crime

What Changed, and Didn’t, After the 1988 Slaying of a Rain Forest Hero in Brazil

By Andrew C. Revkin

The Fight to Save the Amazon

In 1988, the murder of Chico Mendes sparked a movement of environmental activists, celebrities and indigenous peoples that made saving the Brazilian rain forest an international rallying cry. But what is happening there now?

By RETRO REPORT on November 27, 2016.

I was happy to see this fresh Retro Report production on the legacy of Chico Mendes, the Brazilian rain forest defender who was slain by a ranching family in December, 1988 as land conflicts followed road building in the depths of the Amazon. Retro Report is an innovative journalism project revisiting stories long after the headlines have flowed by. The resulting videos provide an invaluable learning tool for students of all ages interested in media cycles and keeping an eye on what’s real. As I wrote a few days ago, such efforts are more important than ever given the fact-free nature of so much online discourse.

Please watch the video above and read the related story in The Times by Clyde Haberman.

[Steve Schwartzman, an anthropologist who worked closely with Mendes and has spent decades working in the Amazon and other forest regions for the Environmental Defense Fund, analyzes what has and hasn’t changed in Brazil’s rain forests.]

Haberman notes that while violence in the Amazon has ebbed somewhat, murderous attacks on Indians and others still occur there and have spread to forest frontiers around the world — a troubling reality that I’ve tried to track here through the years.

For more, listen to the Takeaway radio segment posted by WNYC featuring the producer of this report, Geoffrey O’Connor, a filmmaker who was in the Amazon through the violent stretch when Mendes was assassinated.

For a long read on Mendes’s life and the broader events in the Amazon in recent decades, I have to recommend “The Burning Season,” my first book, which shows how this remarkable man displayed extraordinary adaptability and creativity in fighting deforestation — defying the many stereotypes that outsiders tried to apply.

Note| Dot Earth’s 2,800-plus posts will live on, but I’m moving to ProPublica on Dec. 5. Read the back story behind this blog at Times Insider, my reflection on 30 years of climate reporting and stay connected with me on Twitter or  Facebook.