Three days before Christmas 1988, Brazil was stunned by the news that Chico Mendes, a humble rubber tapper who had become the country's most famous crusader for the protection of the Amazon rain forest, had been murdered by furious Brazilian landowners. Martyrdom can help fulfill a life's mission, and that was true for Mendes: his death electrified a generation of young Brazilians, who found both magic and meaning in his seductive brand of environmentalism.
Sylvia Mitraud, a Sao Paulo university student,was among those seduced. The daughter of a Brazilian economic-planning-ministry bureaucrat, she had been brought up to care more about her...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
