The Xapuri Forest Campaign was an 11-year long (1977 - 1988) effort to organize environmentalists, trade unionists and indigenous people together to defend the Amazon rainforest around the town of Xapuri, Brazil from destruction by wealthy ranchers.
Background
Much of the Amazon Rainforest had been controlled by powerful rubber barrons for centuries, who had treated much of the population terribly, working in slave-like conditions. Attempts were made in the 1960s to unionize these workers, called “rubber tappers;” however, these attempts failed. But in the 1970s, ranchers from Southern Brazil began to buy most of the land in order to clear them for land to graze cattle on. This forcibly evicted the rubber tappers and cut them off from their main source of income. This led to a successful establishing of a rubber tappers union in 1975, the president of which was Wilson Pinheiro and the secretary was Chico Mendes, who went to Xapuri to establish a new branch of the union.[1]
Events
Chico helped organize the Xapuri Rural Workers' Union with Marina Silva in 1977, drawing a link between the survivial of the forest and the survival of the workers. The goal of the
The primary goal of the organization was to stop ranchers from clear cutting Xapuri’s forests for grazing land. In his speeches, Mendes drew a link between survival of the forest and survival of the rubber tappers, whose means of support was the Brazilian nuts and rubber they gathered from the forest. 1977 also marked the creation of a weekly paper called the Varadoura, which was founded to broadcast information on the deforestation of Acre region. The editor of the newspaper relied heavily on Chico to give him weekly updates of the campaign, which Chico used as a recruitment opportunity.
The primary tactic of the campaign, employed from almost the start, was the use of empates, or “stand offs.” This tactic involved groups of activists confronting laborers hired to clear the forests and attempting to convince them to lay down their saws. Empates were overwhelmingly successful as many of the men hired to clear the forests had been rubber tappers before the taking of their land. This tactic was not solely benign however, as it often involved the destruction of the laborers’ camps and possessions, forcing them to return to their homesteads. Participants in the empates were often beaten and arrested by military police called on by the ranchers to keep order. The campaigners met this treatment with non-violence, such as singing hymns. When imprisoned, the campaigners often numbered too many for the jail’s holding capacity and thus were soon released. As the campaign evolved so did the empates, moving to encompass the entire rubber tapper community, men, women, and children. Women and children would move to the front of the group, discouraging the Military police from shooting into the crowd.
In 1979 Chico introduced a strategy to establish schools and cooperatives on the rubber estates. The rational behind this agenda was that these programs would improve the living conditions on the estates, which would in turn give rubber tappers more incentive to organize to keep their lands and remain in the forest. Originally engineered for adults, the education program quickly expanded to children. Classes included literacy training as well as global and environmental awareness. Although the Mendes’ schools were a huge success, the attempt to establish cooperatives on the estates failed. Mendes tried to compensate for this by spending almost all of his time journeying from estate to estate spreading information and recruiting. 1980 marked the assassination of the president of the Brasileia union, Wilson Pinheiro. This resulted in a shift in the axis of the movement from Brasileia to Xapuri.
The next few years were marked by a series of empates and assassinations of union leaders. Then in 1985 the UDR, Democratic Ruralist Union, was formed. This group was formed by the ranchers in response to Chico’s efforts to organize against deforestation. The UDR hired large numbers of armed forces to combat the union movement and initiated a number of targeted assassinations of union leaders. 1985 also marked the founding of the National Council of Rubber Tappers (CNS) by Mendes and other key union leaders. The group gained widespread international support since it was seen as both a social justice and environmental protection campaign. Later that year Chico organized the First National Rubber Tappers Congress. From this meeting emerged the proposal for extractive reserves, legally protected forest areas held in trust for people who lived and worked in a sustainable manner. This proposal offered an economically viable alternative to the clearing of forests for grazing land and would be the primary demand for the remainder of the campaign.
In 1986 the Xapuri Rural Workers’ Union allied with the indigenous people of Brazil, who had also been historically discriminated against and overlooked. This was particularly significant because the Indians and rubber tappers had traditionally been at odds with one another over forest resources. Thus, the alliance between these two groups signaled for government officials the seriousness of the campaigns demands. In June of 1986 Mendes organized over 200 tappers for a march on the federal forestry office of Xapuri. Upon arrival the group staged a sit-in, but were quickly evicted by the police. For the remainder of 1986 and 1987 the focus of the movement was recruitment of rubber tappers for empates and rallying international support for the cause. International recognition of Mendes with the Ted Turner’s Better World Society Prize and United Nation’s Global 500 Environmental Prize, both awarded to him in 1987, spread awareness of the campaign.
Results
The campaign won the creation of a 61,000 acre tract of rainforest to be off limits to logging, the first 'extractive reserve' in Brazil. In the next 13 years, twenty-one additional reserves have been established, protecting 1.5% of the Amazon's total area. However, the campaign triggered a wave of assassinations of environmentalists, trade unionists and indigenists.[1]