20/7/12

I gave a presentation today in class about Chico Mendes. He was an activist from the state of Acre who grew up on a rubber tree farm. The workers on those farms were treated like slaves. Everything they had came from the owner of the plantation and he would charge them around 5x higher than the normal price for food, clothes, and supplies. The people had to work hard in order to form raw balls of cooked latex which were then shipped off to undergo a process called vulcanization and then turned into tire rubber. Mendes fought for the rights of the plantation workers and also tried to make people aware of the destruction of the jungle that was taking place. Mendes was murdered by two plantation owners. He has a bioconservation institute named in his honor in Brasília. Sadly, his murderers got out of jail without serving even half of their sentence because of the political connections they had.