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Mendes Trial Landmark for Brazilian Justice

by Maria Helena Passes
A landmark has been set in the history of Justice in Brazil with the trial and conviction of the murderers of the union leader and conservationist Chico Mendes.
Darcy Alves Pereira. 23. and his father Darly Alves da Silva. 58. were each sentenced to 19 years In prison after a much publicised trial that ended in December.
Only seven of1.200 cases involving people murdered in land conflicts In Brazil have made it to court. And the Mendes trial is the first time Brazil has seen members of a prosperous landowning family sent to prison for planning and executing a murder.
The Amazon forest was I he reason for the fight between C hico Mendes and Darty Alves. Like many other farmers aixl enterpreneurs, Darly came lo Acre, a stale In the Amazon basin, to raise cattle. To obtain land for pasture farmers have trees cut. some of which are I 000 years old Local people arc alwavs expelled from the ureas to be cleared.
The Immediate victims are th. strong and ever-productive rubber ircc and ihe families who make their livelihood from its produce
A descendant of three grn erations of nibber plant tap pers. Mendes had long been convinced that hie own survival
- and that of his folk-agues lay In the preservation of tlx- rain forest as an economic resource-and a home With this ideal in mind, he conceived a conser vationist strategy named ’empates,' which roughly translated means 'balance.’ tn Portuguese
The empates strategy involved persuading workers hired to cut trees not to go ilxad with their work
Ute only weapon of the a tivtats: words. Workers wl»o went along with lire Idea would go io the lorcM rest and wall On their way back they woukl lie io the bosses, saying they had been cutting down trees
Because the forest Is so big. the truth could not be cheeked. Mendes and his fol low workers peacefully carried out 45 empales -15 were successful - over 12 years
One of the Iasi empales headed by Mendes was In the rubber plant area of Cachoetra. within the limits of the Darty Alves property. The- trees were not cut down aid the govern mint, pressed by a worldwide wave- of clamour for preserving the area, soon transformed M
into an 'extruclivlst reserve.’
The concept of cxtracttvlst reserve was developed by Mendes and Is basically an at tempt to preserve an area for the sustained exploration of nibber trees.
In contrast to the non-violence of Mendes, people- like Darcy and Darly Alves have learned since an curly age to solve their questions by means of violence.
The Alves family hud reportedly often been Involved with murder In almost every corner of the country. Impunity had built their path.
In 1958. Darly’s father family patriarch Sebastian Abes, caused the removal of ihe family from the state- of Minoa Gerais Central Bradl, to Ihe state of Parana In the-South.
The elder Alves, the story goers, had killed a mun. It had taken five years for police to begin Investigation In the smull town of Ipancma. The family then mun.ig.-d lo obtain u sentence- which absolved Its iMiriarch The sentence was later eancclk-d and when the case was reopened the family
moved southward.
letter in 1973. in the city ol IhmuuM In Parana stale Darly took his turn, killing sawmill iwtkt Acir Urtzzl The presumed motive for Ihe crime was a combination of a kind dispute and a quarrel about the change of the name of Ihe city.
Only months before his own death. Chico Mendes had ob talned from the Parana stalecourt a mandate forcing ihe Xapurl police- chief to question Darly about Urtsal' murder Mendes had g.xxl reason for doing so. As he told the Brazilian authorities, politicians and foreign ecologists, he had already been threatened with death by a group of farmer that included Darly.
The- landowners of the stale of Acre normally a law unto ilsnwclves. would have been happy to sec Mendes disappear.
Mendes wa trying lo prove- that Alves was a criminal and more ambitiously. trying Nr reverse the status quo. This was loo much of a provocation lor Ihe kxil laneknvncrs.
Darcy Alves. who committed the murder, aid Darly Alve who planned II, could spend from 12 to 30 year* In fall