Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes, was a Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader, and environmentalist assassinated by a rancher on this day in 1988.

Chico Mendes was born on 15 December 1944, in a rubber reserve called Seringal Bom Futuro, outside of Xapuri, a small town in the state of Acre. He was the son of a second-generation rubber tapper, Francisco Mendes, and his wife, Iracê.

Mendes was taught to read and write by a man named Euclides Fernando Távora, an activist turned rubber tapper. Most of his practice came from newspaper clippings on social and political issues within Brazil. These articles opened Chico's eyes to the widespread injustices in society, adding to his dissatisfaction with the treatment of seringueiros.

After learning what he could from Távora, Mendes became a literacy teacher in hopes of educating his community. As his fellow workers became more aware of unjust treatment, they formed the Rural Workers’ Union, and the more localized Xapuri Rubber Tappers Union. Both of these organizations worked through peaceful protest to stop the logging and burning of the rainforest that acted as their livelihood.

By the mid-1980s, Chico was known as both a radical unionist and an activist, though he also ran for several local political positions such as state deputy and city councilor.

At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.

— Chico Mendes

To save the rainforest, Chico Mendes and the rubber workers union asked the government to set up reserves as they wanted people to use the forest without damaging it. They also used a very effective technique they called the 'empate' where rubber tappers blocked the way into rubber reserves, preventing their destruction.

The Rubber Tappers' Union was created in 1975 in the nearby town of Brasileia, with Wilson Pinheiro elected as the union's president and Mendes as its secretary.

When the first meeting of this new union was held in 1985 in the capital Brasilia, rubber tappers from all over the country came. The discussion expanded from the threats to their own livelihoods to the larger issues of road paving, cattle ranching, and deforestation. The meeting also caught the attention of the international environmentalist movement, giving the rubber tappers a larger audience for their grievances. The group embraced a larger alliance with environmentalism, rather than strict Marxism, in spite of the bourgeois associations of the former. Another result of these discussions was the coining of the concept and the term "extractive reserves". In November of that year, Adrian Cowell, an English filmmaker, filmed much of the proceedings of this meeting as part of a documentary he was making about Mendes, which aired in 1990.

In 1988 a man named Darly Alves da Silva bought part of a rubber reserve called Cachoeira, where relatives of Mendes lived, and which was affiliated to the local Rural Workers Union in Xapuri. While the sale of the section was disputed by the family of the vendor, who claimed he had no legal right to sell it, Silva tried to drive them off their land and increase his ranch holdings. The rubber tappers of Cachoeira stood firm and set up road blocks to keep Silva out.

In 1988, Mendes launched a campaign to stop Silva from logging the area that its inhabitants wanted demarcated as an extractive reserve. Mendes not only managed to stop the planned deforestation and create the reserve, but also gained a warrant for Darly's arrest for a murder committed in another state, Paraná. He delivered the warrant to the federal police, but it was never acted upon.

On the evening of Thursday, 22 December 1988, Mendes was assassinated in his Xapuri home by Darci, the son of Darly Alves da Silva. The shooting took place exactly one week after Mendes' 44th birthday when he had predicted he would "not live until Christmas".

Mendes was the 90th rural activist murdered that year in Brazil. Many felt that although the trial was proceeding against Mendes' killers, the roles of the ranchers' union, the Rural Democratic Union, and the Brazilian Federal Police in his death were ignored.

Chico Mendes’ death legitimized the struggle for conservation and unionization in the Amazon for a global audience, and support for the movements poured in immediately following his death. The strides forward made by activists in the wake of Mendes’ death are multifaceted, encompassing Indigenous sovereignty and alliance, the formation of extractive reserves, and some government support for Mendes’ activism.

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