The Burning Season

by Andrew Revkin

  Mendes was becoming wary of being cast as an environmentalist by the media. Those who lived outside the rain forest, both in Brazil and abroad, seemed interested only in the hummingbirds and the trees. One night, while Mendes watched television at the union hall with some friends and a reporter, a documentary described the greenhouse effect and the carbon dioxide that was spewing from the burning forests of the Amazon. Suddenly, there was Chico Mendes, the Amazon’s own ecologist, depicted as fighting to save the “lungs of the world.” In a rare display of frustration, Mendes jumped up and yelled at the television, “I’m not protecting the forest because I’m worried that in twenty years the world will be affected. I’m worried about it because there are thousands of people living here who depend on the forest—and their lives are in danger every day.”

  The character of Acre was speedily changing for the worse. Rio Branco had swelled from the sleepy outpost of 40,000 it had been in 1960 into a city of 250,000, with most of the population living in slums created as the rubber tappers and squatters were pushed off the land. It now had a grimy industrial district and a growing array of sawmills and ceramic kilns (for brick and roof tiles). The beehive-shape kilns glowed as they were fed timber taken from tall piles harvested from the surrounding forest. The sawmills were messy places where great chunks of wasted tropical hardwood lay warping in the heat of the sun. Where Rio Branco had six sawmills in 1986, by 1988 it had more than forty. (In Rondônia, the number of sawmills was already dropping because the accessible stands of trees there had all been cut.) The lumber trucks rolled constantly down BR-317 into town, hauling massive sections of tree trunk to be skinned and sliced. The sawmill owners saw no need to avoid buying Brazil nut logs, despite the ban. They were a dangerous lot, quick to use intimidation and violence against any opponent, including the few government officials who tried to enforce the forestry laws.

  In August, João Branco, the head of the UDR in Acre, and two other powerful right-wing landowners had bought one of Acre’s daily papers, O Rio Branco. Branco’s two partners were extremely conservative brothers, Narciso and Naildo Mendes; Narciso was a federal congressman who consistently supported the UDR position on all legislation. Initially, the paper’s staff continued to report the news from a relatively liberal standpoint. Antonio Alves, a reporter there, later recalled that they ran a headline one day that read: “Two Thousand Hectares Murdered” (a hectare is 2.47 acres). Naildo Mendes came storming into the newsroom, screaming and shaking a copy of the paper. It was his property they were describing. “From now on, this paper writes what I want it to write,” he said. And then the owners proceeded to “clean” the staff, just as they would a newly purchased tract of forest. Almost everyone was fired.

  When the paper resumed publication a month later, it was unrecognizable. The new staff was under strict orders to attack the PT, Chico Mendes, and the church whenever possible. As Branco later said to the filmmaker Miranda Smith, “We got Chico Mendes out of circulation when we bought the newspaper. Also the local bishop. Their politics were of no interest to our business interests. They preach socialism while we preach free initiative. I’m not going to give them space or get these gentlemen in the news.” Shortly thereafter, Branco and his partners bought one of Acre’s television stations, and it too became a platform for the UDR’s gospel of tradition, family, and property—and pasture.

  Even as Chico Mendes was losing support in the local press—which had for so long been a valued support—his dangerous duel with the Alves family escalated dramatically. Mendes was outraged that months were passing without any progress on the police investigations of the shooting at the forestry office and the killing of Higino. In fact, there were no investigations to speak of. Part of the problem was the Alves family’s close friendship with the sheriff of Xapuri. Darci could often be seen lounging outside the police station, just yards from Mendes’s front door. He would sit on the wooden bench beneath the shade tree, listening to the chirping of the caged bird that was hung on a branch each day, and joke around with the officers—who were never busy. Mendes was still unwilling to resort to violence, but he longed for some weapon with which to attack the Alves family and their private army.

  He found his weapon in an unlikely place. Around the time of José Ribeiro’s death, Mendes flew south to a national meeting of union organizers and then on to Curitiba, the capital of Paraná and the home base of Mary Allegretti. There he participated in the first large conference on extractive reserves: Allegretti’s Institute for Amazonian Studies had invited scientists and policymakers from around Brazil and overseas to help refine the legal and scientific questions surrounding this new conservation strategy. Genesio Natividade, the young lawyer who was working for the tappers, also attended the meeting, along with another lawyer. Mendes mentioned to them that his main opponents, the Alveses, had come from Paraná, and that there were persistent rumors that Alvarino, Darly, and their father, Sebastião, might be wanted on past crimes. As the meeting got under way, Natividade and his partner volunteered to drive downtown to the Justice Department archives, where they could look for any cases involving the family.

  Not surprisingly, they found a reference to an old but active case against Alvarino. There was a mention of an order of imprisonment issued in 1973 because Alvarino had resisted arrest and wounded a police officer. The complete file was said to be at the Justice Department in Umuarama, the town 250 miles northwest of Curitiba where the Alveses had lived before moving to the Amazon. By coincidence, a law school classmate of Natividade’s was now a prosecutor there. Natividade telephoned his friend, who quickly reported that there was indeed a voluminous file on the case.

  When the lawyer returned to the meeting and excitedly told Mendes and Allegretti the news, Mendes was delighted. Allegretti gave Natividade money for his trip to Umuarama to dig up what he could. That same day, Natividade flew west, knowing only that there was an imprisonment order for Alvarino—nothing more. But when he sat down the next day with the four-hundred-page legal file, it quickly became apparent that here was a massive amount of damaging information on the family’s violent past. Most important was the case in which the Alveses were said to have killed a neighbor of Sebastião’s after a land dispute. The judge had found sufficient evidence to justify holding Alvarino and Darly for trial, and imprisonment orders had been issued for both men. The orders had never been served, however, because the two had fled the state.

  Late one afternoon a few days later, Natividade and his old friend, the prosecutor, met with Judge Abel Antônio Rebello in his paneled office and went over the case. The judge, along with many veterans of the legal system in the town, remembered the Alveses’s exploits. Still eager to see justice served, he issued two imprisonment orders and two letters requesting that Xapuri’s officials take the ranchers into custody. Turning over the documents to the visiting lawyer, the judge said this called for a celebratory round of chimarrão, a green tea—and potent stimulant—that is the favorite drink in the south of Brazil, and bid Natividade good luck. After the lawyer finished drinking his tea through the silver straw customarily used for chimarrão, he told the judge, “If only everything I now have to do goes this easily, all will be well.”

  Natividade returned to Curitiba with the fate of Chico Mendes in his briefcase. There, in a tense meeting, he and Mendes, Gomercindo Rodrigues, Mary Allegretti, and a few others from the core of the movement discussed their next move. Mendes was elated because now he had the information he needed to justify his going after the Alveses. But at the same time, everyone acknowledged that if the information leaked, the Alveses might go after him. The decision was left up to Mendes. Without hesitating, he insisted that the documents had to be taken to the police in Acre. Despite any personal risk, he said, he was tired of the unanswered killings of his companheiros From this moment, Mendes’s fight with Darly Alves and his family became less a fight between a rubber tapper and a rancher and more a battle between two strong-willed men. When Allegretti urged cautio
n, Mendes responded, “I’m going to show them that they can’t push this nordestino around.”

  When Mendes returned to Acre, he seemed revitalized. There was new energy in his step, energy that people had not seen for months. In Xapuri, he told Sister Zelia that he had finally gotten the goods on Darly. As he put it, “Now I am touching the snake in his own hole.” In late September, Natividade flew up to Rio Branco to meet with Mendes and the bishop, Moacyr Grechi, to decide how to proceed. The conventional approach was not feasible because Darly was so friendly with the Xapuri police. So Mendes and the others decided to take the documents directly to the chief of the Federal Police in Rio Branco. Of all the police services in Brazil, the Federal Police, the equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, had lately developed a reputation for honesty.

  The chief, Mauro Spósito, was the same man who, during the dark days of military rule eight years earlier, had interrogated Mendes time and again. Since then, the two men had not had much to do with each other. Now, when Natividade presented the papers to Spósito, he appeared genuinely pleased to have something on the Alves family. Afterward, as Mendes and his friends walked down the street, the tapper spotted Darly himself sitting in a car in front of a restaurant just a few blocks from the police station. Going quickly to Mary Allegretti’s hotel, they called Spósito. Mendes implored him to arrest Darly on the spot, but Spósito hesitated and in the end did nothing.

  In fact, nothing was done for weeks. The judicial letters sat on Spósito’s desk while his enthusiasm for capturing the Alveses dried up. He demanded that Natividade provide more documentation to substantiate the letters, which had come in an unsealed envelope. Spósito later claimed that he could not have done anything regardless. Such judicial requests only have force if they are first brought to a local judge, who then issues a fresh warrant; technically, Spósito said, his hands were tied. Later, Mendes discovered that Spósito was a friend of Alvarino Alves’s. Finally, on October 19, after the papers from Umuarama were indeed given to a judge assigned to Xapuri, new arrest warrants were issued for Darly and Alvarino. The Military Police were sent to the Paraná ranch and to Alvarino’s small spread, but by that time the brothers had heard about the warrants and disappeared. The police issued a nationwide alert.

  The unwitting source of the leak was Malu Maranhão, the reporter from Paraná who had spent part of the previous dry season writing about Mendes and who had also attended the September meeting in Curitiba. When she decided to write an article about the arrest warrant—against the wishes of Allegretti—she never anticipated that it might be read by one of Darly’s friends or relatives still in Paraná. But that is exactly what happened. As Darly later recalled in an interview, “My brother-in-law Djair Gomes ... called me and said, ‘Friend, there is an article here in the Folha de Londrina which says that you are going to be arrested, that you committed many crimes here.”’ Darly was worried, but at first he did nothing. Then, just before the police finally executed the warrants, he went to the courthouse in Xapuri and asked a stenographer he knew whether there was some kind of warrant against him. He was told that Mendes had brought it from Paraná and that it was already in the hands of the Federal Police. Darly was enraged; according to later testimony by the stenographer, he shouted, “I’m going to show Chico Mendes that he will never bother me and my wife again.”

  Darly and Alvarino at first hid near the Bolivian border. They sent word back to town that they would only reappear after Mendes was in his grave. There was evidence that Alvarino eventually headed south and fled to a ranch he owned in Paraguay; he had retreated there before when he was in trouble with the law. In November, Darly was able to sneak back to his ranch, where one of his sons dropped him off at a worker’s shack in a remote corner of the property. The police stationed guards at the ranch and conducted cursory searches but lacked adequate manpower to cover the entire spread.

  Even for a wanted man, hiding out in the Amazon is not especially difficult. Darly’s younger sons took food to their father each day and filled him in on the news. Occasionally, he hiked back to the central compound at night to visit his women. He put Oloci in charge of the ranch’s operations. While Darly hid, he planned his revenge. As one resident of the ranch later testified, Darly said, “Chico won’t live out the year. No one has ever bested me. And Chico wants to do that.”

  By the end of October, it was obvious that Mendes was in deep trouble. Little was being done to pursue the Alveses; little could be done. The Military Police in Xapuri had few functioning vehicles and hardly any ammunition. The Federal Police had only a token force in Rio Branco. And the sheriff in Xapuri was not apt to conduct an intensive search for his friend.

  The tension was broken briefly that month when the rubber tappers of Cachoeira staged a rally to mark the official announcement of the disappropriation of the seringal before it was designated an extractive reserve. Hundreds of tappers gathered at the central clearing. There was singing and dancing and soccer games and speeches. And there was drinking, with cachaça and cola the beverage of the day. Mendes joined the tappers for a few rounds. Adrian Cowell was in town, and his camera captured the essence of the day —a mixture of joy and sadness and foreboding. Looking more than a little drunk, Mendes squinted into the late afternoon sun, smiled his wide, walrus smile, lifted his cup of cachaça, and told the camera, “We’re commemorating the victory of the rubber tappers of Cachoeira and the first extractive reserve in Xapuri. But it’s just the first step. We need many more reserves. This is just one percent of what is needed.” Behind his smile, you could see the tension. And Mendes was starting to show his years: gray had steadily infiltrated what had been a tousled mop of shining black hair.

  Later that day, the tappers gathered in front of a table that had been set up beneath a tree for a mass. Children gathered in the front. Luis Ceppi, Xapuri’s priest, spoke eloquently of the events of the last few months. A pair of sapatos de seringueiro was placed on the table—the homemade rubber shoes of the tappers. “No one likes to die,” Ceppi said. “But if it has to happen, then it should be to create more life. The blood spilled in these recent days must be the seed of a new liberty, a new life.” Mendes stood toward the back and stared pensively at his feet, and then out to the forest canopy, which surrounded the clearing like a delicate tapestry. Finally, the service concluded with the communion wafer and wine. As the sun set behind the treetops, Mendes and Ilzamar, with Sandino and Elenira, walked across the pasture to Cecília’s house. They gave their aunt a hug, then walked up the slope toward the ravine and the path back to Xapuri.

  Soon the fires of the burning season began to hiss and die under the first heavy downpours of the rainy season. In the Amazon’s unchanging rhythm, the tappers switched from collecting latex to harvesting Brazil nuts. Out on the estradas, the steady whack, whack, whack of machetes lopping open the nut casings could be heard. And in Xapuri, as October came to an end, Chico Mendes seemed to know that he was running out of time.

  Few of his friends understood why he chose to stay in Xapuri. Some speculated that he had become overconfident because of the growing international attention; Mendes had often said that it prolonged his life. Others said there was just enough of the macho Brazilian in Mendes to push him to stand and fight even if the odds were against him. Sister Zelia disagreed. By this time, she felt he had totally abnegated his personal life to the fight for the rubber tappers. As she later recalled, “Every day we were waiting for Chico’s death. Sometimes he’d sleep at a friend’s house or at the seringal. But there was always someone watching, following. So we were always afraid. It became almost routine.” She asked Mendes many times why he did not leave Xapuri for a while, until things cooled off. One night he gave her an answer: “I would be a coward to do this. My blood is the same blood as that of these people suffering here. I can’t run. There’s something inside me that cannot leave here. This is the place where I will finish my mission.”

  While Mendes spoke his m
ind to Sister Zelia, to others he continually repeated his refrain about the relative values of a living person and a corpse. And he was not ready to give up without a fight. At the end of October, he sent a letter to Governor Melo and the Acre secretary for public safety; it was an eloquent plea for help: “My main objective is to communicate my concern with the present situation.... At certain times I’ve been misinterpreted, at other times I’ve been censored by the authorities of our state. I’ve been accused of being an agitator and a generator of violence. I’d like to be allowed to prove to all the authorities that never has a drop of blood been drawn on my own responsibility. I intend to continue with the same attitude until the end. And I’d like to get support in my struggle. Are you interested in helping me, sir?”

  He went on to list the people who were plotting to kill him and Osmarino Rodrigues. He said that a closely placed source had informed him of two meetings in Brasiléia in late October at which Darly, Darci, and their friends worked out the details. He claimed that they had the support of the judge and police in Brasiléia. Then he complained about the inaction of Mauro Spósito. Mendes concluded, “I cannot be quiet looking at what is happening. People can’t keep suffering this way. Through being humble, I have gained the support of very powerful people. If you really want to help, I’m going to wait.”

  He gave a copy of the letter to Fatima Mastub, his next-door neighbor and confidante, for safekeeping and told her to show it to no one. That day, he displayed a bit of the triumphant spark he had felt when he had learned of the warrants. “Now these guys are going to be arrested,” he told her confidently. But when he came by a few days later, he seemed broken, Mastub recalled. As she watched television, Mendes came into her cottage, just ten feet from his own, and sat on her sagging couch. His eyes were full of tears, and he would start to say something, then stop. When she asked him what was wrong, he said, “Nothing.” Eventually he told her that he had gotten no response to his letter.