a political ecology of martyrdom in defense of the Amazon
The interior of Brazil has been coveted by internal and external colonialists since the Conquest. Even today, land grabbers continue to steal land in the Amazon, replacing the forest with cattle and soybeans for export. But indigenous peoples and squatters are resisting. And one form of resistance has been to combat destructive production by setting up agro-extractivist reserves, which reproduce life through the long-lasting extraction of rubber or Brazil nuts, among other gifts from nature. Since Chico Mendes, murdered in 1988, there have been many examples of popular resistance against the depredation of the Amazon. Maria and José Cláudio defended the forest to the death with true daring, without greed and with a passionate altruism for other living beings. This book recounts the facts and explains the social and ecological values at stake in the couple's murder - yet another of the many attacks that victimize true environmentalists: the poor, the subaltern, the indigenous, the vanguard of preservation, whom Felipe Milanez's work elevates to symbol and example.