Chico Mendes, who was murdered by a rancher in 1988, is an international symbol of the struggle to protect the Amazon Rainforest. As the leader of the rubber tapper trade union, he organized the so-called empates, a pacifist resistance action in which workers blocked the advance of machines entering the forest with their bodies.

Chico Mendes, who was murdered by a rancher in 1988, is an international symbol of the struggle to protect the Amazon Rainforest. As the leader of the rubber tapper trade union, he organized the so-called empates, a pacifist resistance action in which workers blocked the advance of machines entering the forest with their bodies.