Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff,
Speaker 1: the podcast where I sit in moral judgment of everyone
Speaker 1: who's ever lived. I'm your host, Margaret with me today
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite ever guests. Prop. What are
Speaker 1: you doing man? Tell me something good? Yeah, saying miss
Speaker 1: out there? Good? I need something good? Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be happy. But this is this is gonna
Speaker 1: be moral complexity week. Unfortunately, It's gonna be good. It's
Speaker 1: gonna exists. Okay, I got any percent through this biography
Speaker 1: before I was like, oh yeah, I need some comic
Speaker 1: book level fifties comic book good guys, bad guys. Give
Speaker 1: me some just that would be happy about and a
Speaker 1: listener you want to hear that? Go back to our
Speaker 1: first episode that I did with Prop. Oh yeah, just
Speaker 1: people destroying the Confederacy from the inside. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that was one comic level good. Yeah, that was easy.
Speaker 1: Our producers Sophie, Hi, Sophie, how are you doing him? Great?
Speaker 1: I'm good? Pops here yea yeah, squad, this is our
Speaker 1: comic level good is okay? In our audio engineer, h
Speaker 1: I what The theme music was written for us by
Speaker 1: a woman probably have you ever heard of the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, all right, So this week we are talking
Speaker 1: about a coalition of people who lived in that rainforest
Speaker 1: in Brazil who did there aren't most to stop it
Speaker 1: from destruction. Most of that story is going to focus
Speaker 1: around a union of rubber tappers, the people who collect
Speaker 1: latex from rubber trees. Okay, and we're gonna tell that
Speaker 1: story means of the most famous of these people is
Speaker 1: a guy named Chico Mendez. Okay, And the complicated part here,
Speaker 1: I tend to judge people who date women based on
Speaker 1: how they treat those women as like kind of my
Speaker 1: first and foremost bar I hold everyone too. Mendez's not
Speaker 1: go ahead. I was gonna say, it's a pretty easy metric,
Speaker 1: Like it's like, you know, just like does a person
Speaker 1: like bathe you know, yeah, yeah, Like that's an easy
Speaker 1: metric that you could just be like check strike one,
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, yeah. So Chico Mendez was not
Speaker 1: up to par in that regard, failed that one. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that, but it's another moral complexity week.
Speaker 1: And the movement that he's part of did amazing fucking
Speaker 1: ship and he was a crucial part of doing a
Speaker 1: lot of this amazing ship. He was only forty four
Speaker 1: and he got murdered by the ranchers who wanted to
Speaker 1: see the rainforest burn. Oh man, And along the way
Speaker 1: he and the rest of the movement did just amazing ship,
Speaker 1: cool ship, cool stuff. So let's get into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote a song about the forest. Oh yeah, oh ship,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I listened to it recently. Actually,
Speaker 1: yea everybody, Yeah, yeah, that songs sols fun to write,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm actually now I'm like about to im
Speaker 1: feeling myself about to get emotional when you get to
Speaker 1: the dark sides. It is because I'm just like, it's
Speaker 1: so front of mine right now. Yeah, it's it's funny.
Speaker 1: As I was, I was reading about all this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot all the books of chapters
Speaker 1: and chapters about a horrible destruction. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that I do often on this show
Speaker 1: is like I kind of like point that there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of bad ship, but I don't always necessarily talk
Speaker 1: about it. Like if someone gets like tortured and raped,
Speaker 1: I might just be like, and then bad ship they
Speaker 1: got tortured and rape. I'm not gonna take in details
Speaker 1: with the rainforest ship. I'm gonna I'm gonna try in there, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but I'm not gonna go like hard at it,
Speaker 1: because I think everyone knows. Everyone listening to this knows
Speaker 1: the forest fucking matters. Before we get to the rubber tappers,
Speaker 1: we're gonna race our way through some of Brazil's complex history,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna stop for a moment for this side quest.
Speaker 1: I guess and describe one of the coolest things that's
Speaker 1: ever happened in the history of the world, the Columbo
Speaker 1: dos Palmyras. And I apologize for any Portuguese that I
Speaker 1: pronounced accidentally like Spanish, which I'm not particularly good at
Speaker 1: speaking Spanish, but I like understand how to pronounce it vaguely,
Speaker 1: and I have a I did look up all of
Speaker 1: the Portuguese names and ship but I sometimes accidentally ain't
Speaker 1: going to pronounce them like they're Spanish. So Brazil has
Speaker 1: been occupied by people for at least eleven thousand years,
Speaker 1: probably a lot longer than that. It gets its name
Speaker 1: and its boundaries and shipped from European colonizers. Of course,
Speaker 1: in this case it is the Portuguese. They show up
Speaker 1: in fifteen hundred, they settle it in two. They name
Speaker 1: it after the brazil wood trees. The Portuguese actually tried
Speaker 1: to call it the Land of the Holy Cross, but
Speaker 1: the sailors kept being like, no, no, it's where the
Speaker 1: brazil wood trees are. Pretty soon, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good beef where it's like, that's a good beef. It's
Speaker 1: like the Holy Cross. Not it's just just named after
Speaker 1: the trees. Many more trees here. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: kind of a fun little beef. I know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like, yeah, the the language, the etymology in
Speaker 1: some of these places, that's really interesting. Um, and then't
Speaker 1: even a brazil would it comes from basically a word
Speaker 1: for ember because it's like a red They make a
Speaker 1: red dye out of it at the time. Pretty soon
Speaker 1: the whole colony, at least the coast is a sugar plantation,
Speaker 1: the rainforest on the interior. It gets rated first by
Speaker 1: conquistadors were looking for El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold.
Speaker 1: Like I always thought that was like sort of bullshit,
Speaker 1: like no one actually believed that, Like the yeah, Colombia
Speaker 1: in Colombia and Brazil, like it was like nas here. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: hundreds of fucking years is murdering people, being like where's
Speaker 1: the gold. Natives are like what yeah, fuck you yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And then after the Conquistadores,
Speaker 1: you get the Bandaritas, the flag bearers, and they're even worse.
Speaker 1: They're specifically there to funk up indigenous people and steal
Speaker 1: them and sell them to the sugar plantations. And this
Speaker 1: history of the Bandaritas and the Rainforce is going to
Speaker 1: set the stage for a lot of what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about later. They're basically this class of slavery bandits
Speaker 1: who push westward expansion in Brazil, kind of the cowboys
Speaker 1: in a certain way, although the pistole Eros will get
Speaker 1: to later or even more cowboys, and they do all
Speaker 1: kinds of dirty tricks and ship to get away with this.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they do is that the
Speaker 1: Jesuits actually really interestingly have a good reputation with the
Speaker 1: indigenous people and the Amazon at this time, because the
Speaker 1: Jesuits are literally the only white people who aren't trying
Speaker 1: to steal them and put them into slavery. So the
Speaker 1: fucking flag bears would dress up as Jesuits and then
Speaker 1: go around and rob okay, and then they actually started
Speaker 1: raising Jesuit raiding Jesuit villages. The end up we end
Speaker 1: up with these like warfare between the Jesuits and the
Speaker 1: bandartez Um. Later the Jesuits go to war, and this
Speaker 1: is at this point a lot of the Jesuits were
Speaker 1: going to war our indigenous people themselves, right, um, go
Speaker 1: to war against the Spanish and the Portuguese, and really
Speaker 1: interestedly in this story way more than other stories I've read,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church is kind of being both good and
Speaker 1: bad instead of usually it's just kind of on the bedside.
Speaker 1: But the Colombo Dolls dos Palmyras happens around this time
Speaker 1: beginning of Brazil's colonization. A columbo is a Maroon community
Speaker 1: more or less, um, this is a place where people
Speaker 1: escaping slavery go and live free. Usually in the US
Speaker 1: you have mirroron communities and the swamps and stuff in
Speaker 1: the mountains. This one was fucking huge. It lasted for generations.
Speaker 1: It lasted a twenty four times longer than the Confederacy,
Speaker 1: which just makes me very happy. They had a fucking
Speaker 1: standing army. They repelled seventeen different assaults from the Portuguese
Speaker 1: and I think the Dutch. Let's go yeah, so they
Speaker 1: It wasn't called Columbo at the time. The word Columbo
Speaker 1: comes later sixteen seventies the people. The word the people
Speaker 1: use at the time was a macambo, which is an
Speaker 1: Umbunda word for war camp. M hmm, and colombo also
Speaker 1: means war camp actually from the same language. But oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I didn't know. I didn't. I had heard of
Speaker 1: Columbo's but um, I didn't know as an African word.
Speaker 1: I didn't know shit about it. Portugal, I don't know,
Speaker 1: even if I can say this sarcastically, I don't never
Speaker 1: knew about this slavery thing prop but it's a big
Speaker 1: and bad thing. I was. I was aware this this little,
Speaker 1: this little Atlantic triangle year yeah and Atlantic yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They got off the boat before us down there down south,
Speaker 1: yeah yep. And Portugal was was first among equals in
Speaker 1: the slave trade. They were the slaveyest and they're the
Speaker 1: only European power to actually participate in the rating in Africa,
Speaker 1: I think, as far as I can tell, like on
Speaker 1: a major level, everyone else just bought people, but the Portuguese,
Speaker 1: We're fucking monsters. I'm trying to plut through this lighthearted thing.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it's real bad. Yeah. Ye, anybody, anybody
Speaker 1: in my sphere knows this. You know. It was first
Speaker 1: they was there for that good, that good African salt,
Speaker 1: and then after that they was like, how about the
Speaker 1: people that's on the land that had assault? What about
Speaker 1: them too? And they just started just packing foods up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen anywhere from two point eight to five point
Speaker 1: eight million Africans who were stolen by the Portuguese and
Speaker 1: transported to Brazil specifically. Yeah, for chunks of time, thirty
Speaker 1: of the population of Brazil's enslaved. It's about the same
Speaker 1: as the US South in eighteen sixty, but in places
Speaker 1: with more plantations. In Brazil it was upwards of sixty
Speaker 1: percent of the people. And there's a bunch of reasons
Speaker 1: why they had a hard time holding on to enslave people,
Speaker 1: and one of them is Mocambo's and that's the cool reason.
Speaker 1: The other reason is that enslaved the life expectancy of
Speaker 1: enslaved indigenous people was nineteen years and enslaved Africans was
Speaker 1: twenty four years in Brazil. And also complicatedly, it was
Speaker 1: easier for people to become freed people in Brazil than
Speaker 1: in other countries. Um, you get more stories of freed
Speaker 1: slaves turning around and enslaving people in Brazil than you
Speaker 1: do in other countries. But the other reason that they
Speaker 1: had a hard time holding onto people is people got
Speaker 1: the funk out and got into the goddamn mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in northeast Brazil and the my Dern state of alag As,
Speaker 1: we get what's called the Colombo does Palmyras or Angola Jonga.
Speaker 1: And because Angola was where Portugal stealing, Yeah, most of
Speaker 1: them are from Angola. Yeah, there's something specific. This is
Speaker 1: a side note about please, and it's like, I like,
Speaker 1: these are the things that like are just so fascinating
Speaker 1: to me because people from that region and you know,
Speaker 1: specifically Angola, this Brazil, Portuguese, sort of Spain, indigenous goulash,
Speaker 1: this is just freakishly beautiful. Like I just don't understand
Speaker 1: why y'all are so gorgeous, Like you know, everyone right,
Speaker 1: and uh as always Brazil makes this some of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful people on earth. But um, but specifically, when
Speaker 1: you start looking at a lot of the Brazilian drums,
Speaker 1: um music, dance, you could just you if you know
Speaker 1: African stuff, you're just like, oh, my god, Angola, Like
Speaker 1: it's like immediate, you know what I mean, And it's
Speaker 1: just it's it's it's it's a testament to like how
Speaker 1: you know, even when how do I say this cut
Speaker 1: off from a legacy and a heritage, that that magic,
Speaker 1: you know, that somehow continues on, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that like you know, like joyous protests, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, dances, protests, like it's it's I feel
Speaker 1: like Brazil is one of those those those places Brazili
Speaker 1: and Columbia to like a lot of people don't really
Speaker 1: realize how many African slaves were in Colombia. And if
Speaker 1: you go there now, like you're like, you dode, this
Speaker 1: looks like this looks like New Orleans, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean there's parts of Columbia. Columbia look like New Orleans.
Speaker 1: It's just black folks dancing and you're like, yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: well it's Colombia, you know, yeah, no, No, that's like
Speaker 1: and it would've been reading about is that some of
Speaker 1: the Macombos or some of the reason that a lot
Speaker 1: of ship was able to be held onto because you
Speaker 1: have like multiple generations of people who now live in
Speaker 1: Brazil who like aren't being as forcefully cut off of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, on a long enough timeline. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to paint this utopian lee right yeah, yeaheah, We're still
Speaker 1: talking about slavery. Yeah, and people who have to escape
Speaker 1: from it and only get away for a while or
Speaker 1: you know, although you get people who escape and then
Speaker 1: have free grandkids who live and die free, you know,
Speaker 1: but then they're great grandkids are back in it. Um,
Speaker 1: so you get Angola Jonga. In sixteen o two, the
Speaker 1: first enslaved people start running away into the hills, and
Speaker 1: the hills are full of palm trees, thus palmyras, and
Speaker 1: they start setting at Mocambo's and then just fucking more
Speaker 1: and more of them. In sixteen o five forty people
Speaker 1: who get out I think of sugar plantation, but to
Speaker 1: get out of slavery, go out there and set up
Speaker 1: a village. Pretty soon there's entire towns. Then there's networks
Speaker 1: of towns, and it just keeps going for generations. By
Speaker 1: the mid sixteen fifties, it's a kingdom. It literally has
Speaker 1: a king. The king is elected. It's modeled on a
Speaker 1: kind of syncretic government. It's basically it's like not Europe
Speaker 1: is the thing that like, you know, you're like king
Speaker 1: and then there's just like image in people's head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you get the syncretic governmental structure that borrows mostly
Speaker 1: borrows isn't even the right words is where people are from,
Speaker 1: but like it comes from African systems, primarily in Golan
Speaker 1: and also I think Congo, and it also has some
Speaker 1: European elements that has indigenous elements within it. And historians
Speaker 1: seem to argue about all this because everyone really likes
Speaker 1: this place. If you're not evil, you really like this place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so everyone was like no, no, like that was us.
Speaker 1: We totally did that, you know. But the leaders are
Speaker 1: a mix of elected and appointed um in a hierarchy
Speaker 1: that has kind of an interesting both democratic and bottom
Speaker 1: up elements as well as autocratic top down element. The
Speaker 1: town leaders, I believe, were elected and together they wound
Speaker 1: up electing a king who then went in appointed family
Speaker 1: members to like lead a whole bunch of the ship. Mhm.
Speaker 1: There were churches there. There are a lot of churches.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were Catholic, but they practice one
Speaker 1: of those things that I love to talk to so much,
Speaker 1: about that show. They called themselves Christians and then kept
Speaker 1: on doing exactly what they were doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah Jesus,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, totally, yeah, totally, and then just continued entirely anyway.
Speaker 1: So so get this one leaf, you know, mixed that
Speaker 1: with this herb okay you know, yeah yeah, and then
Speaker 1: pray to the following spirits not guys anymore or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Cuelombo Cuellombo does palmaris or Angola jonga. It's
Speaker 1: mostly African born or Afro Brazilian folks, but there's a
Speaker 1: ton of other people to including indigenous people, mixed race people,
Speaker 1: and Europeans. Um. The Europeans tended to either be deserters
Speaker 1: from conscription. Basically, people were like, no, not fighting for
Speaker 1: the fucking Brazilians. Funck this. They run away into the mountains.
Speaker 1: And then also women escaping abuse of husbands would run
Speaker 1: into the mountains and go be part of the society.
Speaker 1: Anyone with a reason to run, you just get yourself
Speaker 1: to Angela Djonga. At its peak, there's anywhere between eleven
Speaker 1: thousand and thirty thousand people living in eleven towns, surrounded
Speaker 1: by innumerable small villages and homesteads and they're on decent
Speaker 1: terms with their neighbors, including like the white settlers around them. Um,
Speaker 1: they're just trading peacefully and ship because they just are
Speaker 1: there and no one's able to dislodge them. They start
Speaker 1: getting supplied gunpowder and shipped by urban merchants. I think
Speaker 1: enslave folks who worked for the merchants. And it's first king,
Speaker 1: or rather it's first high Lord. We're gonna go back
Speaker 1: to Africa for a second. Yeah, you've got this woman.
Speaker 1: Her name is aqual Tune. I cannot figure out how
Speaker 1: to pronounce this name. I looked for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we say yeah. I kind of feel like I had
Speaker 1: a duty to know this and I don't know no people.
Speaker 1: She's kind of a legend, so you know, people write
Speaker 1: a lot of things about her like they're fact, and
Speaker 1: those don't line up with each other. She was born
Speaker 1: god knows when in the Kingdom of Congo. That's Congo
Speaker 1: with a K. Yeah, like no one knows when she
Speaker 1: was born. People roughly know when she died. Um, she's
Speaker 1: born in Congo with a K, a kingdom that lasted
Speaker 1: about five hundred years that includes pieces of modern day Angola,
Speaker 1: and then the two countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo
Speaker 1: and the Republic of Congo. H She's born there. She's
Speaker 1: a princess. Her dad is the Many Congo, the King
Speaker 1: of the Congo. But she doesn't like sit around in
Speaker 1: a tower and like wait for a prince. She's not
Speaker 1: that sort of princess. She's the military leader of Congo
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, because she led a
Speaker 1: battalion of ten thousand warriors in a battle that only
Speaker 1: had fifteen thousand warriors on her side. So she's the
Speaker 1: military leader of the Congo. She fights the Portuguese in
Speaker 1: a battle in sixteen sixty five called the Battle of Mullah, which,
Speaker 1: because history is really messy, was mostly African soldiers on
Speaker 1: both sides, with European musketeers on both sides, but it
Speaker 1: was a battle between Congo and the Portuguese. Um she lost.
Speaker 1: This is the biggest problem that happened. Portuguese round up
Speaker 1: her entire fucking family, including her dad, the king, including her,
Speaker 1: including hundreds of nobles, thousands of other folks and sold
Speaker 1: them to sugar plantations in Brazil. Her son was with
Speaker 1: her at the battle and at the sugar plantation. She
Speaker 1: didn't stay put um. She and maybe her children led
Speaker 1: a rebellion at the plantation and then got herself and
Speaker 1: family the fuck to the micambo. Um. Yeah, and her son,
Speaker 1: one of her sons. Um. He's mostly known to history
Speaker 1: is Ganga Zoomba, although that name probably means great Lord. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's likely his title. Because he becomes the great Lord.
Speaker 1: He is elected the king of Angola Jonga and he
Speaker 1: is a legit a king. He has a palace, he
Speaker 1: has three wives, he has guards, he has ministers, fucking
Speaker 1: standing army. Yeah, like when you you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like rebels in the hills. One of them like
Speaker 1: calls himself king, Like no, this is a fucking nation.
Speaker 1: I don't think you get it. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking people, y'all.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, at the lowest the lowest esteate yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And he appoints his family to all the positions, including
Speaker 1: most importantly his nephews Zombie to the commander to be
Speaker 1: commander of the army. More and more people start showing
Speaker 1: up in the maroon nation. Okay, but they do this,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious your your take on this.
Speaker 1: They get people in a mixed, mixed sort of ways.
Speaker 1: People are running away. That's awesome people, um, and people
Speaker 1: who escape slavery will go back to where they're from
Speaker 1: at night and be like, yo, you gotta get away, man,
Speaker 1: it's fucking great out there. Yeah. And sometimes they would
Speaker 1: raid plantations and free people. Sometimes they would raid plantations
Speaker 1: and take slaves. Yeah, of course they would, but cap
Speaker 1: But it's really interesting because captives is kind of a
Speaker 1: better word because a goalajanga doesn't have chattel slavery, but
Speaker 1: it has unfree people of every race. If you want
Speaker 1: to get free, one of the ways that you can
Speaker 1: become free is you can go on a rate and
Speaker 1: capture someone else and have them take your place. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know, you're you're it's like you're still living
Speaker 1: in the same universe as the system that you set
Speaker 1: yourself free phone totally to another planet. You're still you're
Speaker 1: still a product of your of your time, you know,
Speaker 1: which sucks. And it's like, you know, uh, slavery or
Speaker 1: captivity was, Yeah, chattow slavery was the thing that was
Speaker 1: just so new. But like we're we're they're still Africans
Speaker 1: and indigenous and yeah, we've capturing people since the dawn
Speaker 1: of time, you know, what I'm saying. So their their
Speaker 1: concept of it is like, of course, it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I mean, this is different. It's not. It
Speaker 1: ain't what they're doing, Joe say it. Yeah no, And
Speaker 1: that's such an important point. Is like one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think that people try because we want
Speaker 1: a cleaner version of history, right, we want to be
Speaker 1: able to be like, all these people were good and
Speaker 1: bad and good and oppressed, and these people are bad
Speaker 1: oppressors and there's the Portuguese are the fucking bad ones
Speaker 1: in this story. Right, But it's like, but you don't
Speaker 1: have like the clean, perfect people who knew everything. And
Speaker 1: then also everyone throughout the entire fucking world. Not every culture,
Speaker 1: but most cultures practice some form of slavery and chattel
Speaker 1: slavery really was different. And that's the thing that I
Speaker 1: think that people don't want to yeah address you know,
Speaker 1: it's too Yeah, it's the thought is too ghastly. And
Speaker 1: because if if if you have to accept that, if
Speaker 1: you have to say that, then you have to be
Speaker 1: like then the domino effect of like, oh, that means
Speaker 1: that what these people are talking about in diversity, equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion is also true. Oh, man, maybe we do
Speaker 1: need to talk about reparations. Maybe we do. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: it's like, but if you're just like dude, it's just like, look, man,
Speaker 1: this is just that, you know, it's like ancient people
Speaker 1: have been doing this forever. It's like, no, ancient people
Speaker 1: have not been doing that forever. Yeah, you know, yeah totally.
Speaker 1: It's just actually a different thing. I can still sit
Speaker 1: in judgment and be like, you know what sucks capturing
Speaker 1: people and making them your slave? That sucks? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what's saying? Yeah? Yeah, the ones that the part,
Speaker 1: even if it is a tale as old as time,
Speaker 1: that still sucks too. Like that, you know, I'm saying, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know what else sucks is no, wait, no,
Speaker 1: you know what else is great? All the advertisers who
Speaker 1: support the show, none of whom have ever No, I
Speaker 1: can't even straight face, let us pray buy stuff instead
Speaker 1: of people. How's that that? You know what? We could
Speaker 1: go with that one? I'd rather you purchase, you don't,
Speaker 1: I'm saying objects rather than proper nouns, you know, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Al Right, here's some ats and we are back. So
Speaker 1: it might have been our most problematic transition we've ever done,
Speaker 1: and we've done a lot of good good Lord, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one was that was a struggle that was out there.
Speaker 1: I hope that people take the context of what we're
Speaker 1: saying instead of taking things out of Margaret. Text of
Speaker 1: what we're saying, give me a trouble over here, Margaret. So,
Speaker 1: Portugal and the Dutch are not happy about this place existence,
Speaker 1: so they keep attacking. But the thing is that they
Speaker 1: keep losing too, because of the Maroons. They really actually
Speaker 1: like not being they like being free. So they and
Speaker 1: they have spears and they have bows, and they have
Speaker 1: some guns, and they know the mountains really fucking well
Speaker 1: because they live there. And so they do what defeats
Speaker 1: great powers throughout history, the guerrilla warfare, the ship out
Speaker 1: of all the invading forces, and Zoomba himself, the Great
Speaker 1: Lord is not afraid to throw down once again, not
Speaker 1: a European king, Nope. During one campaign against his country
Speaker 1: um in sixteen seventy six and sixteen seventy seven, he
Speaker 1: gets wounded and a bunch of his kids and grandkids
Speaker 1: get captured and he freaks out, so he sues for peace.
Speaker 1: He writes the Portugal and it's like Hey, let's can
Speaker 1: I have my family back. In sixteen seventy eight, he
Speaker 1: sells his people out. He signs a treaty with the Portuguese,
Speaker 1: agreeing to move everyone to the lowlands where they be
Speaker 1: easier to deal with, and to return any runaway slaves.
Speaker 1: I've run across two different versions of this. He either
Speaker 1: promised to only let the people born free stay free,
Speaker 1: or he was like, all the people were supposed to
Speaker 1: stay free, but they'd stop rating and bringing more people
Speaker 1: into freedom. Okay, so we don't know, yeah, and some
Speaker 1: knows yeah, um, somebody knows. Yeah. Either way, this is
Speaker 1: not seen as good by the people who elected him king.
Speaker 1: He's in charge because they respect him, not because of like,
Speaker 1: you know, divine right or something. So his people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: fuck you. Um. In particular, his nephew, the commander of
Speaker 1: the army, whose name is Zoombie not Zoomba, leads a
Speaker 1: revolt against him, and I guess you could say this
Speaker 1: is Brazil's first coup and it will not be the
Speaker 1: last one. Zombie is a national hero in Brazil, and
Speaker 1: for really fucking good reasons. He was born free in Palmyras.
Speaker 1: He was captured as a little kid educated in slavery
Speaker 1: at a church, and then he busted out at fifteen,
Speaker 1: got the funk back to Palmyras. He led a revolt
Speaker 1: against his sellout uncle and he won as for his uncle. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his uncle dies of poison around this time. And
Speaker 1: there's two two versions of this story. The most common
Speaker 1: version is a zoombie and his crew poison him right
Speaker 1: for being a sellout. But there's a version that I've
Speaker 1: also heard that I like narratively, so I think it's
Speaker 1: more likely to be true. It does not actually make
Speaker 1: it more likely to be true, but it sounds dope
Speaker 1: with it. Does a version were zoom but poisoned himself
Speaker 1: because he was ashamed of what he did and he
Speaker 1: wanted to warn his friends not to trust the Portuguese.
Speaker 1: I like that narratively too. Yeah. I also think so
Speaker 1: as a as a as an aside, especially about this
Speaker 1: this um displaced in the mountains. I just think there's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing happening here in the sense that like
Speaker 1: the Brazilian forest and Angola are the same forest, They're
Speaker 1: just on the other side of the Atlantic, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So even when you think, like how
Speaker 1: these angold and freed slaves were able to be like,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna go live up here. It's because it's
Speaker 1: the same as where they're from, you know, It's just
Speaker 1: it's just how plate tectonics work. It's the same forest, right,
Speaker 1: It's kind of dope if you think about it like that,
Speaker 1: in the same way that like if you think about,
Speaker 1: like the science nerd, the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Isles,
Speaker 1: that they're the same mountains, you know, it's just on
Speaker 1: the other side of the ocean. So so so when
Speaker 1: you think about again, like I'll say that again, like,
Speaker 1: which is part of to me, just the the beauty
Speaker 1: of the diaspora between black and indigenous people. It's like
Speaker 1: we've been living in the same forest, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just on the other side of the ocean. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that makes so much sense. And also like yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're like they're in forests that they fucking basically grew
Speaker 1: up in. Yeah, And the Portuguese are like, we know,
Speaker 1: boats in Portugal. I don't know. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: like y'ah too far north, you don't know about this
Speaker 1: equator life. Yeah. Yeah, So Zoobie wins this revolt and
Speaker 1: Palmyra stays free some people, not most people. They stick
Speaker 1: to the sign treaty. They decided safer and they moved
Speaker 1: down to the low Lens. And this is gonna shock
Speaker 1: you what happened. The Portuguese didn't stick to their treaty. Wait,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry what? Yeah? No, you think that Western civilization,
Speaker 1: if there's one thing that's good at its keeping promises.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you said, they didn't keep their word. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is the only time in history it's
Speaker 1: gotta be man because you know. Yeah, so the countries
Speaker 1: are the people who decided to trust the Portuguese get
Speaker 1: captured back into slave horse. The people who stick with
Speaker 1: the rebel zoom bie, they get to keep their place
Speaker 1: for fifteen more years because it takes fifteen more years
Speaker 1: before eventually and there's like constant attacks that whole time,
Speaker 1: and they keep fighting them off. January nineteen sorry not
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, was like wow, that sounds like four
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen years. Yeah, just bad at mac you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the Portuguese finally wipe out the Columbo does
Speaker 1: pomaras Um and they were set because again this is
Speaker 1: moral complexity. Week they were wiped out by a Portuguese
Speaker 1: lead army of indigenous people. Brazil has a really long
Speaker 1: history of using indigenous people against each other and against
Speaker 1: Maroons like every other colonial Yeah, this community lasted almost
Speaker 1: a hundred years. It's the longest lasting rebel society I've
Speaker 1: run across so far. In this show, once again, always
Speaker 1: fun to remind people that the Confederacy lasted four fucking years. Uh,
Speaker 1: Nirvana lasted longer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the band Nirvana lasted
Speaker 1: longer than uh. Yeah, to go around replace all the
Speaker 1: flags of what was there, things like some like weird
Speaker 1: happy face or something that face. Yeah. It took eighteen
Speaker 1: attempts by the colonizers over this almost hundred year period. Uh,
Speaker 1: and even against artillery. The main town held out for
Speaker 1: forty two days before it fell. When it fell, two
Speaker 1: people in the main town killed themselves. Rather than be
Speaker 1: returned to slavery. Zoombie went on the run, but he
Speaker 1: was caught and beheaded, and his head was paraded around
Speaker 1: on a pike because at that point he was seen
Speaker 1: as a demigod and invincible, and so they wanted to
Speaker 1: prove that he was vincible. He was vincible, Yeah, vinced yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, he could get vinced. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: one of the most he is one of the coolest
Speaker 1: people I've ever read about in history. Um, and this
Speaker 1: is only the largest of the Quilumbos. There are a
Speaker 1: ton more, enough that they have two different fucking words
Speaker 1: for it, you know, across the entire country and across
Speaker 1: the entire New World, because people worked really fucking hard
Speaker 1: to be free and white history doesn't like admitting that
Speaker 1: that was the cooler kind of rebel around Brazil at
Speaker 1: this time. You're also the boring kind of rebel, the
Speaker 1: rich white Brazilians who wanted to be free from Brazil
Speaker 1: to keep having their colonial venture like the US. Did
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, um, in fact, they were inspired by
Speaker 1: the U. S Revolution. Yeah. I was gonna say, there's
Speaker 1: a good number of Confederates that left America to go
Speaker 1: to Brazil to continue that the the Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, the experience or the experiment with the Confederacy
Speaker 1: because they felt like America lost its way, but we
Speaker 1: could we could keep it going down here. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: in this case, I'm talking about the Revolutionary War. But
Speaker 1: but that makes sense. A confederate like also doing that. Um,
Speaker 1: now I I find the U s Revolution to be
Speaker 1: this like thing that seems like on the surface, like
Speaker 1: really cool, but it's actually just cementing a colonial relationship,
Speaker 1: like kind of a lateral move um from my point
Speaker 1: of view. But so, and that's what happens in the end.
Speaker 1: In Brazil, these less interesting revolutionaries create the Hire of
Speaker 1: Brazil in eighteen eighty nine, they have a coup and
Speaker 1: become a republic, and they're still settler colonial state. They
Speaker 1: go from a sugar plantation economy to a mining economy
Speaker 1: to a cattle ranching economy. Always slave labor um. Cattle
Speaker 1: ranching is gonna come up a whole bunch in today's story.
Speaker 1: They were the last country in the Western world to
Speaker 1: abolish slavery. Oh, this makes sense of the Confederacy ship, right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until eight that they finally get of slavery legally.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that rich people suddenly decided that
Speaker 1: they cared about slavery at the end of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century is that the economy was shifting away from um
Speaker 1: from enslaved people to underpaid immigrant labor. Yeah, specifically because
Speaker 1: it was cheaper and a million Italians came over and
Speaker 1: got treated so badly as wage workers that Italy for
Speaker 1: a while bandits people from going to Brazil. Wow. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I only just like, you know, slavery is just so messy.
Speaker 1: It's just got a lot of baggage, you know. I
Speaker 1: just want to be able to do all this stuff
Speaker 1: without all the baggage. You don't have to pay health
Speaker 1: insurance for, you know, like you don't have to you
Speaker 1: don't have to keep a wage worker alive. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the slaves, actually they have to live here. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't live here. Yeah. Yeah. Along the way from forward
Speaker 1: from there, Brazil goes through a fucking thousand twists and turns,
Speaker 1: including indigenous people leading the war, a war against the Jesuit,
Speaker 1: indigenous people waiting a war against the combined forces of
Speaker 1: the Spanish and Portuguese in seventeen fifty nine, and this
Speaker 1: Christian mystic Antonio Concierro. Uh, this herodic guy who wandered
Speaker 1: around basically preaching Christian communism but not under that name.
Speaker 1: And the abolitionus slavery yeah he uh. Some of the underpinnings,
Speaker 1: like theological underpinnings, not sometimes it's a little bit indirect,
Speaker 1: but like of sort of like black liberation theology and
Speaker 1: um sort of just the left leaning like uh, faith
Speaker 1: of people of color in America, like a lot of
Speaker 1: that actually came from Brazil and some of the thinkers
Speaker 1: down there. I believe he was like one of the
Speaker 1: one of them, one of the dudes. Yeah, no, that
Speaker 1: makes sense because a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 1: liberation theology is going to keep coming up in this episode.
Speaker 1: And and the church was like trying to shut this
Speaker 1: guy up. They were like, no, you can't preach anymore,
Speaker 1: like you know, like everywhere he would go. And to
Speaker 1: quote historian Carlos m Rama, in hardly five years after
Speaker 1: the abolition of slavery, Antonio Concierro and a group of
Speaker 1: peasants occupied the abandoned Canudos Haciendo and they're established a
Speaker 1: community of workers based to some degree on self management
Speaker 1: beyond the exploitation of landowners and the laws of the
Speaker 1: Republican state. The swift arrival of a large number of
Speaker 1: slaves left of that work or means of livelihood by
Speaker 1: manumission is no surprise, nor is the fact that in
Speaker 1: the in the few months the community number twenty five thousand,
Speaker 1: all dedicated to agricultural and livestock work. The community was
Speaker 1: founded as you cleared, as d Kaana says, in the
Speaker 1: appropriation of homes and their furnishings, in the absolute community
Speaker 1: of the land, pastors, flocks, and herds and all farm products.
Speaker 1: Concierro promoted a strain of Christian communism, fought against the
Speaker 1: consumption of alcohol as much as against clerical influence, did
Speaker 1: not recognize the state or any constitutional authorities, refused to
Speaker 1: pay taxes, held no respect for the military, permitted divorce
Speaker 1: and free love, and above all abolished private property. And
Speaker 1: there's no prison. But there's no prison though, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they kick you out if you sunk up. And
Speaker 1: I have no idea whether it's like it's one of
Speaker 1: these things where like this sounds fucking awesome or shitty
Speaker 1: and culty or maybe both. Yeah, that's that's what I'm like.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's what we're getting at here like that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little a little complicated because a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff's dope, and a lot of stuff is
Speaker 1: like yo, yeah, yeah, a lot of people like people
Speaker 1: let people have a beer after work, relaxed. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: took four military attempts to shut this basically commune down.
Speaker 1: The first three failed, leaving five thousand dead on which
Speaker 1: side I don't know. I'm really annoyed because this is
Speaker 1: since this is like a side note, I only have
Speaker 1: like one source on this, you know, I didn't The
Speaker 1: fourth attempt annihilated it, like literally they went in and
Speaker 1: killed half the people living there. Whack. But what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is Brazil is a fucking interesting place. Lots of
Speaker 1: people wanted to be independent for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: and the church and the left intersect time and time again,
Speaker 1: which will tie into our main story. Proper, was something
Speaker 1: really good we should be sponsored by. I'm pushing for turnal.
Speaker 1: If if we were sponsored by some sort of like
Speaker 1: soul food restaurant, or like some sort of like ramen spot,
Speaker 1: like a local like community of like of like local
Speaker 1: like mom and pop restaurants, may because that means we personally,
Speaker 1: as the voices in the show, could walk in and
Speaker 1: benefit from this, you know that that would be hard
Speaker 1: or some sort of like cannabis dispensary spot, Like if
Speaker 1: we were sponsored by one of those and we just
Speaker 1: have like a promo code joint, that actually would be
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, promo code joint pun attended bars. I
Speaker 1: want to delivery. I want a Ramen delivery service to do.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine if we're sponsored by like a Ramen
Speaker 1: delivery thing and we could be like, hey, they and
Speaker 1: they gave us like seven free things, so that like
Speaker 1: we could be slurping it right now, and I would
Speaker 1: start voicing ads. If if you are a local Ramen place,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a worker's co op, voice ads, yeah,
Speaker 1: voice the hell out of him ads. And here's some
Speaker 1: other ads. And we are back. We're talking about Brazil
Speaker 1: and we're getting up towards the nineteenth century. The I
Speaker 1: started doing this thing where now I just like provide
Speaker 1: context for pretty much the first half of the week.
Speaker 1: But I think it's I think it helps because I
Speaker 1: think that like dropping in and suddenly being like, wait,
Speaker 1: why is the church on the side of the workers,
Speaker 1: you know? Or you know no, That's what's so hard
Speaker 1: about history and like and also what I love about
Speaker 1: teaching it because it's like every context has a context.
Speaker 1: Where do you start the story? You know? And it's
Speaker 1: all interesting if you like really are like just interested
Speaker 1: in the human experience, Like it's all dope, it's all
Speaker 1: like yeah, so I love it. I love that you
Speaker 1: went all the way back to the Stone Age to
Speaker 1: explain that's about to happen in in the nineteen hunt.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I appreciate that. So the the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century is rocky as funck. There's rebellions from all sides.
Speaker 1: The beginning of the twentieth century, the left is overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: anarchist because they just imported a million fucking Italis Um.
Speaker 1: Then after the revolution, communism takes center stage. Brazil gets
Speaker 1: a dictator, not a communist dictator, named Vargus in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty and three different groups trying to overthrow him. The
Speaker 1: constitutionalists trying to bring back the republic I think, the
Speaker 1: communists and the fascists all try to drive him out
Speaker 1: and they all fail, until finally there's another coup, this
Speaker 1: time for democracy gets him out in nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: because ship's messy. He then wins an election in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: gets back into power, and then kills himself in nineteen fifty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get another dictatorship in nineteen sixty eight, democracies restored
Speaker 1: in ninety five. That is the bigger broad strokes twentieth century,
Speaker 1: um Brazil. But let's talk about the fucking Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the Amazon rainforest, you sound like
Speaker 1: you're lying. You get stats like we've only identified one
Speaker 1: percent of the species here, or while the most that temperate,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, exactly, like the most diverse. Just let's just
Speaker 1: start there. Yeah, yeah, did you ever get do you
Speaker 1: ever just get fucking sad thinking about the fact that
Speaker 1: it's like the undersea creatures that we don't even know
Speaker 1: what are, but we've already made extinct, Like it fucks
Speaker 1: me up that we're making it. Yeah, that like and
Speaker 1: you know, self plug here absolutely shameless. Like the first
Speaker 1: lyric I say is before y'all could cut it all down,
Speaker 1: y'all even explore it, you know, before you understood what
Speaker 1: it could do, y'all just destroyed it. And I'm like
Speaker 1: the idea that like you're trying to colonize Mars but
Speaker 1: still don't know the forest is like you know, Mohamie
Speaker 1: has this saying where he's like, man, you could spell,
Speaker 1: but you don't know your A, B C s. Where
Speaker 1: it's like you're so smart, but you're so dumb, you know,
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's that like you said, like
Speaker 1: there's one percent because we could still And what's crazy,
Speaker 1: It's like, that's just us. But those who have lived
Speaker 1: in the Amazon for centuries are like, I know exactly
Speaker 1: what that frog is. I've been seeing it. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. It's just y'all, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. No, I'm calling it a frog because that's
Speaker 1: the closest you would understand of what that is. But
Speaker 1: we got a name for it, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: We've had for centuries. Yeah, yeah, no, it's I fucking
Speaker 1: it breaks it breaks my heart. Yeah. So, the most
Speaker 1: diverse temperate forests in the world is Appalachia as species
Speaker 1: of trees, whereas a random two point five acre chunk
Speaker 1: of the Amazon has more than four hundred species. Is
Speaker 1: another fucking stat I found. Some of these stats are
Speaker 1: from the late eighties, because most of the books I
Speaker 1: was reading about this from the late eighties really nineties. Uh.
Speaker 1: When it floods, fish swim through the canopy and eat
Speaker 1: the fruit from the trees, just from the top of
Speaker 1: the trees. Yeah. So yeah, I can't even picture it.
Speaker 1: I can't even sucking. Two of the world's surface area
Speaker 1: of all bird species Amazon rainforest is three quarters the
Speaker 1: size of the continental US. I read pieces where they
Speaker 1: talk about some cutting that happened over a couple of years,
Speaker 1: some burning, and they'll be like, it's to California's worth
Speaker 1: of burning. That's like psycho Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna the other part for me, And the other
Speaker 1: part for me is I'm like, y'all people live there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I just like when you think about the fact
Speaker 1: that you think and you just like, we talk about
Speaker 1: this forest as if it's like it's this uncharted, you know,
Speaker 1: raw earth, in which it is, but also you talk
Speaker 1: about a swap the size of three Californias. People live there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you just like, what do you like? Y'all acted
Speaker 1: like y'all y'all act like nobody there, Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and then they do a lot of murdering um of
Speaker 1: everyone they run across. And yeah. It's also like places
Speaker 1: where you have, like, you know, groups of people who
Speaker 1: didn't contact the outside world or didn't contact the Western
Speaker 1: world until the fucking like nineteen sixties and ship you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to assume that the listener comes
Speaker 1: in understanding that the rainforest matters, whether from biodiversity or
Speaker 1: carbon capture, or just you shouldn't go around and steal
Speaker 1: people like fucking land. You know, do you know how
Speaker 1: it got its name? I only learned this while researching this.
Speaker 1: Talk to him. So, some of the early colonial explorers,
Speaker 1: they got in a fight with the Tupaia people, and
Speaker 1: women were leading the warriors into battle, so they named
Speaker 1: them the Amazons, from the Greek word for like the
Speaker 1: semi myth of women warriors, the Amazons. And what's funny
Speaker 1: about it, it's like all these layers to it from
Speaker 1: my point of view, because the Greeks believe that the
Speaker 1: Amazons were real, and then historians later were like, no,
Speaker 1: it was just like some Greek myths ship and then
Speaker 1: like eventually people are like, yeah, no, like a lot
Speaker 1: of the step people who came in and like just
Speaker 1: murdered the ship. Out of all of the fucking great
Speaker 1: civilizations like Greece had women warriors and women war queens,
Speaker 1: and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, the Amazons were real.
Speaker 1: They are also real among these people. The whole thing
Speaker 1: about like amazon and meaning without breast is not true.
Speaker 1: That comes later. It probably comes from the Iranian word
Speaker 1: for warrior and I really like the Amazons, the Greek
Speaker 1: Ones and the rainforest, and I'm really annoyed that one
Speaker 1: of the world's richest men has made his fortune off
Speaker 1: of this word for like strong women Amazon. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: word jungle. I know, I'm not I'm I've actually been
Speaker 1: on the entomology kick. The word jungle is from some
Speaker 1: Brita colonial bullshit. Really, when Britain was like fucking over India.
Speaker 1: There's this Hindi word for waste land that sounds kind
Speaker 1: of like jungle, Like like a dry, barren, arid area,
Speaker 1: a useless area, a place that civilization is not. Is
Speaker 1: what the British decided is a jungle? Oh wow? Not
Speaker 1: like a place where all our medicine comes from, right,
Speaker 1: like our medicine cabinet. Like you know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is really what this is? Yeah? Yeah. So the Amazon,
Speaker 1: besides the concisestadors and the slave raids and the missionaries
Speaker 1: in some trade, has been sort of left alone by Brazil.
Speaker 1: It's the non conquered area and a lot of ways
Speaker 1: until rubber colonists had been harvesting or trading for rubber
Speaker 1: for a couple hundred years already, but natural rubber kind
Speaker 1: of sucks. It gets sticky in the heat, it gets
Speaker 1: brittle in the cold. In eighteen thirty nine, Charles Goodyear,
Speaker 1: the man named after a blimp, uh, mixed that ship
Speaker 1: with sulfur. He got vulcanized rubber. He didn't actually he
Speaker 1: wasn't actually very good at this. He didn't really he
Speaker 1: kind of figured it out, but then he died broke
Speaker 1: because he never really figured it out. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later, another guy figured out how to do it
Speaker 1: at actual scales, names Hancock, and no one from history
Speaker 1: remembers him, even though he got fucking rich off of it.
Speaker 1: Um And the Industrial Revolution needs rubber for tires and
Speaker 1: conveyor belts and aracers, which is the word really on
Speaker 1: amology kicks today. I don't know why where the word
Speaker 1: rubber comes from is from the fucking pencil eraser like
Speaker 1: being yeah, the British rubber. Oh wow, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that was my like. And they're making shoe soles
Speaker 1: and fucking everything electrical installation. Within ten years of course,
Speaker 1: they're making condoms out of it, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: in latex. Yeah, and rubbers. Um. So the rainforest is
Speaker 1: suddenly popular with these tiny towns supporting rubber extraction. And
Speaker 1: this will shock you. The people who do this are
Speaker 1: exploited by their bosses. Yeah, I know, the people who
Speaker 1: are out at the edges of civilization are being exploited
Speaker 1: by their bosses. It's crazy, dude. Yeah. They also enslave
Speaker 1: a lot of people to do it. Even though slavery
Speaker 1: had been outlawed decades prior. It doesn't matter because there
Speaker 1: out past the reach of law. If anyone wants to
Speaker 1: hear about the gay Irish anti colonial knight who brought
Speaker 1: down some Amazon rubber plantation slavers, check out the episode
Speaker 1: on Roger Casement we did last year. Um, he was
Speaker 1: fucking cool. More than a hundred thousand rubber tappers are
Speaker 1: in the Amazon by the year, and they're treated like
Speaker 1: absolute shit. You can't do anything without the boss's permission. Um,
Speaker 1: you have to bribe the boss of more rubber to
Speaker 1: get away with anything. Um, including like go to town
Speaker 1: and should I think thousand and upwards the ten thousand
Speaker 1: people a year are dying doing this work. Most rubber
Speaker 1: tappers they go into debt and you enter essentially debt slavery. Um,
Speaker 1: because they're being ripped on they're being ripped off constantly,
Speaker 1: and you just go further and further a debt the
Speaker 1: longer you work. And if you try to skip down
Speaker 1: on your debt, they'll set you on fire. If you're
Speaker 1: caught growing food, If you're caught growing food instead of
Speaker 1: buying it from the company store, they'll set you on fire.
Speaker 1: Set you off, okay, like okay, yeah, like chill set
Speaker 1: them on fire. Yeah, alright, like what are we doing here? Man? Like?
Speaker 1: All right? Yeah? Um, schools are forbidden because not only
Speaker 1: can no one read, but they also keep people from
Speaker 1: being able to do basic math. I literally had never
Speaker 1: heard the word enumero it before, but these people were
Speaker 1: kept literate and enumerate numerate. Yeah, so you just don't
Speaker 1: know how many hours you've been here and how many
Speaker 1: units of rubber that you just dug up. You just
Speaker 1: don't know. And they're they're taking ten percent off the top,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you can take off whatever percent off
Speaker 1: the top they want, and you fucking fight them, they'll
Speaker 1: just set you on fire. That's crazy. And there's an
Speaker 1: interesting tension between indigenous people and these rubber tappers, one
Speaker 1: that will probably be familiar to anyone who reads about
Speaker 1: the ship anywhere in colonized areas. There's a hundred years
Speaker 1: of bloody conflict between the two groups. But they also
Speaker 1: intermarried frequently, and most of what the rubber tappers knew
Speaker 1: about the forest came from these marriages and from conversations
Speaker 1: with indigenous people mm hmm. And really interestingly, and it's
Speaker 1: very important to the story. They did this sustainably, Unlike
Speaker 1: most like colonizers who go into like an untouched not
Speaker 1: actually untouched, but you know, perceived as untouched wilderness or whatever.
Speaker 1: They set up all of their rubber harvesting, at least
Speaker 1: in Brazil actually right across the river and Bolivia, they
Speaker 1: would just like fucking clear different. Yeah, but the rubber
Speaker 1: tappers in Brazil would like um work with specific trees
Speaker 1: they knew well and would like knew exactly how much
Speaker 1: rubber they could take out of them without damaging them further,
Speaker 1: and like just and even when they would like clear
Speaker 1: some area to grow food when they could, they would
Speaker 1: do that for a little while and let the forest
Speaker 1: reclaim it and then do it in a new spot
Speaker 1: and like actually pay attention to how the indigenous people
Speaker 1: did it and do it that way. But there's still
Speaker 1: this tension. Even though they've kind of like learned from
Speaker 1: the indigenous people, they're also fighting over territory and yeah,
Speaker 1: a little a little pragmatism, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: in play here. Yeah, Anyway, the boom falls apart at
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteenth century because someone smuggles seeds
Speaker 1: to Asia and the invasive tree does really well in
Speaker 1: various other places where it doesn't have like its own
Speaker 1: funguses that keep it in check, and it could be
Speaker 1: like kind of more mono cropt The rubber tappers remain
Speaker 1: in the Amazon, which was very good in some ways
Speaker 1: because in World War Two, the Asian rubber market was
Speaker 1: controlled by Japan. Suddenly the Allies need rubber, and so
Speaker 1: you get these soldiers of rubber. I've never heard about this,
Speaker 1: whoa tens of thousands of poor workers are shipped into
Speaker 1: the Amazon and like Germany's hanging out in submarines, not
Speaker 1: shooting down the boats of the soldiers of rubber because
Speaker 1: they don't want the Allies to get rubber because you
Speaker 1: need it for industrial war. Yeah, for war. Yeah. Half
Speaker 1: of these workers, these soldiers die of malaria during the war,
Speaker 1: and after the war they will promise, pensions, and ship.
Speaker 1: They're completely abandoned. Most of them can't leave the forest
Speaker 1: and return to their families because they're now in debt
Speaker 1: to their bosses, and they'll be set on fire. Set
Speaker 1: on fire man. Yeah, I don't how long. The set
Speaker 1: on fire thing like that was a specific one I
Speaker 1: read about, and I never read about any other method
Speaker 1: that they used to kill people. And it's very evocative.
Speaker 1: They'd like wrap you in latex, which is flammable, and
Speaker 1: then set you on fire. One of these original rubber
Speaker 1: tappers not a soldier of rubber but which just a
Speaker 1: funny word. Yeah, it was our protagonist grandfather, and another
Speaker 1: was our protagonist father, and another was this week's protagonist himself,
Speaker 1: Chico Mendez. Jico Mendez was born on December four, near
Speaker 1: the end of World War two. His full name is
Speaker 1: Francisco Alvez Mendez Fiel Home. He was one of eighteen kids,
Speaker 1: only six of who made Yeah, only six of who
Speaker 1: made it to adulthood. That's a fucking rough it is
Speaker 1: in the jungle. His family's poor as fuck. His dad, though,
Speaker 1: knew how to read and how to count. Um. His
Speaker 1: dad was cool. His dad hated parties and gossip and
Speaker 1: just wanted to talk about how they were being exploited
Speaker 1: by the bosses. His friends kind of hated him, but
Speaker 1: I liked him, you know, mm hmmm. And his dad
Speaker 1: had a club foot and walked the limp and had
Speaker 1: like physical disabilities, but still taped rubber um and had
Speaker 1: a harder time bringing in enough money, but still did so.
Speaker 1: When Chico is nine, he started following his dad into
Speaker 1: the forest a tap rubber by the time, and this
Speaker 1: is a ten mile circuit they walk every day. You
Speaker 1: come to know each rubber tree personally. They get several
Speaker 1: gallons of raw latex every day, plus whatever they're able
Speaker 1: to hunt. You go out with a shotgun and a
Speaker 1: knife and a machette ye, go gather what you can
Speaker 1: from the jungle. Once they're home. They smoked the latex
Speaker 1: to prevent bacteria from growing in it, and a day's
Speaker 1: haul is about six to seven pounds of rubber after
Speaker 1: fifteen hours of work. They could only do this three
Speaker 1: to four days a week because they didn't have enough
Speaker 1: territory to sustainably harvest more than three. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't even fucking can't get my head. Yeah no, And
Speaker 1: there's like there's so many stories of of like just
Speaker 1: like his childhood where it's like the first time you
Speaker 1: shoot a monkey and realize it looks like a person,
Speaker 1: and like the brother who's killed by random wild animal
Speaker 1: and like or like I touched the wrong caterpillar and
Speaker 1: now I'm dead. You know, during the rainy season, the
Speaker 1: rubber tappers collect brazil nuts for sale instead. And by
Speaker 1: the time he's eleven, chicoes a full time rubber tapper.
Speaker 1: He learned a little bit about how to read from
Speaker 1: his dad, so he used to read the newspaper allowed
Speaker 1: to other tappers. But he wasn't like he's gonna be
Speaker 1: this like labor leader, right, and so people kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to be like this charismatic kid. Like no, everyone's
Speaker 1: like now that kids used still wander around open mouth
Speaker 1: and drooling. Yeah. And then when he was twelve, a
Speaker 1: stranger swept into town and bought an abandoned rubber tapping homestead.
Speaker 1: You Claydie's Fernandez Tavora, and he's a communist rebel in
Speaker 1: hiding and he never bothered cooking because he didn't like to,
Speaker 1: so we just ate sugar. How long did he live,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think In the end, he gets
Speaker 1: married and makes his wife cook for him. But but
Speaker 1: he's a man after my own heart in this regard
Speaker 1: of hat and just eating sugar. I just eat this
Speaker 1: stick right here. It's real sweet, it's great. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: had failed to overthrow the dictator in the thirties. Then
Speaker 1: he escaped a prison island by dressing up as a
Speaker 1: woman and getting out on a boat. Then he'd hit
Speaker 1: in Bolivia for a while and worked started working as
Speaker 1: a rubber tapper, which he was like not constitutionally suited for.
Speaker 1: But he had to hide in the jungle because he's
Speaker 1: a communist rebel. Yeah, he got caught stirring up labor
Speaker 1: organizing in Bolivia, so he had to run back to Brazil,
Speaker 1: where he radicalized one of the most important labor leaders
Speaker 1: in Brazil's history, Chico Mendez, a twelve year old. Chico
Speaker 1: was like, this guy's cool as fuck, and he reads
Speaker 1: books books all the time and tried to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: I like him, And so soon Euclides is teaching Chico
Speaker 1: how to read even more and teaching him marks, teaching
Speaker 1: him that labor produces all value. Yeah. When she goes seventeen,
Speaker 1: his mother dies of a complication during her nineteen pregnancy,
Speaker 1: you'd think, you know, like, I bet you, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's fucking horrible. And it's just like I feel like
Speaker 1: by the time I in my like nineteenth pregnancy, I
Speaker 1: feel like i'd be like, it's fine, I got this,
Speaker 1: you know. Listen, after witnessing the birth of my youngest,
Speaker 1: I am like, I don't know how anyone does that again. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why anyone has siblings. Yeah, after to
Speaker 1: have his wots, I know, I would be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I experienced it. It was great. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing that again. Ye no, I like nine times trip
Speaker 1: she keeps getting worse. In Brazil, Leftish government came into
Speaker 1: power to try and fix some of the ship that
Speaker 1: was going bad. A rural movement started popping off. Landless
Speaker 1: peasants started pushing for land reform, which is to say,
Speaker 1: have workable land available to them instead of owned by
Speaker 1: the rich people. Activists and the Catholic Church start pushing
Speaker 1: for the education of the working class. Because of this,
Speaker 1: left wing things doing this crazy stuff like working with
Speaker 1: the church to educate people of the right wing, supported
Speaker 1: by the US and the CIA, staged a coup in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four installed a dictator. Eucleides gets more and
Speaker 1: more paranoid, right the communist rebel, and he starts losing
Speaker 1: his ship. He's convinced, for very good reason, that people
Speaker 1: are after him. He starts getting sick. Then one day
Speaker 1: he went off to walk to the hospital and he
Speaker 1: never came back. He probably just died of being sick.
Speaker 1: He might have died by being caught and executed, or
Speaker 1: and this is the least likely by far, maybe he's
Speaker 1: still living in Brazil to this day, fomenting revolution or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but his last words to his protege Mendez, who's twenty
Speaker 1: two at this time, is and I am paraphrasing here,
Speaker 1: don't just go throw yourself into some military looking leftist
Speaker 1: thing and get yourself killed. Join a fucking union organized,
Speaker 1: gets shipped done. M hmm. Some ship he does get done,
Speaker 1: which I will talk about on Wednesday. But first, prop,
Speaker 1: what ship do you get done? What's the plug a bulls? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be getting done. Uh yeah, the cold Brew has
Speaker 1: been re upped. I'm excited about that terraform called brew.
Speaker 1: Get you some coffee, Um, please, get you some coffee.
Speaker 1: There's that. Uh you know, we got the politics who
Speaker 1: Prop season two. We've been cracking a bit kind of fun,
Speaker 1: like introducing YadA the homies, Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: have I've known over the years that do like super
Speaker 1: dope stuff and are involved. Um the also yeah, also,
Speaker 1: like the news has gotten much more comical, so it
Speaker 1: makes it easier to you know, have stuff to talk about,
Speaker 1: you say, you know so so that helps. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and prop hip hop dot Com like I'm releasing music,
Speaker 1: releasing poems right now. Um it's a good time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so if you got anything you want to plug, no,
Speaker 1: I just head politics or prop Prop's got some good
Speaker 1: episodes so so, I mean always has been coming in hot.
Speaker 1: We've becoming it hot man, it's been dope. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: your titles have been a base as an episode called
Speaker 1: whose Man's is this? Yeah, I was looking at that
Speaker 1: earlier today. I'm gonna listen to that bro, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: probably the only one I want to hear telling me
Speaker 1: about what's going on in Congress because everyone else is annoying.
Speaker 1: Was annoying. Like I just feel like if anyone was
Speaker 1: in the room right now, you would be like yoh, hey, okay, boy,
Speaker 1: get your who bray, Hey, get your boy dog like, hey,
Speaker 1: get your girl? What is she up there screaming about
Speaker 1: right now? Hey, shut the funk up? Who is she?
Speaker 1: That's the way anyone would be in his room right now.
Speaker 1: It's so funny, So you all should check out those
Speaker 1: things and yes, listen to us more on Wednesday. Cool
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. Or more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website cool zone media dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.