Brazil’s new president promises no deforestation, but challenges loom

Luzineide da Silva is a third generation rubber tapper. One of her daughters wants to follow in her footsteps and make a living from the family fields, rubber trees and Brazil nuts, the other two want to cut down the forest, plant grass and raise cattle.

“My eldest daughter was thrilled when she took a cattle training course. She learned how to make beef and cheese and even drive a tractor. It changed her worldview,” said da Silva at the end of a day tending her corn, squash, watermelon, banana and cucumber crops under the scorching sun. “She said, ‘Mom, everyone who raises cattle has a car, a good life, and goes to private colleges, while I can’t afford vet school.'”

It’s the same with other families. Over the past two decades, many rubber tappers have gradually abandoned the vision of Mendes, who strongly opposed logging by big ranchers.

The forest conservationist was shot dead in December 1998 at his tiny home in the town of Xapuri, here in Acre. A local farmer had ordered the killing. The international outcry that followed led to the creation of “extraction reserves” throughout the Amazon, a sort of federal reserve where forest communities could live their traditional lives, protected from land grabs.

With the classic rubber cone, grooves are cut into the bark of rubber trees and the escaping latex is collected. But this artisanal rubber has deteriorated over decades, a victim of synthetic rubber made in chemical plants or rubber grown on plantations.

Finding few opportunities elsewhere, many locals cut down trees and turned to livestock, which provide a more reliable income than seasonal forest products like Brazil nuts. Cattle became Acre’s most important economic activity.

In the past four years, under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, this trend of converting forest to pasture has reached unprecedented levels.

His government attempted to shrink sanctuaries and legalize large herds of cattle within resource reserves. Land grabbers from the neighboring state of Rondonia bought land illegally, including on public land. One of them cleared 104 hectares (257 acres), the largest destruction this year, according to Environmental Police officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

Residents also cleared trees to lease the land to nearby ranchers who funded the demolition. There are even cases where traditional rubber tappers have used the money from rubber sales to expand their grazing lands. Others post ads on Facebook selling their traditional rubber groves.

“It strikes me that when we had nothing, we could bring people together and fight like we did,” said Raimundo Mendes de Barros while sitting on the porch of his wooden house, whose walls have pictures of him next to Chico Mendes show who was his cousin, and Lula. They all belong to the same party, the Labor Party. Thanks to the rubber tapper movement, people now had roads and electricity, they walked around on an equal footing with the townspeople.

But “these improvements ultimately benefited the evildoers,” said Raimundo Mendes. Many think that forest products and family farms are worthless and they need money to buy a motorcycle and a cell phone. They will sell a piece of their own rubber grove and cut down the forest to raise cattle.

“We’ve fought so hard and built so many good things, but people don’t care,” said the 77-year-old rubber leader.

The result is that during Bolsonaro’s presidency between 2019 and 2022, an area roughly the size of Manhattan was destroyed. That’s three times more than in the previous four years, according to an analysis by the Socio-Environmental Institute, a Brazilian non-profit organization, based on official figures.

“In the past, residents of the Chico Mendes Reservation used the profits from rubber and Brazil nuts to buy cattle as a sort of savings account,” institute researcher Antonio Oviedo said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. He said now everything is on a much larger account scale.