaker 1: An Okra. Literally half of its land was owned by
Speaker 1: ten owners shortly after this land rush. So there's fire
Speaker 1: and cows and pistoleros and forced removal of rubber tappers
Speaker 1: and all this bad shit just flooding into the state.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy six, some heroes, actually i'll use
Speaker 1: heroes here, some rubber tappers. They fucking did something about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you get this tactic. It's called the impotch and
Speaker 1: it's a big demons Yeah. Yeah, it's a big demonstration.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a mix between civil disobedience and a
Speaker 1: mass direct action attack. Over the next decade, the tappers
Speaker 1: stage more than forty of these mass actions. Well they
Speaker 1: do it way more than forty, but forty of them
Speaker 1: are big. And they save two million acres of forest
Speaker 1: from sauls and fire by way of these direct actions.
Speaker 1: So that's the core of how fucking cool these people are.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to describe it. I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from a book called The Burning Season by Andrew Revkin.
Speaker 1: The impat has repeatedly been characterized in the press as
Speaker 1: a peaceful sit in, something that Gandhi or Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior might have conceived, but in fact it is
Speaker 1: frequently an aggressive showdown, a classic Brazilian confrontation in which
Speaker 1: bluff counts for a lot, but it must be backed
Speaker 1: up by a willingness to act and as for where
Speaker 1: it comes from to continue quoting Andrew Revkin. Although Chico
Speaker 1: Mendes has frequently been credited with creating the impace, this
Speaker 1: form of protest was really more of a spontaneous reaction
Speaker 1: from Acre's rubber Tapper community, a communal response to a
Speaker 1: shared threat. Mendes and the other leaders the rubber Tappers,
Speaker 1: with the help of their new allies from the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church and Brazil's burgeoning Union movement, simply took a crude
Speaker 1: action and honed it into a powerful weapon. And so
Speaker 1: the first one of these, I just think it's really
Speaker 1: funny because like when I first start doing research on
Speaker 1: something and I'll listen to some like I'll kind of
Speaker 1: like I'll listen to a podcast about it, I'll I'll
Speaker 1: find the like little surface level things and you know,
Speaker 1: and they're like in the spirit of literally they're both
Speaker 1: like in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: these peaceful sit ins. Let me describe it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, this ain't gole be peaceful,
Speaker 1: is it. It is peaceful in the way that if
Speaker 1: you show enough force, you can stay peaceful. I love it.
Speaker 1: On May ninth, nineteen seventy six, some rubber tappers whose
Speaker 1: whole town had just been bought out from under them
Speaker 1: to be converted to pasture. I'm reading this is if
Speaker 1: it's a quote, but it's not. I'm actually just going
Speaker 1: back to my script. Okay, they got themselves some shotguns
Speaker 1: and some friends. They legally had squatters rights, but only
Speaker 1: if they're putting the land to productive use. And so
Speaker 1: if the land is cut and burned, then they can't
Speaker 1: claim productive use because they can't rubber tap of fucking
Speaker 1: burned field. So they have to act fast. The only
Speaker 1: way that they can protect their legal right to this
Speaker 1: forest is contesting the legal right by stopping the fucking burning.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven of them, not Chico yet, surround a camp
Speaker 1: of sixty some loggers with like shotguns and are just like,
Speaker 1: you gotta leave. Okay, yeah, nah, yeah, that that type
Speaker 1: of piece got it. I this is the reason you're
Speaker 1: the perfect guest for this is that is that is
Speaker 1: what the fucking rubber tappers are doing this entire time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the loggers left it, of course they did. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. These people are like, no,
Speaker 1: we fucking know this place that yeah, and it kind
Speaker 1: of worked like it worked to the tappers end up
Speaker 1: giving seventy acres each, but it's land that's already been
Speaker 1: mostly burned and you need about like I think five
Speaker 1: hundred seven hundred acres actually in order to be a
Speaker 1: rubber tapper sustainably as like one person. Oh wow. But
Speaker 1: so this is useless to them. But what it does
Speaker 1: is it starts a movement. It basically shows them that
Speaker 1: they have power, and so they get some allies. One
Speaker 1: of their first allies is liberation theology. Liberation theology is
Speaker 1: running through South America at that time, which is basically
Speaker 1: like Catholicism done cool, Like what if we did Jesus
Speaker 1: shit instead of like power hung I was like, one
Speaker 1: would argue, yea yeah, it's a lot more like the
Speaker 1: Jesus of the book. Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they would make that argument as well, and I think
Speaker 1: did so successfully for a while. Yes, not the entire
Speaker 1: institution of the Catholic Church, but huge chunks of it
Speaker 1: in Latin American particular start moving over towards liberation theology,
Speaker 1: including a ton of regional and local players. And there's
Speaker 1: still some priests in Akra who are conservative and working
Speaker 1: for the ranchers. So basically both sides have their priests.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons the church was and actually
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that the church was such a
Speaker 1: big part of the left in Brazil, is that the
Speaker 1: dictatorship had like murdered everyone else, but it was harder
Speaker 1: or murder priests. They did murder priests, but it was
Speaker 1: like harder, you know. They also got okay, so they
Speaker 1: the liberation theologists and the priests basically are on their side.
Speaker 1: And then they get the unions. The union movement finally
Speaker 1: made its way into the Amazon, and the union movement
Speaker 1: has struggled under the dictatorship. It was very hard to
Speaker 1: legally be a union. You have some illegal unions like
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, and you have like legal unions that
Speaker 1: are very handicapped. But specifically you get the Confederation of
Speaker 1: Agricultural Workers or CONTAG It's set up shopping. Shapuri, a
Speaker 1: small town in okre So, Chico. Mendes quits teaching. He
Speaker 1: moves to Shapuri and he gets involved. He gets himself
Speaker 1: elected to town council in nineteen seventy seven, and the
Speaker 1: church gives him, gives the union a shed to set
Speaker 1: up the office in. And he is a shitty politician,
Speaker 1: not in an evil way, just in a yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not good at it. He's an organizer and he's honest.
Speaker 1: He's good, he's good with people, he's good with networking.
Speaker 1: He's bad at speeches, he's never an orator, and he's
Speaker 1: terrible at politicking because he wears his fucking heart on
Speaker 1: his sleeve. This is the ship I really like him for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he basically never lies, and he basically never backs down
Speaker 1: or like runs away in fear. He's fucking smart and
Speaker 1: he's good at tactics. And the unions and all the
Speaker 1: small towns come together, which makes sense union and they
Speaker 1: start organizing together. Hundreds of workers now go to interrupt
Speaker 1: logging whenever they have an apace and the ampace start
Speaker 1: getting fierce. They're mostly non violent, but they're definitely not pacifist.
Speaker 1: The ability to back up their threats is super important.
Speaker 1: The main line that they don't cross. So what they
Speaker 1: do is they like some loggers will set up camp,
Speaker 1: right and they'll be like living in this like shack
Speaker 1: with like a tarp and shit, and then the fucking
Speaker 1: rubber tappers come and are like, hey, like you're gonna go,
Speaker 1: and then they chainsaw down the shack and yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. And the one thing that they don't do
Speaker 1: is they don't steal from the people that they're driving out,
Speaker 1: and these people like poor as shit. There's like at
Speaker 1: one point where they're talking about they're like eyeing a
Speaker 1: cow hungrily, right because they're all fucking hungry, and the
Speaker 1: loggers have some cow and they're like in the middle
Speaker 1: of like violently confronting them and driving them out. But
Speaker 1: the still at the end of the day being like, no,
Speaker 1: these are people. They're trying to make their money like us.
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah exactly. Yeah. And there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of stories about different times where like part of the
Speaker 1: reason it works is even they're showing up with force,
Speaker 1: but they're also kind of showing up being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're trying to make money just like us, but you
Speaker 1: can't do it this way, we won't let you. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, one of the biggest of these and paches,
Speaker 1: three hundred tappers armed only with machetes, surround a camp
Speaker 1: of thirty pistoleros, the hired killers who murder people who
Speaker 1: don't leave their homes. Yeah, the murderers, the thirty people,
Speaker 1: the thirty people with guns run away. Of course they do,
Speaker 1: ditch their guns. They're running in such a hurry. The
Speaker 1: tappers confiscate all their firearms and pose for a photo.
Speaker 1: It's like, now we got guns. I love it. Let
Speaker 1: me listen. Listen, listen, yeah, listeners, there's there is confidence
Speaker 1: goes such a long way, yeah, you know. And and
Speaker 1: it's because you have to think to yourself, if you're
Speaker 1: the ones with the guns and these people walk up
Speaker 1: with machetes, you have to think to yourself, if you're
Speaker 1: the gun person, that they these people know something I
Speaker 1: don't because they should be scared of us, and they not.
Speaker 1: So maybe they know something I don't, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's why they're like, yo, we should probably fall back,
Speaker 1: because they they're clearly crazy, you know. And and and
Speaker 1: especially like when the type of this is I love
Speaker 1: it because the type of of direct action they're doing
Speaker 1: is the type that they can always be like, look,
Speaker 1: we've never stole from y'all. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: We are we are you know air quotes non violence,
Speaker 1: I'll burn your house down, yeah, but were not violent,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So then the legend does
Speaker 1: the work for you to where it's like, how do
Speaker 1: these people without hurting? Nobody just hurt people? Let me
Speaker 1: fall back, you know, and it works. Listen, it works.
Speaker 1: It probably works. Look it looks it works. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a tactic that works. It's a tactic as a confidence man,
Speaker 1: it goes a long way. Yeah, and you know, also
Speaker 1: you can be confident and there's these savings capitalism and
Speaker 1: we're back. So while all this shit's happening, Chico and
Speaker 1: a priest start traveling around all the rural areas outside
Speaker 1: Shapuri recruiting tappers. And they don't do it with fiery speeches.
Speaker 1: Actually the priest kind of does. He like sets up
Speaker 1: a meeting and he's like, yeah, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: and then that's my impression of a priest. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not an impression girl. Yeah, Like so but instead
Speaker 1: Chico just shows up and just starts fucking listening to
Speaker 1: people about their problems um and connecting with people one
Speaker 1: on one. And there's a new left party on the
Speaker 1: scene in nineteen seventy eight called the Workers Party or
Speaker 1: it's founded by Lula, the guy who's currently the president
Speaker 1: of Brazil, and it is not popular at first. It
Speaker 1: is a leftist opposition party. Chico is setting up the
Speaker 1: Aukry branch of it. He actually started off joining the
Speaker 1: Illegal Communist Party because but he's a practical man at heart.
Speaker 1: More than he's a communist, he's a I'm get stuff done.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So the PT is doing more for people,
Speaker 1: so he switches. Later in life, he actually starts working
Speaker 1: for the Green Party literally just because environmentalism attracts more
Speaker 1: international support it does unfortunately. Yeah, that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big thing for them, is that they keep being like,
Speaker 1: why don't you care when it's people dying, and people
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, yeah, we don't care about people, and
Speaker 1: it's like, we should care about both. I don't understand
Speaker 1: why this is such a why is it a zero
Speaker 1: sum game? Which y'all, yeah, yeah, exactly. So by the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, the ranchers, the sort of right wing,
Speaker 1: the big owners. They come up with a very effective
Speaker 1: tactic as well. It's called murder. They just and they
Speaker 1: moved from killing just random peasants, which I guess they
Speaker 1: were already doing. Murder. Strategic murder is what they moved to.
Speaker 1: Instead of just killing random peasants, they start killing movement leaders,
Speaker 1: priests and union leaders and stubborn squatters all wind up dead.
Speaker 1: At some point during all this, Chico Mendez is kidnapped
Speaker 1: into a car, hooded and beat by the side of
Speaker 1: the road, but he's not killed, not yet. The spoiler,
Speaker 1: the union president in the region, is a guy named
Speaker 1: Wilson Pinnaro, and he's gunned down in nineteen eighty after
Speaker 1: receiving such a threat of that he's gonna get murdered.
Speaker 1: Chico probably maybe only survived this by being out of town.
Speaker 1: No one really knows, but he was out of town
Speaker 1: what happened, and the workers were mad, like like real mad.
Speaker 1: So a thousand mourners come to see his body, and
Speaker 1: Chico is a little bit like, hey, we probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: fall unto revenge killing. It'll go bad. But everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going to do revenge killing. So several dozen arm
Speaker 1: tappers go to the suspected rancher's house, the suspected murderer.
Speaker 1: They ambushed on him on his way in. They put
Speaker 1: thirty to forty rounds into him. He's dead. None of
Speaker 1: these various murders on either side gets solved, including there's
Speaker 1: some revenge killing for the revenge killing, which is the
Speaker 1: problem with revenge killing to be fair. Yeah, Chico goes
Speaker 1: into hiding for months, but eventually he comes out of hiding.
Speaker 1: He gets elected leader of the union, and their movement
Speaker 1: just keeps growing. A bunch of communists have been hiding
Speaker 1: out in the jungle. That other guy wasn't the only one.
Speaker 1: They join. The liberal newspaper becomes a labor newspaper and
Speaker 1: it outsells any other paper in the area by like
Speaker 1: twice over. Folks who who could read would read it
Speaker 1: to everyone else in big public meetings, and direct action
Speaker 1: was only part of it. A newspaper was only part
Speaker 1: of it. They also set up schools and worker cooperatives,
Speaker 1: which is again part of the Like this movement fucking ruled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were like, we're going to bring education and financial
Speaker 1: independence to the rubber tappers, and the cooperative model they
Speaker 1: wound up with was borrowed from a model that indigenous
Speaker 1: folks in the area had been using alongside outside help
Speaker 1: to set up their own cooperatives. But basically it was like,
Speaker 1: we're going to cut out the rubber bosses, we're going
Speaker 1: to sell directly to the merchants, and we're going to
Speaker 1: stop being exploited that way. Yeah, the schools get started
Speaker 1: by this grad student. It's kind of funny. This is
Speaker 1: a very movie part of it. There's this like Mary
Speaker 1: Helena l. Gretty and she shows up to do field work.
Speaker 1: She's like, Oh, I'm going to go study these people.
Speaker 1: And then she's like, oh, this place fucking sucks, like
Speaker 1: literacy is forced onto people. So she decides to set
Speaker 1: up some schools. But she doesn't do it in the
Speaker 1: colonisty way that could easily happen, right, She doesn't say
Speaker 1: I know how to do this. She goes to Chico
Speaker 1: Mendes and she goes to the union and she says,
Speaker 1: how do I help this happen? How do I make
Speaker 1: this happen the way that works with you? While um
Speaker 1: and so she stays part of the movement and one
Speaker 1: of the movement leaders for the rest of the fucking time.
Speaker 1: And she does it so not so not so dangerous mindset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen us a kid um good Yeah kids,
Speaker 1: Third and most learn. I love that song when I
Speaker 1: was in middle school. It's a great song. Yeah around it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so she's I couldn't remember whether Michelle Feiffer
Speaker 1: does it in a good way or bad way in
Speaker 1: that movie. So no, she's white Savior. Yeah. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: moving to the Ander City School and she whips them
Speaker 1: all into shape. Yeah that makes a yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so that's not what Ali Gretty is doing. I believe
Speaker 1: how it happens. Yeah, Chico mendees it. During all this time,
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm gonna be a politician. He's convinced. All
Speaker 1: of his friends are like, you suck at that be
Speaker 1: an organizer. He runs for Mary, No, he runs for Mary,
Speaker 1: runs for states senator. He runs like so many different races,
Speaker 1: and he keeps fucking up his organizing by like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta leave because I gotta go fucking go hilarious
Speaker 1: campaign or whatever. He never wins a race besides the
Speaker 1: town council race. He wants won a quarter. Only a
Speaker 1: quarter of the potential voters in the region were registered
Speaker 1: because and most and so it's like the rubber tappers
Speaker 1: and the poor folks who would be on his side
Speaker 1: were not voters by and large. Yeah. Sorry. They also
Speaker 1: don't even like the Workers Party, most of them. They
Speaker 1: like the Union, they like the empaches, they like fucking
Speaker 1: up things and getting things done, but they're not like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Workers Party, that's for us. So yeah, his friends
Speaker 1: keep trying to talk him out of it to the
Speaker 1: day he dies. He keeps running for shit, keeps losing.
Speaker 1: Maria Helena Michelle Pfeiffer is back in the city and
Speaker 1: she's fighting like hell for land reform and better treatment
Speaker 1: of indigenous people and all kinds of cool shit. She
Speaker 1: keeps her connections to the Amazon, and she basically sets
Speaker 1: herself up as like a way to channel what's happening
Speaker 1: in the Amazon out to first the rest of Brazil
Speaker 1: and then internationally. And yeah, it's through her that Chico
Speaker 1: and the unions start doing nationwide and international shit. Chico
Speaker 1: starts traveling to the US and ship to network. He
Speaker 1: winds up like putting pressure on the World Bank to
Speaker 1: get them to like cancel loans unless they treat people better.
Speaker 1: And during all of this they get yet another ally
Speaker 1: to their movement. They get the environmental movement. And obviously
Speaker 1: for them it wasn't this abstract preserve the environment thing,
Speaker 1: but they had to learn the language of basically like
Speaker 1: us environmentalism in order to get support and money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're all kind of mad about it because they're
Speaker 1: like the only way that we come across as important
Speaker 1: to you is if we're like seen as charismatic megafauna,
Speaker 1: you know, especially the indigenous people are like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll put us on the cover of National Geographic or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like we're just fucking people and we live here,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, it has to be like this,
Speaker 1: like yeah, this like sage ancient wisdom that yeah, this
Speaker 1: like Mystic Woman who is almost like Avatar esque, like
Speaker 1: the movie, like I'm at one with this thing and
Speaker 1: now you like it, rather than being like yo, I
Speaker 1: just they shouldn't burn down my land. I live here, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. But they do actually also take some stuff
Speaker 1: from the environmental movement a positive way besides just like
Speaker 1: financial support and attention, and specifically it helps them frame
Speaker 1: at Chico at least talks about this. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: talking bullshit in order to get attention, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but like it helps them frame their struggle as not
Speaker 1: just a local struggle, but like an international struggle, a
Speaker 1: global struggle, because there's like this, people are being like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's actually around the time people start pay attention to
Speaker 1: global warming. They ignore it, including to the present day,
Speaker 1: but it's like when they start being like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is going to cause them like real shit if we
Speaker 1: burn down the lungs of the earth or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like Chico talks about being like I started
Speaker 1: off fighting for my people and now I'm fighting for
Speaker 1: you know, the world or whatever. They also during all
Speaker 1: of this set up one of the coolest things that
Speaker 1: they do this concept of extractive reserves, which is preserve
Speaker 1: the forest but continually but continue to be able to
Speaker 1: sustainably harvest things like rubber and brazil nuts from it.
Speaker 1: And it's basically this idea of being like humans are
Speaker 1: part of nature, and it kind of presages what we
Speaker 1: talk about now with environmentalism. You know, Um, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what that's what I was going to. That's what I
Speaker 1: was definitely going to bring that up because I'm like,
Speaker 1: the more you understand, like indigenous communities, they don't have
Speaker 1: this separation between human and nature, like we are, we are,
Speaker 1: we are, we're all. It's all nature. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: these aren't two separate, it's the same. I don't understand
Speaker 1: how y'all separating the two is they are one thing?
Speaker 1: And also, uh, something interesting that you that you you're
Speaker 1: kind of bringing up to is is the reality of
Speaker 1: how do I say this, like which you probably are
Speaker 1: going to get to later, but like just the view
Speaker 1: in sort of like uh, climate change in environmental circles
Speaker 1: to where it's like you have the one side that's like,
Speaker 1: let's try to get this back to like Garden of
Speaker 1: Eden energy to where it's like before humans touched it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's one view and then the other view is
Speaker 1: like that's literally impossible because we don't know how that
Speaker 1: was Number one and number two humans exist, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And it's like and we we we
Speaker 1: live on the planet. You know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: be a parasite though, like there's there is a way
Speaker 1: to be on the to be on the planet, to
Speaker 1: understand that we are one of many creatures on it,
Speaker 1: you know, and no other creature depleted the land like this.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't have to be that. There's millions
Speaker 1: of other creatures here that have not destroyed their environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And there's like millions of other cultures of
Speaker 1: humans that have not destroyed their environment, you know exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They have lived thousands and thousands of thousands of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they ain't every day, know what I'm saying. They did
Speaker 1: look for it's still here. Yeah, they live here the
Speaker 1: whole time. Four's still here. Yeah. No. It's funny because
Speaker 1: like more and more, finally people and whatever Western folks
Speaker 1: are realizing that all throughout even the Amazon rainforest, they're
Speaker 1: running across these like stands of brazil nuts and all
Speaker 1: this stuff that we're like, we're clearly planted. It was
Speaker 1: clearly like yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like they work.
Speaker 1: We had the environment. Yeah, yeah, we had guardens, we
Speaker 1: had farms. Yeah, that's that's um. I know you you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna get to this too. But that's an interesting
Speaker 1: side not even about like American sort of Native American history,
Speaker 1: where people would be like you know, even around the
Speaker 1: time like the Teddy Roosevelt and just being like, we
Speaker 1: want to preserve our great American outdoors. Look at this untapped,
Speaker 1: you know, untouched pristine forests, and the natives are like, no,
Speaker 1: that's our garden. That's what are you talking about. We grew,
Speaker 1: we grew strawberries. There is what do you mean untouched.
Speaker 1: We've been harvesting this land since five hundd BC. What
Speaker 1: did you talk about? Yeah, yeah, we put so we
Speaker 1: just take it. And you're claiming, Yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: we just take care of it. Like I don't under
Speaker 1: stay at what you're saying. Yeah, it's like walking into
Speaker 1: someone's house and it's not trashed, a trashed bachelor pad,
Speaker 1: and being like, no one lives here because if you
Speaker 1: live here, you get pizza boxes everywhere. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I I grew up and I learned how to throw
Speaker 1: my pizza boxes away. Yeah it's just simple. I just
Speaker 1: I just threw off the trash. It's just yeah, look
Speaker 1: at this beautiful untouched house. No I live in it.
Speaker 1: What do you think? I just cleaned up? What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? I just cleaned up after myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah that's what. Um, that's and I love that
Speaker 1: they they they kind of presaged that, like it's stuff
Speaker 1: that the environmental movement in the North was having didn't
Speaker 1: quite get yet, at least the non indigenous one. And
Speaker 1: they end up so they end up opening a bunch
Speaker 1: of these fucking reserves, these extractive reserves as a way
Speaker 1: to save the forest and also participate in the economy
Speaker 1: and feed themselves and all this stuff stuff, And they
Speaker 1: make one other really important ally during this time, the
Speaker 1: indigenous people of the Amazon. And this was the biggest deal, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, it wasn't the thing that changed everything financially
Speaker 1: or whatever, but from my point of view, is the
Speaker 1: biggest deal because because despite all the like intermarrying and
Speaker 1: like some connections or whatever, the rubber tappers and the
Speaker 1: indigenous people have been at odds for a machete point
Speaker 1: for like centuries, right, Yeah, but they navigated it. They
Speaker 1: created the alliance of the peoples of the forest. And
Speaker 1: Chico is a big part of this. But I think
Speaker 1: I think that the initial push actually came from indigenous
Speaker 1: folks because I read about I read them saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we should probably do this, and then like and then
Speaker 1: I read about like Chico doing it, but like the
Speaker 1: movement did it, and Chico was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to to play that, but I just
Speaker 1: don't want to play it up too big. And they
Speaker 1: meant it though. They made this alliance. And at one
Speaker 1: point the I can't remember it was a World Bank
Speaker 1: or someone, someone's like basically like, hey, what if we
Speaker 1: sell out the indigenous people but give the rubber tappers
Speaker 1: what they want? How about that chic and she goes
Speaker 1: just gets up and walks out of the room and
Speaker 1: like stops them. No, they meant it. They like created
Speaker 1: this alliance and they fucking meant it. Yeah. But there
Speaker 1: was one group of people. The Chico Mendes wasn't excited
Speaker 1: about working with women. Women. Women rudic for you, I know,
Speaker 1: I know. So women started coming along to them paches,
Speaker 1: and they had to disapointed right now, you know, because
Speaker 1: I really there's so many things you're so good about him.
Speaker 1: So the women had to fight the men fairly hard.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I know, I know. Margaret. Margaret texts
Speaker 1: me so mad yesterday. Yeah. She was like she was like,
Speaker 1: I was eighty percent through and then I found out
Speaker 1: this horrible thing and I was like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a man. So there was a good chance yeah
Speaker 1: at this time, you know. But yeah, which is why
Speaker 1: we're working on developing our Cool Wife Guys of History podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about men who actually cared about the women who were
Speaker 1: part of their lives. Yes, so the women had to
Speaker 1: fight like hell against the men. Not all of the
Speaker 1: men to come along on the apaches, but one man
Speaker 1: in particular stood in their way. That man was Chico Mendez,
Speaker 1: who went point damn it. Yeah, who around this time
Speaker 1: starts sleeping with that fifteen year old Oh, when she
Speaker 1: turns nineteen, they get married. Soon he is cheating on her,
Speaker 1: and then when she cheats on him, he threatens to
Speaker 1: shoot her and he has to be talked out of
Speaker 1: it by his friends. And he only sees her a
Speaker 1: couple of days a year because he's always off doing
Speaker 1: activist shit. And she wants to join the movement and
Speaker 1: come with him the whole time. As far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, she's like, no, I want to just actually
Speaker 1: be part of your life in this movement. He tells
Speaker 1: her things like, quote, my work is not play, which
Speaker 1: gets out what you're talking about earlier, being like you're
Speaker 1: mad at someone for being childish, then don't marry children. Yes,
Speaker 1: And the other quote is this is this is business
Speaker 1: and you can't keep a secret. So his wife is
Speaker 1: not part of the activism. She is at home with
Speaker 1: the kids. Okay, but if you're stuck at home with
Speaker 1: the kids and you should try buying stuff, how's that?
Speaker 1: So if he's not excited about this, it's been a
Speaker 1: rough one for ad transition. I mean that's kind of
Speaker 1: what happens, man, you know. I mean me being the
Speaker 1: opposite of him and totally loving my wife and totally
Speaker 1: respecting her. And she's not a teenager that shout. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I do find myself at
Speaker 1: home with the kids sometimes, and you do be buying stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So here's some stuff and we are back and yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I yep, I actually think once again another reason you're
Speaker 1: a good guest for this particular Yeah, you're a big
Speaker 1: wife guy. Yeah. How you released a song? I released
Speaker 1: a song just now, like a video and it's just
Speaker 1: me and three homies and just a bunch of pictures
Speaker 1: of us with our wives being in love with him
Speaker 1: the whole video. Yeah, Yes, I love the thing that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be that shouldn't be a high bar. You know. No,
Speaker 1: it's just like even in like traditional masculinity and machiesmo
Speaker 1: carrying and protecting as part of it, and that's good.
Speaker 1: I just that, Yeah, there's certain there's certain aspects of
Speaker 1: stupid masculinity that I just I didn't get that germ
Speaker 1: like that. I'm like, and I don't get it when
Speaker 1: I see it that whole like I'm more prone to
Speaker 1: and try to impress the homies than I am. The
Speaker 1: girl is like, I don't get that part, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, where you're in a pissing contest in everything.
Speaker 1: You know, also, don't get the idea of being like,
Speaker 1: no baby me alone. I'm with the pros. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the homies like, uh, I see you
Speaker 1: dudes later. I spend time, but I'm gonna goes. I
Speaker 1: actually like this woman. I think she's incredible. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go spend time with her. Yeah fu yeah, I'll be
Speaker 1: at the creative homie. So back to his activism, pretending
Speaker 1: like all this other stuff doesn't well, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we don't actually pretend like this other stuff didn't happen,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's a context worth understanding about him,
Speaker 1: but they the movement, including him, are doing amazing shit.
Speaker 1: At this point, they drive out several of the biggest
Speaker 1: ranchers out of the area, including some guy named the
Speaker 1: cattle King who also owns ranches in the fucking us
Speaker 1: and that guy that guys are used car salesman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hate that guy, the cattle King. Yeah. And they
Speaker 1: do it by basically being like, look, it is just
Speaker 1: not worth it to you, like the return on investment
Speaker 1: of cutting down this forest, dealing with us, did I
Speaker 1: mention the part where we're here and we have guns,
Speaker 1: Like it makes it just not fucking worth it for people.
Speaker 1: And so financially, they're all finally like fuck it, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get out of here, and so they start driving
Speaker 1: away more and more ranchers, but not all of the
Speaker 1: ranchers are leaving. There's one particular group of ranchers that
Speaker 1: doesn't leave, and they tend to be the we call
Speaker 1: ourselves ranchers, but we mostly run drugs type of ranchers. Oh,
Speaker 1: I like those guys. Here we go, here we go.
Speaker 1: So the most murdery of the rancher families in the
Speaker 1: area was the Alvez family. They were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're totally definitely ranchers, not a criminal network of murderers
Speaker 1: who moved cocaine. But everyone knew they were lying, because
Speaker 1: they didn't care that everyone knew they were lying. Darley
Speaker 1: Alvez da Silva lived on a ten thousand acre ranch,
Speaker 1: which is really fucking big. I live on five acres
Speaker 1: and I have more land than almost anyone I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he lived on that ranch with his brother, his dad,
Speaker 1: his four wives, his thirty kids, and about a dozen
Speaker 1: hired gunmen who occasionally did ranch work too. They were
Speaker 1: super murdery, murdered anyone who looked at them funny, mostly
Speaker 1: random workers and shit, including their own workers. Later, at
Speaker 1: one point, they try to hire this gunman to kill Chico,
Speaker 1: but he actually backs out and goes and warns Chico
Speaker 1: because he doesn't mind being hired as a murderer. But
Speaker 1: then he finds out that this would be employers of
Speaker 1: a tendency to murder their own employees, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna work for this guy. Like, if I go,
Speaker 1: says someone, I'm gonna fucking die. I never understood that.
Speaker 1: Whenever you're watching some movie and they like they show
Speaker 1: the bad guys really bad by having him like kill
Speaker 1: one of his subordinates. Like, that's a terrible leadership. How
Speaker 1: do you run an autocratic regime killing everyone? It doesn't
Speaker 1: on your side anyway, it's not functional. Yeah, the Elvis
Speaker 1: family had moved recently to the jungle because them and
Speaker 1: run out of everywhere else for murdering people. Once there,
Speaker 1: they start providing muscle for cocaine transportation. Most of the
Speaker 1: stuff I read about doesn't really focus on the drug
Speaker 1: running part. I only found one reference to the fact
Speaker 1: that they were running drugs, But to me it clicks
Speaker 1: and makes everything else makes sense. And so I don't
Speaker 1: know whether the books I was reading just like kind
Speaker 1: of didn't want to get into the drug trade stuff,
Speaker 1: or like didn't know about it, or they were written
Speaker 1: during a time when it would be a bad idea
Speaker 1: to talk about it, or maybe it wasn't as big
Speaker 1: a deal part of their deal it seems like it,
Speaker 1: But it seems to me like it was a big
Speaker 1: part of it. The other batty for this episode, the
Speaker 1: Tappers get a union. How come rich landowners and ranchers
Speaker 1: can't have a union, so they they form one. They
Speaker 1: form the Rural Democratic Union, which is affront for doing
Speaker 1: all the violent stuff against Robbert tappers, small farmers and
Speaker 1: landless folks. Yeah, there's no white entertainment television exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: much like white entertainment television. Their motto is tradition, family
Speaker 1: and property. Oh god, not the property. Yeah, tradition, family
Speaker 1: and property and blood and soil. What's so funny about Like,
Speaker 1: I know that they're hypocrites about everything and everything's fucked,
Speaker 1: but like they are not the traditional inhabitants of the Amazon,
Speaker 1: not even the white settle are traditional. Like this would
Speaker 1: Yeah if Texas Nazis moved to Appalachia and started murdering
Speaker 1: the folks here who live here and then started talking
Speaker 1: about tradition, that's how it. Like, Oh, they're not fucking
Speaker 1: from here. They're not even the white people who are
Speaker 1: sort of from here multigenerationally or whatever. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their main point of activism was that the ranchers had
Speaker 1: the right to use violence to defend their property. Their
Speaker 1: main activism was to buy all the ranchers more weapons.
Speaker 1: They'd have big fundraisers like I'm making this up, but
Speaker 1: like Bingo night for guns for ranchers and the ranchers
Speaker 1: tried to ambush Chico Mendes like multiple times. Like I've
Speaker 1: read different numbers of the numbers of times that people
Speaker 1: tried to kill him. Five ish seems to be the
Speaker 1: general median. The ranchers themselves usually not doing this attempted murder,
Speaker 1: usually attired killers. Chico Mendes goes out and gets himself
Speaker 1: a pistol permit and a pistol for obvious reasons. So
Speaker 1: Darcy Alvez, he's hired to clear out the rubber tappers
Speaker 1: from where Chico Mendez grew up, and hundreds of rubber
Speaker 1: tappers show up and occupy the place in a in
Speaker 1: their classic semi peaceful way, armed non violence. I guess
Speaker 1: they hold the place for months. Darcy gets told by
Speaker 1: the military police that if shit goes down, people will
Speaker 1: no doubt die on both sides, and Darcy will be
Speaker 1: held responsible, so he doesn't attack. Darcy tries to buy
Speaker 1: Chico off Chico's like, hell no, doesn't. He won't even
Speaker 1: shake the guy's hand, And the rubber tappers win. And
Speaker 1: as there's a standoff in which against the police where
Speaker 1: there's like about to be a massacre, this is this
Speaker 1: is the way it gets told. I don't totally believe
Speaker 1: this story because this two pat But there's a big
Speaker 1: standoff with the police and they're all about to die.
Speaker 1: And then all the little kids who are part of
Speaker 1: the mpare starts singing the Brazilian national anthem, and then
Speaker 1: the cops join in and they all sing the Brazilian
Speaker 1: national anthem together. Oh, nice little movie moment. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it might have happened. Weird shit happens. Then tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of acres are turned into an extractive reserve and
Speaker 1: the Alves family is denied their job of driving out
Speaker 1: and murdering everyone. And because of this success is like
Speaker 1: one of the biggest successes they've had. The tactics starts
Speaker 1: spreading this like occupation tactic, and soon no new ranchers
Speaker 1: are setting fire in Shapuri. Some of his activist friends
Speaker 1: buy a house for Chico's family in town. At this
Speaker 1: point because check this out, he literally hadn't bothered having
Speaker 1: a house, so his wife and his kids had to
Speaker 1: live with his wife's family and ship before that. Of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys that are so driven by the movement, Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I have a I've thought about this. I stayed
Speaker 1: up late angry about this. If you want to be
Speaker 1: I'm committed to the cause and not my family type
Speaker 1: of guy, you can be that. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is follow this one simple trick. Don't have a family.
Speaker 1: It's I don't understand why that's so hard to understand. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if you listen, he think, if you just don't have
Speaker 1: wife and you just don't make babies, just don't make
Speaker 1: other humans. Yeah, you ain't gotta worry about him. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems so simple. I know we could. We could.
Speaker 1: You literally work at a rubber place. You're literally where
Speaker 1: rubber literally you can figure out. Yeah, you could have
Speaker 1: the freshest condom in the world. Bro, you can, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right out of the tree. Yea. Darcy Alvez is fucking mad.
Speaker 1: Not about Chico being a bad husband. He's actually worse.
Speaker 1: Um we'll talk about why to his four wives later.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he's mad because the activists are winning,
Speaker 1: so they double down on the violence thing, and more
Speaker 1: and more pistoleros start marching through town. Someone shoots some
Speaker 1: teenagers during a sit in a leftist church. Guy who's
Speaker 1: running for town council gets murdered. Mendez starts being surrounded
Speaker 1: by bodyguard at all time, and basically he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to die. He doesn't want to die, but he
Speaker 1: also doesn't want to leave town. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be a martyr. He refuses to leave. All of his
Speaker 1: friends are like, hey, like it's cool and all you
Speaker 1: could go somewhere else for a while. They're going to
Speaker 1: murder you, and he's like, no, no, it's fine. His
Speaker 1: quote around this time is after death were useless. Living
Speaker 1: people achieve things. Corpses nothing, gosh. Yeah. So he starts
Speaker 1: digging up dirt on the Alvezs and he like uses
Speaker 1: new activist connections to dig up the fact that they're
Speaker 1: wanted in another state. He can't go to the local
Speaker 1: police because the local police are in the Alvez's pocket,
Speaker 1: of course, so he goes to the federal police, who
Speaker 1: take their sweet time writing the warrants. They take more
Speaker 1: than a month to do, so the Alvez's catch wind
Speaker 1: of the fact that he's now snitched on them, and
Speaker 1: the Alvez skipped town so that they don't get arrested.
Speaker 1: And while they're out of town, Yeah, like what they're
Speaker 1: doing makes sense from their you know, yes, and they
Speaker 1: planned Chico's death. He turned forty four. On December fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, he said he wouldn't live to see Christmas.
Speaker 1: The UDR, the Rich People's Union, they're pouring money into
Speaker 1: the problem, because of course they are. They've already bought
Speaker 1: most of the newspapers, using them to talk shit on Chico,
Speaker 1: the Union, the Worker's Party in the church. Now they're
Speaker 1: openly raising money for the reward for to murder Chico Mendez.
Speaker 1: Hey green light, Okay, Yeah. The local cops who are
Speaker 1: in the pocket of these folks, they take away Chico's
Speaker 1: pistol permit. He stays armed illegally, and right up to
Speaker 1: the end, he's running around organizing people and joining getting
Speaker 1: people to join the union. He's running off to cities
Speaker 1: to be the face of the movement in the network,
Speaker 1: but he won't leave town for good. On December twenty second,
Speaker 1: he's with his family and two bodyguards and his kids,
Speaker 1: and he goes into his backyard to take a shower
Speaker 1: at the sort of outhouse shower area. Two men had
Speaker 1: been camped there, possibly for like a month, basically waiting
Speaker 1: like they were hunting. Later, they found all the like
Speaker 1: food cans and shit piled up there. Oh, so gross.
Speaker 1: A man with a twenty gage shotgun murdered him. It
Speaker 1: was likely Darley Alvez, Darcy's son, or it was an accomplice.
Speaker 1: Darley confessed later said steadfastedly it was only him because
Speaker 1: he was a murderer, but he was not a snitch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Chico Mendez was one of nine hundred eighty
Speaker 1: two union organizers and land rights activists killed in Brazil
Speaker 1: between nineteen sixty four and nineteen eighty eight. Day he
Speaker 1: was the fifth rural union president to be murdered in
Speaker 1: Brazil that year alone, and usually in Okra. The you
Speaker 1: know that state, if you kill a guy, nothing bad
Speaker 1: happens to you. But what they didn't realize, what the
Speaker 1: killers didn't realize, You know that, like I don't know
Speaker 1: this happens to you. Then no one's a hero in
Speaker 1: their hometown. Thing, where like people from your hometown never
Speaker 1: quite understand the level of fame that you've acquired. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is great. It keeps you honest, but sometimes it's
Speaker 1: really frustrating when people are like, yeah, whatever, anyway, do
Speaker 1: you little music bang? How you little music thang going? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Like I feel myself that way. Fuck you
Speaker 1: number two on the Billboard charts. Yeah, that's how it's going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it turns out
Speaker 1: Chico Mendez was real famous, like international famous, like had
Speaker 1: been in the New York Times famous, and killing famous
Speaker 1: people is way harder to get away with. Yes, So
Speaker 1: the Fed's investigated and the Alveza is spent nineteen years
Speaker 1: in prison. Oh and they suck, but they kind of
Speaker 1: suck in a cool, badass TV villain kind of way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are multiple armed standoffs involved in arresting them. Several
Speaker 1: cops get shot in the process. They all break out
Speaker 1: of prison for a while before getting recaptured. Witnesses and
Speaker 1: prosecutors at their trials late wind up dead or quit
Speaker 1: their jobs. Like there was this like paratrooper, judo instructor
Speaker 1: or something who was like one of the prosecutors, and
Speaker 1: then he's like, I have decided to prioritize my time
Speaker 1: with my family and then he left the job. Okay,
Speaker 1: sucker shit, yeah all right. And then my evidence for
Speaker 1: this idea that this man was bad to his four
Speaker 1: wives is that one of Darley's four wives killed herself
Speaker 1: because she'd talked to police and she was afraid of
Speaker 1: darl and what he might do. Oh my gosh. And
Speaker 1: that's the end of Chico Mendez. A thousand people came
Speaker 1: to his funeral a few days later, including Lula, the
Speaker 1: current president of Brazil. Some people flew from the States.
Speaker 1: The priest was there, the town's priest, Luis Seppi, and
Speaker 1: he was an Italian immigrant and a member of the
Speaker 1: Italian Communist Party. And I just think that's funny that
Speaker 1: their town priest was this Italian communist. Italian communist. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1: His death changed him shit. And most of the stuff
Speaker 1: I've read has been like he was a brilliant martyr
Speaker 1: and it changed everything. But like I honestly think on
Speaker 1: a longer timeline, like I think his life changed more.
Speaker 1: I think he was right. He was an all right martyr.
Speaker 1: You play the hand you got. But he was a
Speaker 1: really good organizer. Other people kept going. The fight for
Speaker 1: the rainforest continues, indigenous people leading the way. It's still
Speaker 1: getting burned. An ecology guy named Jose Lutzemberger as a
Speaker 1: quote in the environmental movement, our defeats are always final,
Speaker 1: our victory is always provisional. And I have a short afterwards.
Speaker 1: I know, and it's it's kind of the inverse of like,
Speaker 1: I like the inverse when the IRA told I think,
Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher, you have to get lucky every time. We
Speaker 1: only have to get lucky once, yep. But unfortunately, with
Speaker 1: fucking protecting the rainforest and the earth itself the opposite,
Speaker 1: we have to get lucky every time. Yeah. So two
Speaker 1: hundred environmental activists were killed around the world in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Mexico wins the Dubious Award for most environmental
Speaker 1: activists killed fifty four. These murders include a ton of politicians,
Speaker 1: even who do things like opposed New Minds. Latin America
Speaker 1: has more than three quarters of these murders, and more
Speaker 1: than forty percent of these murders are of indigenous people.
Speaker 1: The group that tracks this all the way, by the way,
Speaker 1: if anyone feels like supporting them, is called Global Witness.
Speaker 1: I don't know a ton about them, so I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to be like this is the most important organization,
Speaker 1: but they are the people who track this, and that's
Speaker 1: good that people track this. There have been a bunch
Speaker 1: in the US also. The first one I know about
Speaker 1: is a guy named Guy Bradley, who was a game
Speaker 1: warden who was supposed to enforce all the anti poaching
Speaker 1: laws in Florida in the early nineteen hundreds. He was
Speaker 1: left entirely alone with no backup and supposed to like
Speaker 1: protect the egrets. He got shot at a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: but he kept going. In nineteen oh five, a Confederate
Speaker 1: veteran named Walter Smith murdered him and left him on
Speaker 1: the beach. Walter got found not guilty. On the plus side,
Speaker 1: Bradley's brothers torched the guy's house. Two more bird wardens
Speaker 1: were murdered over the next few years. In nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: someone probably the FBI, car bomb two Earth First activists
Speaker 1: in California, Judy Barry and Darryl Cherney. I'm working on
Speaker 1: an episode about them now. They survived and they proved
Speaker 1: in court that the FBI had violated their civil rights
Speaker 1: during the investigation. In nineteen ninety eight, there was another
Speaker 1: Earth First activist named David Chain. His forest name was Gipsy.
Speaker 1: He was trying to defend old growth force in California
Speaker 1: from clearcutting. A logger dropped a tree on him and
Speaker 1: killed him. WHOA yeah, okay. No charges were ever filed
Speaker 1: against the logger. He was like, oh, it was an accident,
Speaker 1: but he had been like screaming threats at the activists
Speaker 1: shortly before it. After his death, the company was found
Speaker 1: to be logging illegally in the first place the protesters,
Speaker 1: which is what the protesters has been saying the whole time.
Speaker 1: Pacific Lumber lost its logging license in California, and then
Speaker 1: on eighteenth of January in twenty twenty three, a non
Speaker 1: binary indigenous anarchist named Manuel Torts Tehran was shot by
Speaker 1: the police during a raid on a protest camp in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: And this episode is dedicated to them and their memory
Speaker 1: and the people who are trying to fight another example
Speaker 1: of like intersectional environmental protection. They're trying to protect the
Speaker 1: forest in Atlanta and also stop the cops from expanding
Speaker 1: their capacity to Yeah, yeah, sorry, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: bummer of an episode. Man. I was so looking forward
Speaker 1: to today. I was like, oh, great, man, I could
Speaker 1: talk about some dope stuff. They did good ship though,
Speaker 1: they did. They really did. They saved fucking millions of
Speaker 1: acres by like, yeah, just banding together and showing up
Speaker 1: with shotguns and being like you can't fucking do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, so dope, and they change the conversation.
Speaker 1: But you picture like and it's it's a it's definitely
Speaker 1: like a I feel like a uniquely like Western kind
Speaker 1: of American sort of trope when you pitch or environmental
Speaker 1: activists like you just yeah, it's like Berkeley Granola, like
Speaker 1: you picture some like you know, kind of like on
Speaker 1: you know, white girl with dreadlocks. You know what I'm saying, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just that trope of like that that they're so far
Speaker 1: away from mikespe like I care about the earth, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, But they're so far away from
Speaker 1: my experience and not the type of person that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna strap myself to a tree, like yes,
Speaker 1: you know, Like but when you have stories like this
Speaker 1: that bring it more closer, especially as a person of color,
Speaker 1: that bring it more close to like naham like this,
Speaker 1: we're affected by this and we're actually involved, you know,
Speaker 1: and especially down there in Atlanta, you know, in the
Speaker 1: in the whole cop you know, cop Town, like it
Speaker 1: turned out like I didn't know, like I turned out
Speaker 1: I had like homies a part of that movement down there,
Speaker 1: Like I was like where my homeboy, like and I
Speaker 1: never put two and two together, you know, but just
Speaker 1: the the intersection of like you said, just the intersection
Speaker 1: of like this this non binary person inside of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the blackest cities in America, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and like and how all that
Speaker 1: stuff kind of work together. It's, um, it's just important
Speaker 1: to see, you know, which was some of the drive
Speaker 1: behind my last DP was called The Soil DP, and
Speaker 1: it was about the soil being sacred, you know. And
Speaker 1: then this song Forests. You know. What I'm saying is
Speaker 1: like it's all trying to put kind of finding myself
Speaker 1: and hopefully inviting you just sort of like city black
Speaker 1: and brown people into this conversation that it's like it's
Speaker 1: also a part of our our fight for freedom and equality,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah yeah, and like yeah, and it really
Speaker 1: shows to me that as that movement as it just
Speaker 1: as it gathered allies and I don't mean allies and
Speaker 1: the like I am an ally way, but like people
Speaker 1: who are throwing down together, it's like, yes, how it
Speaker 1: gained fucking power, you know, And yes, yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: been impressed by I've been impressed by the Atlanta stuff
Speaker 1: um or geeze man, Yeah, fools or cheese. Yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: uh shout out of Brazil. Yeah, fucking fighting for Sha
Speaker 1: cherries amazing years. Yeah, that's to reduce them to Jimmy
Speaker 1: cherry is ridiculous out there. You got anything to thank
Speaker 1: market to plug here at the end. Yeah, speaking of Brazil,
Speaker 1: they also grow good coffee which was indigenous and well no,
Speaker 1: it's just been there a long time. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: got a cold brew company called Terraform Cold Brew. It's
Speaker 1: a canned cold brew. You can go to Terraform called
Speaker 1: brew dot com and get you some get you some
Speaker 1: caffeine for the weekend. It's delicious. Um. Also do a
Speaker 1: pod on this same very network called Politics with prop Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a fun time, man, It's like, well it's getting
Speaker 1: fun because of how our new cycle has kind of
Speaker 1: like gone into absurdity, Like really, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing feels real. It was hard when we were talking
Speaker 1: about like you know, Yemen and like you know Ukraine
Speaker 1: and like African or like the Ethiopian like civil war.
Speaker 1: It was hard. Then now we're just talking about shooting
Speaker 1: down balloons. Yeah, Like shit is funny. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, this is you spent you spend it?
Speaker 1: They spending multiple millions of dollars scrambling jet planes for
Speaker 1: a balloon. Yeah, like this this is funny, this high
Speaker 1: tech balloon. And the fact that you think once you
Speaker 1: shoot the thing down and you're trying to get its material,
Speaker 1: like in the age of the Internet, you think they
Speaker 1: didn't already got You don't think they already got we
Speaker 1: can control a rover in Mars. You think they don't
Speaker 1: already have the information they need? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I mean the information would be like well they're a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and also like yeah they look the information
Speaker 1: is they ain't got ship were good? Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: part of the reason that people are like actually don't
Speaker 1: actually care is that I'm like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: my government spies on me, Like if it's fine on
Speaker 1: us the whole time? Yeah, what you want to know?
Speaker 1: Open up the app? Open up my phone with my
Speaker 1: face I've gil tagged. What do you want to know?
Speaker 1: You already know my search injury information? What don't you
Speaker 1: know already? Yeah? I have saved all my passwords on
Speaker 1: Google Chrome. What don't you know? I mean, Instagram knows
Speaker 1: who I have a crush on before. I know Instagram here,
Speaker 1: what are you like? Yeah? You know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't you're a feel They don't know, they know
Speaker 1: your porn taste like this, Like dope, there's nothing. What
Speaker 1: don't y'all know? Yeah? Yeah, Magpie. Don't you have a
Speaker 1: book people can order? Oh? Yeah? My book is called
Speaker 1: Escape from Insall Island. It is about people trying to
Speaker 1: escape from an island full of in cells and it's
Speaker 1: out for real. Let's go. Yeah, Escape from Insell Island.
Speaker 1: All right, it's fun. You can read it in an afternoon.
Speaker 1: I write real short books most of the time, so
Speaker 1: that was a short span. And what else? I have
Speaker 1: a podcast? No, you're listening to it? Oh? I have
Speaker 1: another podcast. It's called Live Like the World Is Dying.
Speaker 1: It's a preparedness podcast. It's trying to take preparedness away
Speaker 1: from the right wing. I really like stealing ship from
Speaker 1: the right wing. It wasn't airs anyway, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that? Yeah? Yeah, and yeah, you should check
Speaker 1: out all the other shows on cool Zone Media based,
Speaker 1: especially check out hood Politics and actually, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about tort who I dedicate this episode two.
Speaker 1: There's um a whole bunch of If you listen to
Speaker 1: the recent episodes of It Could Happen here, you'll hear
Speaker 1: a lot more about Stop Coop City and about the
Speaker 1: life of this person who died. What do you? What
Speaker 1: do you got, Sophie? Now you did it? Oh? Okay,
Speaker 1: well did all the things. I guess. We'll see you
Speaker 1: all next week. Hi, Hi, cool people? Who Did Cool Stop?
Speaker 1: Is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.