Imagery and the Amazon

"It is all an illusion (which is nothing against it, for illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things, and she who can create one among the world's greatest benefactors), but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails."

Virginia Woolf

      The Brazilian Amazon is an area with a history of fabulous legend and imagery. During the time of European exploration and colonization it was thought to be the location of the fabled El Dorado. The river itself was named after a single, never repeated battle with a race of warrior women. Its fanciful images can prove misleading, however, as its problems and people are simplified, altered, or overlooked.

"Amazonia, like many other great world regions, is often envisioned as one homogenous entity. A vast and intricate mosaic of distinctive local environments, reduced to a simplistic regional archetype, becomes El Dorado, Second Eden, Green Hell, Earth's Lung, or the Last Frontier."

(Godfrey and Browder, 1996)

      The current information age has proved no exception to this precedent of invention and mythicization. "Amazon" now conjures up visions of exotic, endangered species and painted and pierced Indians who have little contact with the more civilized West. And now, thanks mainly to the efforts of international organizations that are concerned with environmental problems, deforestation, burning and heavy extinction rates also come to mind. But how have these images, devised for the protection of the area, actually affected the Amazon and its inhabitants? Do the Kayapo truly think of their home as a threatened wilderness and themselves as noble guardians? Perhaps the problematization of the Amazon on a global scale has worked to alleviate the problems there. However, there is the possibility that the use of such imagery has also created a new set of problems, of a more localized and complex nature than those romanticized by the environmental movement.
      A brief definition of what are considered parts of the international environmental movement will further understanding of the following case studies and critiques. For the purposes of this research, the international environmental movement is made up of organizations which have the bulk of their contributing membership in one country or multiple countries, usually in the first world, and part or all of their focus on problems in another country, or countries, usually in the third world. Many of these organizations also engage in the circulation of capital from member donations to areas which are deemed to have serious environmental problems, like the Amazon.
      The issues surrounding the Amazon and its imagery are multifarious at their core and further complicated by infinite, localized variation. Due to the environmental movement's nature, the problems of the Amazon are altered and simplified by its intervention and use of Amazonian locales. To enable a careful examination of this phenomena and the problems associated with it, two case studies have been evaluated.
      The first of these studies deals with the interacts between Chico Mendes, a grassroots union organizer, and the international environmental movement. The usefulness of Mendes' image to environmental nongovernment organizations was solidified by the removal of his status as a social reformer, and transformation into a homegrown ecologist. Due to the heavy exposure Mendes received from his interactions with the environmental movement, threats on his life increased, and he was eventually killed. The case tragically demonstrates that lack of attention to local issues on the part of large, powerful organizations can damage the grassroots struggles from which they expropriate powerful imagery.
      The second case study examines the idea of the neo-noble savage. The specific case focuses on the Body Shop's use of imagery depicting the Kayapo Indians of Brazil as neo-noble savages. The business relationship between the Kayapo and the Body Shop was heavily skewed in the favor of the European-based corporation, an injustice to which the Kayapo had a decidedly modern reaction. The case study illustrates both the fallacies of the noble savage image, and the dangers of assuming that "natural" cultures are stagnate.
      In the construction of my history and case studies, I was influenced by Arjun Appadurai's Modernity at Large. My research was structured by his construction of five scapes (ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape, financescape, and ideoscape) as the frameworks for global flows of information, and the disjunctures between these flows as the most fruitful areas of study. My research deals primarily with the ideoscapes and mediascapes affecting the Amazon, but touches on the other scapes as well. After conducting my research I feel that it is impossible to define an issue which is not informed and shaped by all five of Appadurai's scapes.
      Ideoscapes are a "concatenation of images" which are "often directly political and frequently have to do with the ideologies of states and the counter ideologies of movements (Appadurai, p. 36)." In my study, the conflict so delineated is between the power of the Brazilian state over its Amazonian territory, and conflicting influences which the environmental movement has generated through the use of Amazonian imagery, and especially financial leverage. The mediascape has been the medium for the dissemination and assimilation of the environmental movement-generated images. These images have been distributed over a global scale, becoming a part of ideoscapes in a number of first world countries. Though my research is not directly couched in terms of Appadurai's work, the influences of all his five scapes can be seen in the history and case studies presented here.
      In this history I have attempted to trace the rise of international interest in the Amazon and how it has affected the area. I have then highlighted two instances of Amazonian elements which were used as prominent imagery by the environmental movement. The first of my case studies describes how Chico Mendes was made into a martyr for a cause which he did not espouse as his own. This study is a demonstration of how the promotion of false imagery creates problems for the one so imagined. The second case study examines the Kayapo Indians, showing how they and their fellow Amazonian Indians have been simplified by the environmental movement into the neo-noble savage. However, the Kayapo have been able to use this image to their advantage, exploiting it through their knowledge of Western technology and power systems, in order to achieve their own goals.
      In the past twenty years, the environmental movement has shifted from a number of disparate groups that wielded only patchy influence to a large, influential conglomerate of environmental interests. The movement still encompasses such diverse groups and issues that it may be misleading to refer to it either as a "movement" or even as an "it." However, improved communication and public awareness have meant that issues which do receive the focused attention of the international environmental community become touchstones for an eclectic but politically powerful group of organizations.
      Since the early 1980's the Brazilian Amazon has been such a touchstone issue. Its numerous environmental problems, mainly associated with rapid colonization projects, have put it in the forefront of international thought on the environment. I also venture to postulate that the Amazon's charisma, for lack of a more inanimate word, has kept it prominent while many other issues have faded from the general public consciousness.
      The Amazon has long been seen as "the dark heart of the rainforest," a wild, unknown region. The appeal of such a place can be seen over and over again throughout human history. Images of the rainforest have become an intrinsic role in the marketing strategies of many environmental groups. People all over the world are now familiar with an Amazon made up of such indigenous groups as the Kayapo, exotic wildlife, lofty trees, and heroes such as Chico Mendes. Most of these people will never meet a Kayapo or even see a rubber tree. Yet these images are an essential part of their support for groups such as the Rainforest Action Network, and their motivation for buying products like Ben and Jerry's Rainforest Crunch Ice Cream.
      One could perhaps liken the fascination with the Amazon to a similar phenomena in the animal rights movement, namely the persistent interest in large charismatic animals. The Amazon is seen as a vast, dense, and above all pristine wilderness. While this is to some extent true, this view excludes many facets of the region. Its current prominence and marketability make it a more profitable cause than the protection of smaller remnant habitats, such as, to use another Brazilian example, the temperate forest of the northeastern coastal region, now almost completely deforested.
      It is, in part, to keep the issue of Amazonian deforestation an urgent one in the minds of the public that the environmental movement uses such vivid and carefully planned imagery. These images serve several purposes for the movement. To begin with, they do function to keep the public's rather erratic interest. "Fantasy is now a social practice; it enters, in a host of ways, into the fabrication of social lives for many people in many societies (Appadurai, p. 54)." The fantasy of the rainforest becomes a part of even faraway lives through the incorporation of imagery. Images also give legitimacy and validity to environmental institutions that may in reality have little to do with actually solving the problems of the Amazon. They also help maintain the movement as a movement, by providing elements such as heroes and opponents which keep environmental interests cohesive and unified.
      The creation of convenient, vivid imagery may actually be a part of the elevation of the esthetic, which Mike Featherstone associates with postmodern life. Part of Featherstone's definition of postmodernity states that it is characterized by "a tendency towards the estheticization of everyday life...and the alleged movement towards a simulational consumer culture in which an endlessly reduplicated hallucinatory veil of images effaces the distinction between appearance and reality (Featherstone, pp.43-44)."
      Mike Featherstone thoroughly discusses the part that images, which have become fragmented and disconnected, play in the current conception of an individual's culture in the postmodern era. Perhaps, as the image becomes the focus of the individual, it becomes necessary for organizations like the environmental movement, which are dependant on their membership, to present their material in a manner which is consistent with the postmodern life. The creation of images may be the only way to keep the environmental movement in the public eye, which is constantly drawn away by the pluralities and esthetic distractions of day to day existence.
      Related to this is the increasingly prominent part that the esthetic plays in choices. Decisions become less based on a concrete morality and more on the personal esthetic. Perhaps a postmodern person is more likely to choose to align her or himself to an esthetically pleasing image than one which holds disturbing elements. This could be used to explain the removal of violence from Chico Mendes and modernity from the Kayapo. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, imagery serves a very obvious function in many cases, the promotion of monetary gain.
      This imagery may function well for the environmental movement. However, it has a number of drawbacks and ramifications in its application to the Amazon. The two case studies I have selected demonstrate that the images produced by the international environmental movement, while assisting the movement in working with the environmental problems of the Amazon in some ways, have also created additional problems, for both Western companies and, more tellingly, for the people who live in and are subject to said imagery.

The International Environmental Movement

"The problem is that the agenda, rhetoric, and assumptions of most mainstream environmental movement organizations often fail to represent the concerns of the less empowered groups in societies."

(Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 156)

      By its very nature, the environmental movement must manipulate the images that it puts forth. Movements are focused on an idealized goal, so their flow of information is calculated to further that goal. Ulf Hannerz recognizes this in Cultural Complexity when he describes a structure of culture in which "movements foster a more deliberate and explicit flow of meaning, and are more outward oriented, missionizing (Hannerz, p. 50)."
      Simplification is one of the major ways in which the problems addressed by the environmental movement are altered from their reality. Environmental problems are, as a rule, extremely complex. They deal with the people immediately affected, such as the Kayapo, and proceed through what resembles a vast web of causes and effects. Simple actions, such as the application of fertilizer in Kansas, can have far reaching affects. And these problems are further complicated by the power dynamics of the those involved on a local and international scale.
      In their study, Environment and Society: the Enduring Conflict, Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Gould define one of the environmental movement's underlying difficulties as the inability to "define the primary issues (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 153)." The very complexity of the ideas and causes available to the average member of the environmental movement may promote the creation of a simpler, more understandable image to represent problems, like those of the rubber tappers, which are in reality fraught with local complexity.
      It is in the international, rather than the local, arena that the environmental movement has been so successful in the past several decades. Many of the goals formulated for environmental groups that originated in the sixties and seventies have not been met. However, as a whole, the movement has built up a remarkable amount of political power, depending mainly on the public whose environmental interests the movement is supposed to represent.
      It is important to note that the international environmental movement functions in many ways like an industry. It provides the mainly Western consumer with an easily accessible way in which to participate in the resolution of environmental problems and espouse environmental consciousness. In a postmodern society "consumption has now become a serious form of work...the heart of this work is the social discipline of the imagination, the discipline of learning to link fantasy and nostalgia to the desire for new bundles of commodities (Appadurai, p.82)." This imagery becomes the basis of environmental consumption. The movement also provides the consumer with all the pertinent information about these problems and their causes and solutions, driving desire for that information with their images.
      There are two general types of movements associated with environmental causes, the preservationist and the conservationist. The preservation movements work to prevent any tampering with the ecosystem. The conservation movements focus on protecting the ecosystem so that some level of market activity can be sustained. Conservationists often represent the interests of economic powers, while the preservationists are more concerned with the esthetic and recreational value of the area they want to preserve(Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 143-45). Both types of movements have become involved in the power dynamics of Amazonian preservation, and both promote their own solutions to Amazonian problems as the most applicable.
      In a discussion of tourist and consumer culture Walter Percy remarked that the modern consumer has allowed sovereignty over reality to move from their own sphere to that of the expert. Likewise, the consumer of environmental consciousness has allowed the supposed expert, the global environmental movement, to shape his or her perceptions of the nature of areas in which he or she is investing money and interest. In allowing this, the consumer becomes "content to receive an experience just as it has been presented to him by theorists and planners (Percy, p. 55)."

"The loss of sovereignty is not a marginal process...It is a generalized surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie."

(Percy, p. 55)

      Percy goes on to say that the expert does not intend to remove sovereignty from the layman. However, in the case of the environmental movement, and especially its related associates in the economic sphere, the position of sole interpreter of environmental imagery is both desirable and in many instances deliberately sought after. "There is growing evidence that the consumption of the mass media throughout the world often provokes resistance, irony, selectivity, and in general, agency (Appadurai, p. 7)." Such image creation can then occur in a premeditated and contrived fashion, which may leave the consumer not with a merely unsatisfactory experience, as in Percy's discussion, but with a lack of information and an erroneous impression of the matter at hand.
      Images of the Amazon have often been used to generate both popular and financial support for the problems which the environmental movement puts forward as the most pressing. Whether the movement has judged the importance of these areas well or poorly is open to debate, and has spent considerable time as an important issue. However, it is not just the application of funds to the Amazon which affects it. The popular image of the area, which is generated by the environmental movement, also affects flows of information both inside and outside of the Amazon.
      The environmental movement has its own reasons, aside from conservation considerations, to promote potentially erroneous images of the Amazon. The movement has grown exceptionally complex due to the diverseness of the problems that it must deal with. These complexities are further confused by the varied allegiances and goals of the groups which make up the environmental movement. This is especially true when these various parts all rely in some way on an ultimately resource based economy.
      Schnaiberg and Gould discuss the current movement ideal of environmental problems as purely scientific in nature. The inclusion of social and economic aspects of a problem make it far more complex (Schnaiberg and Gould, pp. 145-147). The creation of the image of Chico Mendes as an ecologist can be seen to further this ideal. The movement couched his activism in terms of a concerned ecologist, rather than the social reformer that he really was. The minimizing by The Body Shop of the Kayapo's social sophistication could also be seen as symptomatic of a basic reluctance to leave the familiar framework of the scientific while maintaining the appearance of participating in the potentially messier, social side of environmental issues.
      To add to this problem, many members of the economic sphere have identified growing environmental awareness as a huge potential source of revenue. Businesses have tried to enter a potentially lucrative market with "green" products and slogans. Additionally, as the movement makes such a powerful ally, temporary alliances with other concerned groups whose interests may soon diverge often further complicate environmental doctrine.

"Although environmental social movement organizations can't control other interests that may try to jump on the environmental bandwagon, they can make efforts to publicly distance themselves from these interests."

(Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 151)

      Complications appear on the level of the individual environmental activist or patron, as well. Many supporters of the movement have traditionally preferred to contribute in a manner which does not involve changing the status quo, such as tax deductible donations. This choice is born out of a general lack of experience in many environmental activists, which translates into a reluctance to challenge powerful political and economic elements (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 159-161). Imagery which avoids direct challenges to perceived structures is more attractive to the average consumer of the environmental movement's products. This removes an additional layer of complexity from popular imagery, unlinking environmental and social issues, and most importantly the causes of environmental problems which can be traced to Western domains.
      Thus, the movement does not as a whole concentrate on the redistribution of resources to promote environmental justice. The needs of the poor and marginalized are often overlooked. The movement must, in the future, begin to deal with issues which approach environmental problems from an environmental justice perspective, or many of the most serious problems will never achieve a resolution (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 159-161).

The History of Human Disruptions

 

"'In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.' (After that all hell breaks loose.)"

(Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 165)

      In a discussion of the environmental aspects of the Brazilian Amazon one must briefly outline the involvement of humans in what has been recognized as an area with great significance, both from an ecological and an anthropocentric viewpoint. There is a certain amount of debate over the precise time frame of human colonization of the Amazon, but there is no doubt that colonization has caused distinct changes in the character of the region.
      One theory, popularized by Betty Meggers, states that the first human colonists arrived in the Amazon from the Andes mountains, and slowly spread down river (Meggers, p. 37). Meggers also believes that the Amazon is a of "counterfeit paradise," which was never home to a high level of civilization because such intricate cultural development was impossible in an area where basic survival took up so much human time and energy (Meggers, p. 169). This view of the Amazon has contributed to the discourse among environmentalists that the Amazon was never meant to support any kind of a human population, and that plans to colonize the area have been foolish from their inception and should be reversed. "The persistence of the myth of boundless productivity in spite of the ignominious failure of every large-scale effort to develop the region constitutes one of the most remarkable paradoxes of our time (Meggers, p. 5)."
      A second theory states that the Amazon was colonized through westward movement from the eastern coastal regions of Brazil. This theory originated with the work of Anna C. Roosevelt. Roosevelt contends that the Amazon was once home to more complex civilizations, citing the poor conditions for preservation in the rainforest as the reason for little archaeological evidence. Colonization of the Amazon may have begun as late as 12,000 years ago. She believes that the Amazon is not necessarily a hostile environment, but rather one which must be treated with considerable respect (Roosevelt, 1989).
      Whatever the date of their arrival, by the time the first Europeans reached the Amazon, large numbers of Indians were living in the region. Early European explorers sent back descriptions of vast towns along the major waterways, with high levels of organization, and at least 8,000 inhabitants. It has been estimated that these populations were decimated by up to 95 percent due to European diseases (Moran, 1993, p. 4).
      European intrusions into the Amazon began with a series of ill-fated explorations into a potentially rich area. Members of such expeditions tended to contract exotic diseases, develop nutritional deficits or go mad in a creative fashion. Despite such discouraging beginnings, interest in colonizing the Amazon remained strong for some years. There were several military actions centered on the area. Eventually, banana and rubber plantations proved failures, navigation proved difficult, and interest in permanent settlement of the Amazon waned. Use of Indian labor was unprofitable, due mainly to their lack of resistance to European disease. In time, African slaves and poor Europeans were imported as more effective labor (Moran, 1993, p. 7). Indians in areas of European settlement were actively slaughtered or encouraged to kill one another in disputes over territory or other European orchestrated conflicts. Several main centers of Amazonian settlement were founded. The city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon served as a port for the region. The Amazon remained an only mildly profitable area for many years, and most of that money left the region, crossing the ocean to Portugal. This did not prevent damage to the rainforest. Several species, such as the pau- brasil, a tree which yields a brilliant purple dye, were exploited almost to extinction for export to Europe (Prance, p. 53).
      Finally, the discovery of rubber vulcanization in 1839, created a huge demand for natural rubber, of which the Amazon was the primary source. The rubber boom catapulted the settlement of Manaus into international renown and prosperity (Moran, 1981, p. 72). Unfortunately, this economic success was short lived. When rubber was successfully grown plantation-style in Indonesia, a convenience not possible in the Amazon, the money followed the rubber trade. However, rubber remains an important export of the region (Moran, 1993, p. 6-7).
      During this time the Indian population of the Amazon enjoyed no such luck or prosperity. Diseases brought by colonists proved devastating, even to groups never experiencing direct contact with Europeans. Proximity to European settlements and goods engendered rapid culture change, generally with horrific results. Tribes were often reduced to a fraction of their former numbers by disease, and many began to beg or take up prostitution to procure food, medicinal supplies, and alcohol.
      In the period following the rubber boom, Amazonia once again returned to international anonymity. The Brazilian government created the Superintendencia do Plano de Valorization da Amazonia in 1953. This organization was supposed to oversee the regional development, but lack of funds ensured that little progress towards further development (Moran, 1981, p. 72). It was not until the military took control of the Brazilian government in 1964 that colonization efforts continued with renewed vigor. The miliary regime saw the Venezuelan border as a threat, and rushed to settle "real" Brazilians (as opposed to Indians or half- Indian, half-European coboclos) on the land nearest the border (Moran, 1981, p. 76). The Amazon also became a prime area for Brazilian military action.
      Aside from military motives, the new government was intent on sustaining their "economic miracle." The push to colonize was also a push to exploit, and mining and logging came into the forefront of Amazonian industry, bringing with them new threats to the area's ecosystems. The lack of any protection or enforcement of protected status for Amazonian land made logging cheap and profitable. The government also offered tax incentives for both small farmers and large landowners looking to finance pasture land or mining concerns. In addition, the government began work on a network of roads which were meant to connect the Amazon with the rest of Brazil. This began with the Belem-Brazilia highway, and continues today (Moran, 1981, p. 79).
      Development in the Amazon followed an unusual pattern of rapid urbanization along the paths of the new roads. The six Amazonian states, Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Para, Rondonia, and Roraima were predominantly urbanized by the late 1970s. Since the sixties, migrants have broken away from traditional locations of human settlement, and moved into areas away from the major rivers and into the interior (Godfrey and Browder, 1996).
      The Amazon frontier began and remained an irregular phenomena at best, moving "in fits and starts from place to place, in a riot of local irregularity (Godfrey and Browder, 1996)." This renders many traditional measures of progress and relative wealth uncertain. The labels of "rural" and "urban" were not easily altered to fit a population with cheap, speedy transport between urban and rural locals at its disposal. Additionally, agricultural development was not necessarily the foundation for urban development, as is traditionally assumed in developmental studies (Godfrey and Browder, 1996).
      As a side development to the military dictatorship, interest in Indian rights and environmental issues grew. So many topics were made taboo by the new regime that happenings in far away Amazonia were one of the few areas in which criticism of the government was legal. The Brazilian government, with its traditional policies of Amazonian development and colonization became an international "bad guy." In order to gain favor with first world nations, the first freely elected president of Brazil, Fernando Collor de Mello, began to implement policy that was more Amazon friendly (Barbosa, 1996).
      During the 1970s, international awareness of the threatened status of the rain forest increased. The Amazon became a favorite issue for many environmental organizations. The increasing interest of environmental groups in the Amazon has had a profound effect on the region. Some believe that international pressure is one of the only reasons that Brazil has even token environmental regulation. It has proved a powerful force in Brazilian policy making. There is a history of Brazilian relations with the United States, as well, which gives the U.S. some begrudged power over the Brazilian Government.

Sources of Foreign Influence

      The United States and Brazil began positive relations as early as the 1780's, when Brazilian intellectuals asked Thomas Jefferson for advice in starting their own revolution. Following the Spanish-American War, the United States' increased influence in the Americas lead the Brazilian government to seek alliance with them even at a time when many other Latin American countries kept relations cool in an effort to ease concern about American imperialism. During World War II, the United States, in an early display of foreign influence, pushed Brazil into declaring war on Germany and Italy, at least in part because then-President Getulio Vargas began displaying fascist leanings and German sympathies (Gallant, 1997).
      Post World War II relations began to take on a less friendly aspect. The United States objected to several Brazilian policy changes, including the creation of a state oil monopoly. More damning from a Brazilian perspective, the United States opposed President Joao Goulart's election and regime, preferring more conservative candidates. Following the 1964 military coup which disposed Goulard, many Brazilians suspected that the military had received support from the United States. Such support was never actually a factor in the coup, but the United States had been prepared to offer it in the event of failure (Gallant, 1997).
      Relations between the military government and the United States remained good for a number of years, but began to break down due to conflicts over the lack of human rights in Brazil and the government's desire for nuclear capabilities. Brazil purchased reactor parts in an agreement with West Germany, to which the United States was heavily opposed. There was general trepidation that Brazil, not having signed the North Atlantic Non-Proliferation Treaty, would use their new technology to produce their own bomb. After this relations were not overtly antagonistic, but neither were they friendly (Gallant, 1997).
      In an attempt to better the relations between the two countries, President William Clinton made an official diplomatic visit to Brazil in 1997. During his visit there were many demonstrations of Brazilian resentment towards American actions and policies which they labeled imperialist. Clinton was preceded by a flood of bad press in which he was "compared to Rambo on a mission to subjugate uncivilized Amazon natives (Nascimiento, 1997)." Brazilians believe that they deserve more respect from the United States. As weekly news magazine Isto E declared, "Brazil has become a source of dollars and jobs for the gringos (Nascimiento, 1997)." According to the same article, the American economy receives 200,000 jobs a year and almost five billion dollars as a benefit of its relationship with Brazil (Nascimiento, 1997).
      During his visit, Clinton succeeded in improving relations between the two countries. Given Brazil's current financial status, it may have been just as well for the Brazilians, despite accusations of paternalism. Economists have been predicting the collapse of the Brazilian economy for several years, comparing it to Russia. Indeed, Russian and Brazilian policies for economic conservation were similar, and Brazil was in far more dire economic straits than Russia at the time of its collapse. And as one economist stated, "Brazil matters. It represents about half of Latin America in terms of size, people, and GDP (Roche, 1998)."
      Growing alongside these shifts in the complexion of international relationships have been the involvement of nongovernment organizations and international groups, many of which are focused on the environment. This involvement has grown steadily stronger in the past two decades and now represents a considerable force in Brazilian decision making. "The international dimension of environmental politics in Latin America is nothing new, but until the 1980s was mainly the purview of networks of scientist (Keck, 1995)."
      It is perhaps fitting then, that the first international alarm at the rate of deforestation in the Amazon was among scientists in the early 1970s who were wary of the military government's plans for expansion and colonization. Scientists tended to be apolitical, treating both squatters' movements and large land owners as similar threats. They were also largely ignored, both by the Brazilian government and the international community (Keck, 1995).
      During the 1970s the newly formed environmental organizations in the United States and elsewhere began to concern themselves with events in the Amazon. The problems associated with rapid colonization and urbanization were many and pronounced, and they quickly became popular and well-known in the environmental community. Brazil was the first area to bring deforestation to the international eye. Given a specific point to rally around, lower communication costs allowed concerned organizations from all over the world to unite on the issue. These united forces pressured their assorted governments to do something about the growing problems in the Amazon. The issue continued to gain prominence. In 1974, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and the World Wildlife Fund took up arms for the "most important nature conservation program of the decade (Keck, 1995)."
       In the United States, the Carter administration was amenable to many of the multimillion dollar rain forest conservation programs that were proposed. By the Reagan administration, however, lack of participation in Latin America and lack of government interest in the United States halted many developing efforts (Keck, 1995).
      The United States has frequently been known to advocate the implementation of stricter environmental policies for its third world neighbors, than it is willing to adopt itself. Brazilians tend to express resentment of suggestions from the United States on environmental policy and especially in developmental policy. A common feeling is that the United States has no right to reap the benefits of exploitative developmental models, while telling other countries that they must develop sustainably and not attempt to emulate American success.
      While the United States may seem like only a small part of the international environmental movement, it should be noted that the American demographic makes up a substantial portion of most NGO's donations. Other real money for environmental projects often comes from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, both of which are also heavily influenced by the prevailing American policies. The World Bank is funded with contributions from 148 member nations. The United States is the most influential member, with 20% of the vote, paid for with American tax money (World bank Overview).
      Many of the Brazilian feelings of paternalism or neo-colonialism hold true for even non-American first world environmentalists. Despite these feelings, the money which enters the country from the international community ensures that it posses considerable political clout. "The link between external financing through multilateral development banks and Amazon development policies provides political leverage through which foreign pressure may be exercised within Brazil (Fisher, 1994)."
      Brazilians have a much different image of the potential uses of the Amazon than do most outsiders. For the most part, Brazilians maintain that the Amazon and its wealth are a key part of Brazil's anticipated transformation into a first world country. Luis Barbosa found that in 1996, sixty-six percent of Brazilians still felt that "Brazil must use the resources of Amazonia to develop the country. Fifty-two percent of Brazilians also expressed the fear that the Amazon would eventually be internationalized (Barbosa, 1996)." Thus foreign interest in the Amazon evokes fear among Brazilian nationalists. Plans for sustainable development and conservation seem directly opposed to Brazilian plans to reach treasured, first world status.
      At the 1974 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, a landmark concept for environmentalism through the nineties was produced. This concept, which was called sustainable development, arose out of North-South debates on appropriate development models (Keck, 1995).
      During the same period in which environmental groups were attempting to balance conservation and development, the environmental movement as a whole was becoming more involved with indigenous rights groups. This shift demonstrates a change in the basic philosophy upheld by the international environmental movement. The ideal of protecting pristine wilderness, exemplified by such organizations as the Sierra Club, moved towards the protection of ways of life which were "in balance" with the environment (Keck, 1995). The Amazon was endowed with a wealth of potential role models.
      In the 1980s international interest in the state of the Amazon exploded. Satellite pictures of the deforested areas were released, coinciding with growing concerns about global warming. "Earth's Lung" needed international assistance. The military's fall out of power lead to greater freedom for Brazilians to express dissenting views on deforestation and colonization. This meant that the environmental movement and nongovernment organizations exercised an increased amount of power over Brazilian governmental policies.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Brazilian Environmentalism

"The rise and fall of environmental protection movements owe far more to socioeconomic and political conditions than to the emergence of scientific evidence of ecological disruptions. Put bluntly, perhaps, the environment does not vote, pay taxes, or raise consciousness by itself."

(Schnaiberg and Gould, p.147)

      The Brazilian government may have a vested interest in protecting the environment. However, the government cannot survive without economic surplus. Left to themselves, governmental controls tend to be lax and favor the interests of large, lucrative businesses. "In the absence of other political activities, those actors who gain economic power will tend to dominate both markets and the political agenda (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 139)." This is one reason that the intervention of outside interests has seemed so influential in the creation of environmental regulation and reform. The dependance of the state on the well-being of its economy is also reflected in a general reluctance to create sweeping environmental policies unless there is seen to be a direct affect on the state's finances. NGOs and their monetary support are currently one of the major reasons that there is any environmental reform that is not economically motivated.
      Many elements of the environmental movement have begun to recognize the need for increased attention to the social aspects of environmental reform. The Rainforest Action Network bills their Protect-An- Acre program as "a direct way of helping forest communities to arrest the many forces of destruction (Support RAN's "Protect-An-Acre" Program!)." The program was developed in response to their own critique of similar programs which allow the consumer to donate money which is then used to purchase tracts of rainforest land. RAN found that this type of program caters "to the preconceived notions of North Americans that ownership brings control (Support RAN's "Protect-An-Acre" Program!)." Such programs also commonly failed due to lack of finance and organization which allowed squatters to settle on and degrade the "pristine" rainforest land.
      RAN is also certain to assure would-be philanthropists that "at least 82% of your donations goes directly toward rain forest preservation (Support RAN's "Protect-An-Acre" Program!)." And no more than 18% of the donation will be spent on administration and similar costs (Support RAN's "Protect-An-Acre" Program!). The distribution of donated funds is a perennial problem for many environmental organizations.
      Financial muddles aside, the inclusion of humans rights and especially indigenous rights issues is becoming increasingly popular among the more influential members of the environmental movement. "An environmental challenge of global proportions seems to have given rise to a global response led by an "alliance" between First World nongovernmental organizations and Third World social movements which include indigenous groups (Fisher, 1994)."
      In such alliances, the burden of compromise often rest on the small, less influential organizations. Economic pressures ensure that smaller organizations are willing to alter their platforms in order to gain favor with the larger organizations. This and the lure of cash can make retaining the original focus of the organization difficult. Of the current rubber tappers' movement, Ilzamar Mendes, widow of Chico Mendes, says,"The movement now only exists for television and foreign newspapers, but here in Xapuri it's not helping anyone (Podesta, 1993)."
      Most grassroots groups recognize that the larger, more powerful organizations are far less likely to compromise on issues which may create rifts among collaborators. "Today many people say they are environmentalists and speak of Chico Mendes without having Chico's wider vision which did not separate social struggle from ecological struggle (Rodriguez)." In cases such as that of the rubber tappers, it is almost inevitable that the grassroots, socially conscious partner will come out the loser of any potential struggle. Thus the presence of NGOs in third world areas is both a blessing and a curse.

"Although this provides poor peoples' movements in Latin America with important allies, it also tends to reproduce structural inequities within North-South environmental relations since all money comes from the North, and all the legitimation from the South. The same struggles are defined in quite different ways by different organizations, which may not necessarily want to enter into the same alliances .This also tends to present a stereotypical view of poor people as saviors rather than destroyers of the forest, for example, which is often hard to reconcile with the messier reality of real communities...Despite these drawbacks, environmental-social alliances constitute frameworks within which new understandings can be negotiated."

(Keck, 1995)

      Many third world activists recognize that the financial security the international community can provide may not be the key to success. "Sometimes we have neglected our internal bonds, attracted by offers of material help. But without political clarity, the dollars and the foreign help will still be of no use (Rodriguez)."
      For many NGOs the Amazon represents an environmental victim of various development projects. In the last few decades, international groups became united around the issue of World Bank funding of environmentally detrimental programs. Due to obvious environmental degradation directly linked to projects funded by the World Bank, the Amazon was a perfect example of the environmental hazards associated such projects, including roads and dams. "The South is littered with huge, centralized, expensive, hydroelectric power dams that the South was encouraged in invest in (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 170)." Chico Mendes and the rubber tappers' movement provided an all important link between grassroots environmentalism in the Amazon and the international movement.
      The use of this type of strong, grassroots movement as a link to the international community has affected the way in which members of international groups view the Brazilian activist. Most local environmental activists are concerned with issues which have the most local impact, such as sewage and pesticides. Since only a very few activists actually hail from the forest, deforestation is only a local issue for a small percentage of Brazilians. Brazilian activists who are concerned with sewage and urban issues are less likely to be given credibility or monetary support by international groups (Keck, 1995).
      However, it has been shown that Brazilians have a high level of awareness of the rainforest. A 1996 study of Brazilian children had some very interesting results, showing that 100% of the children interviewed both in Manaus (a major Amazonian city) and Nova Ayrao (a small, rural, Amazonian community) believed that humans needed the rainforest. The majority of the children (83% and 100%) also believed that the forest was being cut down, and similarly high numbers (83% and 79%) believed that such actions are wrong and that the government should regulate deforestation (96% and 92%). More importantly, many of the Amazonian children (88% and 85%) also believed that they, themselves should take action to further conservation (Kahn and Freidman, 1996).
      The Amazonian children interviewed tended to have a more homocentric view of the importance of the environment than a similar subset in Houston. However, the environmental leanings of the Brazilian children may represent a future shift in subsistence activities, especially in the rural community, as many of the adults in Nova Ayrao make their living from logging, an activity which the children interviewed defined as wrong (Kahn and Friedman, 1996).
      Both the rubber tapper's movement and the Kayapo have allied themselves with international interests. Their case studies describe the ways in which these alliances were reached, and the imagery that the participating elements of the environmental movement created out of these alliances. They also illustrate the myriad problems with the use of false imagery.
      These problems vary from situation to situation, but they are all related to the power dynamics between the local and the international, dynamics which are often fueled by economics. In the case of Chico Mendes, the environmental movement was able to change his public goals to coincide with their own, though his personal mission remained social reform. The alteration of his values also altered the organizations he built, seemingly for the worse.
      The case of the Kayapo is mildly more encouraging. They have a history of savvy dealings with Westerners, and sophisticated "modern" man has been no exception. In a Body Shop campaign, the Kayapo were characterized as neo-noble savages through the use of advertising imagery. The company also treated them as savages, failing to live up to contracts and deliver promised cash and goods. The Kayapo reacted to this in a manner that took full advantage of their knowledge of modern life, and illustrates that the "savage" is as much a construction for those acting it out as it is for those promoting it.
      Specific problems relating to the intervention of the international environmental movement can be generalized from these two case studies. The problems the regions do face when they reach international prominence are often simplified, neglected, and in the worst cases, acerbated by the environmental movement's assistance. Additional difficulties are also spawned, the most common having their roots in unequal distribution of new economic resources. Closer attention to the areas on which the environmental movement chooses to focus might avert additional suffering for those who for whom life in such areas is an unavoidable reality.
      The simplicity of societies like the rubber tappers and the Kayapo fools the average Westerner into believing them a haven of idyllic rural existence. The low level of technology in much of the South may appear to be more environmentally sound to the Northerner. However, it is a result of the poorer southern neighbor making the best possible use of his or her resources. "Rather than being the leaders of an environmental revolution, they were (and are) the impoverished followers trying to gain what crumbs they might from the industrial world treadmill that surrounds them (Schnaiberg and Gould, p. 175)."
      While the potential of marginalized populations to create disruption is great, the ability to do so may be sharply limited (Fisher, 1994). Therefore, the reliance of the environmental movement on the "noble savage" image, or the brave Amazonian ecologist, may eventually prove less effective than the movement might wish. The use of such images "implies that Indian (or seringalista) lifestyles should be given a chance to survive because of specific acts they perform which are beneficial to the environment rather than basing the defense of indigenous rights on elementary notions of justice which would ensure their rights to maintain a separate cultural tradition (Fisher, 1994)." As these case studies demonstrate, a lack of attention to local detail when creating internationally disseminated imagery forces change and conflict in the imaged locale.

Chico Mendes, "Ecological Martyr" or Social Reformer?

"I think much has changed since Chico died, but unfortunately, it has changed for the worst."

Ilazamar Mendes (Podesta, 1993)

      On December 15, 1944, Chico Mendes was born on his family's seringal, or plot of land used for tapping rubber, in the Brazilian state of Acre. Mendes' grandfather was the first rubber tapper in his family, having moved to Acre during the rubber boom in search of a better economic situation. Acre was a frontier state, inhabited at the time of Mendes' birth mainly by rubber tappers and remnants of Indian tribes (Revkin, pp. 63-67).
      The life of the typical seringalista depended entirely on the forest. The forest provided food, building materials, and rubber, which in turn provided cash. The rubber tappers sold their harvests to middle men, or padrones. These men did not have to set a fair price, and the tappers had no other legal option for selling elsewhere. Even ducking the system to sell directly to industrialists would not guarantee them a good price. This system, aviamento, was the major adversary of the rubber tapper (Revkin).
      Mendes began to learn the rubber tapper's trade at a young age. No formal schooling was available to the children of Acre, so they received their education in the forest. They learned skills such as how deep to slit the bark of the rubber trees for the maximum flow of latex. Mendes began tapping full time by the age of eleven (Revkin, pp. 69-77).
      In 1956, when he was twelve, Mendes met a political fugitive, Euclides Tavora. Tavora had been involved in a communist revolt against one of the Brazilian governmental regimes, and was wanted by the state for his escape from a penal colony. Tavora taught Mendes the valuable skills of reading and arithmetic, rare among the rubber tappers. Along with more scholastic lessons, Tavora imparted the basic tenants of Marxism and impressed on his pupil the necessity of class struggle in Brazil (Revkin, pp. 83-93). Less than one percent of Brazilian landowners own almost forty-nine percent of the country's area, making outrage at both the extent of Indian reserves and the activities of squatters seem ridiculous a best, and viciously egocentric and calculated at worst (Epstein, 1993). This background fitted Mendes for his future role as organizer of the rubber tappers.
      In a 1964 coup the Brazilian military gained control of the government. This seemingly distant upheaval had severe repercussions for the rubber tappers. Colonization and development of the Amazon became a new Brazilian priority, and the overpopulation and famine in the northeast presented the government with a host of willing colonists. The government obliged by creating the a number of new Amazonian development initiatives. Of all of these programs, the one which most affected Acre and its residents was SUDAM (Revkin). SUDAM promised cleared land and houses to families living hand to mouth in the crowded northeast, which to the landless seemed like a godsend. The government began to build roads and people began to flock to the newly opened Amazonian territory.
      The colonization of the Amazon did not go as planned. Most of the new settlers had no experience in the rain forest, and no knowledge of how to live in it. The land was poor for agriculture, forcing families to keep moving and clearing new plots. This led to the creation of huge swaths of deforested land which grew along with newly cleared roads. This new type of forest use was a threat to the lifestyle of both the resident rubber tappers and the Indians. These people depended on forested land for subsistence, and could see their livelihood disappearing as more settlers arrived.
      As heavier and heavier waves of colonization entered Acre the ramifications of their situation became more and more obvious to the rubber tappers. By the age of twenty-two Mendes had started agitating for changes in the rubber tappers' poor living conditions. He wrote letters to the government describing the lack of education and medical care, and the exploitative system that the tappers labored under. He began to organize the rubber tappers into unions in order to sell their crops collectively. They could then be responsible for negotiating the prices they would charge for their products.
      In 1973, the Brazilian government opened BR 317, a new road into Acre territory. This initiated the heaviest influx of new colonists ever. The rubber tappers were outraged. This expressed itself in a new form of protest, the empate. Contrary to popular belief, Mendes did not invent the empates. They have been described as a spontaneous form of social protest, with no one architect.
      Empate has been characterized as a peaceful protest, but more in character with the local culture they were serious bluffing sessions rather than nonviolent demonstrations. The rubber tappers would enter an area that was to be cut and call the bluff of the cutters, either by placing themselves in the path of the chainsaws or by destroying the cutters' temporary housing. As most cutters were hired by large ranch owners, they backed down easily, and the empates became an effective technique of preventing some of the rampant deforestation of the era (Campbell et. al, 1997).
      The role of women in rubber tapper's movement is worth mentioning for a moment as a contrast to the attention heaped on Mendes by the international community. The part women played in the preservation of the forest and the organization and success of the movement grew to be quite important, but was totally overlooked on a national, international, and even a local level.

"The most popular images of the rubber tappers' movement in the press and the international environmental circles tend to be either of a solitary man leaving home before daybreak to tap rubber trees and gather latex from them, or of the Xapuri union office, the base of the national rubber tappers' organization created by Mendes and other leaders, or of an empate, a forest demonstration in which the rubber tappers face ranchers' hired hands and armed police to prevent the clearing of the forest. Only in the last of these images is it possible to spot women easily, standing on the front lines between chainsaws and the forest."

(Campbell et. al, 1997)

      Women began as a totally marginalized part of the emcomienda system. Women were usually involved in the production of food for the family. As self-sufficiency cut back on the profits of the padrones in the encomienda system, wives were often not allowed to stay with their husbands, and husbands were forced to pay more for food from the central store. Women who did end up in Acre were often captured in cities, or arrested for prostitution. They were then shipped to Acre as a kind of good which could be charged to a seringueiro's account with the boss. It was not until the price of rubber collapsed around 1910 that women were allowed to live with rubber tapper husbands (Campbell et. al, 1997).
      Women began to share the labor of tapping and curing the rubber, though it was more common for them and their smaller children to gather Brazil nuts or engage in subsistence agriculture. They also took care of the domestic side of life in the forest. Women were and are at an economic disadvantage, which leads to serious, unaddressed, social inequities (Campbell et. al, 1997).
      When the rubber tappers' movement was first formed, 41 women joined as founding members. They were all previously recognized as heads of their households, due to male death or illness. Women were often discouraged from joining the union, some even being physically prevented by husbands or other disapproving males, including Mendes' own wife, who says that she was discouraged from participating in union activities (Campbell et. al, 1997).
      Chico Mendes was, in fact, the first person who suggested female membership in the union. The women's participation and role in the Union slowly began to grow. Younger women are beginning to join, and the percentage of widowed female members has fallen. Mendes was well aware of the traditional roles of women in the rubber tappers' society, and he used this to his advantage, placing women and small children at the forefront of empates, challenging the moral codes of the men they fought. Women remain on the front lines of empates today, and still face serious challenges. One woman observed in 1994, "In this movement, the seringueiro got free of the boss man, but the mulher seringeira (woman rubber tapper) didn't get free from her boss--her husband (Campbell et. al, 1997)."
      The struggle with ranchers became more and more pronounced. Mendes moved to the town of Xapuri in order to devote himself entirely to organizing. He was making the transition from grass-roots organizer to national leader. This led to more and more frequent threats of death and violence from worried ranchers. He and others eventually formed the national Rubber Tapper's Union, joining smaller local union chapters with a broader goal, the creation of extractive reserves. Extractive reserves were Mendes' own idea, preserving the forest but allowing subsistence activities to continue.
      Mendes first came in contact with the international environmental movement only a year before his murder. He had written to a friend, Mary Helena Allegretti, in Sao Paulo asking if the Brazilian NGOs might be able to provide some kind of financing for the Rubber Tappers union. The best, and richest source of money seemed like the international NGOs, so Allegretti flew to Washington and presented the case to influential international organizations. Impressed with the power of the NGOs, she set up a meeting for Mendes to discuss his plans for the preservation of the Amazon (Revkin, pp.172-174).
      The meeting was a success, and an ideological marriage of convenience was born. "We rubber tappers have become environmentalists without ceasing to be unionists, to fight for land and Agrarian reform together with Indians and other Brazilians (Rodriguez)." The international organizations had been trying through the early to mid-eighties to find a basis on which to discredit the World Bank's backing of Amazonian development schemes, but they had no alternative form of development to replace the World Bank's model. Mendes provided that alternative in the form of his extractive reserves. Along with extractive reserves, the environmental movement gained another valuable asset, Mendes himself. His image became a very popular tool of the movement's publicists, whether in photo shoots with ranking officials of the various organizations, or evoked as a homegrown Amazonian ecologist.
      The creation of a helpful image of Chico Mendes leads to the question of what function that image serves for the environmental movement. If the only purpose Chico Mendes could serve was as a creator of ideas or a liaison to his own grassroots community, then he would have been forgotten at his death. Mendes himself predicted that his death would not help save the Amazon.

"If a messenger came down from heaven and guaranteed that my death would further our struggle it would even be worth it. But experience teaches us the opposite. Public rallies and lots of funerals won't save the Amazon. I want to live."

(Chico Mendes quoted in Revkin, p. 1)

      Despite Mendes' own predictions, as a martyr he continued to wield considerable influence. His image did not die with him. His murder made the headlines of the New York Times, and the Hollywood media began a race to produce a movie based on his life. The majority of these plans dropped along the way, removing potential money from Acre. Finally a biography, The Burning Season, was picked up by HBO to be the definitive version of Chico's life, the version that would be seen on television screens all over the world.
      An interesting side note to the issue of the Hollywood rush to exploit Mendes' death and notoriety is the film, to be put on the Internet in late December of 1998, made by two documentary makers, known as the Camera Guys. These two men were offered positions on a Warner Brothers film based on the Chico Mendes story. The film was subsequently canceled when it was found that none of the crew knew anything about Mendes. Stranded in Brazil, the two men made their own way up the Amazon to Acre. They reached some startling conclusions about the creation of the Mendes' image (Dias).
      They found that once Chico Mendes was in contact with large international groups, these groups found in him exactly what they needed. Organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation brought Mendes to the United States and gave him "a full marketing blitz by the ecologists (Dias)." The groups them began to set up a series of ecological awards, which Mendes was presented with, generating publicity and enhancing his image in the public eye (Dias).
      It does seem that the environmental movement needs Mendes as an inspiration. He fits very well into the role of the postmodern hero as described by Mike Featherstone in Undoing Culture. Featherstone postulates that postmodernism causes the elevation of both the struggle to change life, and the image of life in the past. Mendes represents both of these things.
      Featherstone's key element of the heroic life is its rejection of "order for the extraordinary life which not only threatens the possibility of returning to everyday routines, but entails the deliberate risking of that life itself (Featherstone, p. 58)." Mendes' activities as a social reformer and organizer qualify him as a rejecter of the status quo of powerlessness and anonymity for rubber tappers. Mendes' murder proves that he was endangering his life for his cause, and many of his associates have stated that he began receiving death threats long before his death. Thus Mendes fits the definition of a hero of the postmodern life.
      Featherstone believes that the heroic life retains importance even in the fragmented postmodern consumer society, in which most of the large environmental NGOs are based. It enhances loyalty to an image when dealing with "interpersonal violence and warfare between the states (Featherstone, p. 67)." As many environmentalists use language which is synonymous with the language of war, a state of warfare seems a good description for the images and emotions which are involved in the environmental movement.

"'Chico was enormously important to the ecologists,' said Schwartz. 'What he gave D.C. ecologists was a local representative from the Amazon who had an alternative development plan the ecologists thought would be more friendly to the forest.'"

(Dias)

      During his life Mendes was not the spokesperson that the movement might have hoped for. His friend and fellow organizer Osmario Amancio Rodrigues, in a letter to the public entitled "The Second Murder of Chico Mendes", describes an incident during which a reporter walked out of a press conference when Mendes began to speak of the rainforest in terms of the struggle for land reform, the plight of the rubber tappers, and threats on his own life (Rodrigues).

"Today I see that ecology occupies a large space in our press, but in a way is a very distant issue... This was not ecology but a union struggle. Since they say Chico was an ecologist, why was he the first ecologist killed in Brazil?"

(Rodrigues)

      The Camera Guys uphold that the environmental groups kept a careful check on Mendes' speeches and appearances, guarding against the espousal of too political an agenda. They also made a conscious effort to sanitize the Amazon for their public, changing the bloody struggle in Acre to "a poetic landscape of gentle peasants trying to protect the forest (Dias)."
      With its manipulation of Mendes' image the environmental movement was fitting him to be a even better hero. Featherstone remarks upon this refitting of the hero when he says,

"What is interesting is the way in which the image of the hero is taken out of its context, and woven into the heroic life in which the social context becomes played down, or becomes one in which the hero distinguishes himself from and rises above the social."

(Featherstone, p. 61)

      Featherstone could have been evaluating the situation of Chico Mendes when he wrote this passage. The removal of the hero from his social context of land reform and class strife was one of the first image changes, if the data provided by the Camera Guys is reliable, that the environmental movement effected on Mendes. Removed from his context of violence and social reform Mendes was shaped into the hero that the environmental movement needed. His actions ceased to be motivated by intense pressure on his economic base, and became motivated by an ecology based love of the forest.
      According to the Camera Guys, Mendes was well aware of the image of him the environmental groups were creating. But he also knew that the only way that he could gain and hold an international spotlight for the rubber tappers was to go along with the image change. Mendes' first trip to Washington proved the power available through the environmental movement. With a new road system threatening Acre, the environmental movement was able to use Mendes and the rubber tappers to force the World Bank to withdraw funding, halting the project (Dias, Barbosa, 1996). This clearly demonstrated to Mendes' opponents in Acre how powerful his new allies were.
      Mendes knew that he was in danger, having received death threats even before he corroborated with the environmental movement. Perhaps the threat he represented to nervous ranchers became too great after the cancellation of the road project demonstrated his new international political clout. Many people believe that the road system was the real reason Mendes was assassinated (Dias).
      The environmental groups knew there were threats against Mendes' life. In Rubber Jungle, Steve Schwartzman, of the Environmental Defense Fund defends Mendes' placement in the spotlight of international affairs.

"We thought that if we got Chico enough publicity in the New York Times they (the ranchers) would leave him alone. We were wrong. The truth is, those ranchers don't read the New York Times."

(Dias)

      Chico Mendes was not an environmentalist. Mendes was first and foremost a grassroots organizer for social and land reform. Strictly speaking, the way of life he was protecting involved the exploitation of the forest for the resources it could provide. His protection of the rain forest was based on the protection of his economic system, rather than an abstract respect for the forest itself.

"I'm not protecting the forest because I'm worried that in twenty years the world will be affected. I'm worried about it because there are thousands of people who depend on the forest and their lives are in danger every day." Chico Mendes

      This aspect of Mendes' ideology seems to have been subsumed after his death. As the National Wildlife Federation summarizes Mendes' beliefs,

"Chico Mendes stood up for the land he knew and loved. He acted without a scientist's detailed knowledge of the vast ecological treasure he was seeking to conserve. But he knew it was wrong to destroy that treasure."

("The Example of Chico Mendes", 1998)

      His murder became a highly controversial issue, and demonstrates the influence of NGOs even over the exotic locale of Acre. On December 22, 1988 Chico Mendes was shot and killed in the door of his house, and in front of his wife, Ilzamar. Two men, Darli Pereiera da Silva and his son Darci Pereiera da Silva were arrested in relation to the murder. This came as a great shock to the ranch owners in the area, as it was the first time a murder in Acre had been investigated by the police. Sebastiao Alves da Silva, the indignant father and grandfather of the suspects, was heard to remark "Even when Jesus died, there wasn't as much publicity (Revkin, p. 279)."
      No investigation would have been made, but various environmental groups began to put international pressure on the Brazilian government to perform. In 1993, both da Silvas broke out of their prison, and in a flurry of scandal, escaped. To the local people the escape came as little surprise, and they described prison security as laughably lax. Darly's conviction was overturned due to lack of evidence (Sangurima, 1995).
      The environmental movement's involvement continued after his death. A recent Rainforest Action Network campaign called for the recapture and trial of Mendes' murders. International pressure notwithstanding, the suspects remain at large (Sangurima, 1995). The loss of Mendes' leadership and the sudden influx of foreign capital took its toll on the rubber tappers. Though the violence in Acre eased, cooperatives designed to provide them with the best possible market remained highly political, but only slightly practical, as economics were neglected. Mendes's widow became involved in a dispute with other members of the rubber tappers' union over the sale of movie rights and the disposition of funds associated with the Chico Mendes Foundation (Podesta, 1993).
      The use of the image of Mendes also changed the environmental movement. They were unable to totally remove Mendes from his social setting and make him into the perfect environmentalist. Many environmental groups have begun to encorperate environmental and human rights issues into their campaigns. In recent years such powerful international NGOs as Amnesty International and the Rainforest Action Network, which has grown prominent in Brazil, have been actively participating in social justice struggles in Brazil.
      They have endorsed and supported such groups as O Povo Sem Terra, a grassroots organization that has been agitating for land reform. O Povo may eventually prove too controversial for the larger NGOs, as one of its major tactics is to build squatter towns and begin to farm land that belongs to absentee landlords, which they hope to have redistributed to landless families. This tactic is often quite effective, but can lead to serious, often violent conflict. The area in which they are based has the highest murder rate in Brazil. It seems worth mentioning that the larger and more conservative environmental NGOs, such as the Sierra Club, have stayed well clear of O Povo Sem Terra. In the future, as the group continues its potentially violent path towards badly needed land reform, it will be interesting to see which of the international and Brazilian NGOs continue to give it their blessing.
      Mendes as an image is much easier to control than such potentially volatile associates. He is now unable to cause problems by supporting the wrong causes and has been transformed from a man who fought for the rights of his people to, in the words of a National Wildlife Fund publication, "hero of the Amazon rubber tappers and inspiration to environmentalists around the world (Remembering Chico Mendes: His Legacy and Our Future)."
      That Mendes as a symbol for the rubber tapper meant something different than Mendes as a symbol for the Northern environmentalist is clear through the rubber tappers' reaction to his current image. As one rubber tapper said, "The name of Chico Mendes has been raised so high that it seems that he did not belong to this world where we continue to live in the same manner as he lived, suffered, struggled and died (Rodriguez)."
      This might lead one to ask why the environmental movement needs a heroic figure such as Mendes. Perhaps the fragmented nature of the movement itself leads to its need for some sort of common ground. The creation of a heroic figure custom made for the interests of those who join large environmental NGOs allows people with hugely diverse backgrounds to respect the same individual. Chico Mendes may now function as a common point of reference to hold together attention and loyalty from a broadly diverse group of people for whom, in many cases, the problems he spent his life solving will never be immediate.
      Mendes may also provide an understandable link to an exotic culture and location. The assurance, though the espousal of Mendes as a native environmentalist, that the people in such a far off place hold the same values and fight the same fight as the members in first world countries may reaffirm for the first world environmentalists that their position is a legitimate one. Perhaps it also serves to create a feeling of solidarity and brotherhood with those who are on what, in environmental terms, could be thought of as the front lines of the fight to save the rainforest.
      Lastly, there is no adequate measure to gauge the worth of a martyr. Though Mendes denied that his death would bring any sort of further relief to the rainforest, the very public nature of it put the environmental spotlight on the Amazon. He was able to turn international attention to the problems faced by rubber tappers. However this had unfortunate consequences for the Rubber Tapper's Union. The influx of money that occurred after Mendes' death lead to internal strife, and the eventual disorganization of the Rubber Tapper's Union. The mantel of social reformers has been taken up by such groups as O Povo Sem Terra.
      The popularization of Mendes and his idea of extractive reserves unarguably played a large part in the pressure to change environmental policy that was exerted on Brazil in the late eighties. By 1988, the government had established two extractive reserves in Acre, with more in the planning stages. Thus Mendes' goal was reached, but at a heavy cost to his own movement.

The Kayapo; Sophisticated, Noble Savages

      The increasing popularity of the Amazon lead to the development of a large multiplicity of "natural" products and companies. These companies took the "missionizing" images of the environmental movement and put them into lucrative advertising campaigns. The creation and use of the "noble savage" image of the Kayapo Indians by the Body Shop is an example of such an image, and perhaps a cautionary tale for companies which have too much faith in their own propaganda.
      Mike Featherstone discusses the current anti-heroic ethos, which he associates with the estheticization of everyday life and the feminization of culture. Perhaps the immediacy of the struggle for many members of the environmental movement has kept it from succumbing to these processes. On the other hand, such things as eco-friendly products and businesses may represent the estheticization of the environmental movement.
      The story of the Body Shop's dealings with the Kayapo Indians of Brazil is a classic example of the problems and pit falls of the "noble savage" concept that has become so integral to some areas of the Western-based environmental movement. It also thoroughly illustrates Marshall Sahlins' article "Goodbye to Triste Tropes," in which he asserts that the cultural assimilation of colonized peoples is well worth studying, as each culture deals with new ideas in a different fashion, and culture does not, in fact, break down with the introduction of Western idioms, but reasserts itself in innovative ways.
      The image of the noble savage is one facet of the idea that the "true" culture of an indigenous people only includes pre-Western contact cultural elements. The "noble savage" rose out of early anthropological work done with native peoples in colonized areas. With its use native peoples are stagnated, their image captured at a specific point in time, preferably one with the trappings and technologies of the modern world at a safe distance. After all, a Kayapo basket weaver is a more natural example of the "simple," indigenous lifestyle that has become an ideal of the environmental movement than a Kayapo lawyer. In reality, however, both use uniquely Kayapo culture in their day to day lives, and both contribute to Kayapo culture as a whole. "Society either understands Indians all made up and naked inside the forest or consigns them to the border of big cities(Potiguara, 1992)."
      The "noble savage" image, originating in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, has been frequently challenged in recent years. Researchers do not doubt that the indigenous inhabitants of areas now under environmental threat have an intimate and thorough knowledge of their surroundings. However, the idea that the "savage" has a perfectly balanced relationship with nature has been critiqued by a number of scholars.
      Michael S. Alvard states that the idea of native peoples as conservationists rises out of looking at the accumulated affect of the foraging practices, rather than the actual behaviors. In his study on the Piro of the Peruvian Amazon Alvard found that the Piro often made prey choices which were not consistent with conservation. However, the study also noted behaviors which could be interpreted as a type of environmental functionalism, working to preserve resources over the long term (Alvard, 1993). So, while the noble savage is a rather overblown image, it is still valid to theorize that indigenous groups may have developed behaviors which protect their specific environment over time, and which, especially when compared with traditional European land use, make them appear quite conservation minded.
      This new flow of the environmental movement has opened doors for the study of indigenous populations and their cultures, not just by anthropologists, but by the general public and the companies that supply them. As the belief in the benign and superior "natural" philosophies of hunter gathers and horticulturalists grows, a new market has grown up in the West for "natural" goods, with the touch of the native and exotic about them. With their use of the Kayapo, and other small, exotic groups, the Body Shop has been one of the forerunners in trying to satisfy this market.
      The Body Shop has often been used, both by itself and by others, as the prototype of the socially responsible business. Its stated goals are "to dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change" and "to tirelessly work to narrow the gap between position and practice (Community Trade Program)," two areas where many multinational companies have incurred considerable criticism. The Body Shop has worked hard to keep this image since its start the early seventies.
      One of the Body Shop's major efforts to promote itself as an innovative company which puts a premium on prevention and relief of social problems was their Community Trade Program. As described by the Body Shop the "Community Trade Program is a special purchasing programme that is the result of the Body Shop's commitment to support long-term sustainable trading relationships with communities in need (Community Trade Program)."
      A community which would normally have "limited opportunities, limited resources, limited access to education, limited health care, and limited outlets for their goods (Community Trade Program)," fits the Body Shop's criteria for a "community in need." The Body Shop tries to structure their trading to grant the disadvantaged community access to these valuable commodities.
      One of the first groups tapped as a "community in need" were the Kayapo Indians of the Xingu region of Brazil. They are currently settled between the von Mauritius Falls in the south and Altamira in the north on the Xingu Indian Park. They currently number around 4,000, and live in 14 villages across their territory (Turner, 1995).
      The Body Shop describes the Kayapo as "one of the few warrior nations to have preserved most of their cultural traditions and tribal knowledge (Body Shop-FAQ's)." This view of the Kayapo proved to be a lucrative one for the Body Shop. On the other hand such a simplistic estimation of the Kayapo culture also led to considerable problems, and contributed in part to the current financial issues the Body Shop is experiencing.
      The Body Shop could be said to have fallen prey to the same "tristes tropes" view of the colonized that Marshall Sahlins accuses anthropologists of being unable to see beyond in the wake of post-modernism. Business, like anthropology, can no longer "only contemplate (or exploit) the sadness of the tropics (Sahlins, 1993)," but needs to remember that culture provides mechanisms of dealing with new situations and each culture will deal with the new ideas of Western capitalism in a slightly different way.
      The history of the Kayapo and the Body Shop provides a perfect example of Sahlins' contention that sometimes capitalism is the exotic and misunderstood cultural ideal. However, capitalism's exoticness does not mean that its parts will not be assimilated into the indigenous culture which is "always universal in compass and thereby able to subsume alien objects and persons in logically coherent relationships (Sahlins, 1993)." The Kayapo are as fitting a group of poster children for Sahlins' definition of "develop-man" as the cultural development of an indigenous group dealing with the influx of western development, as they were for the Body Shop's "community in need."
      The interaction between the Body Shop and the Kayapo began in 1990. The Body Shop arranged to trade with the Indians for Brazil nut oil for their Brazil Nut conditioner, initiating the Body Shop's "Trade Not Aid" program. "Trade Not Aid" was designed to allow companies like the Body Shop and Ben and Jerry's to source their more exotic materials from indigenous groups and small communities.
      The Body Shop began to trade with two Kayapo villages, supplying a used plane for the transport of the oil and accelerating the process of approval from the notoriously bureaucratic Brazilian government for the building of a hospital in a village near the Kayapo settlements.
      This marked the development of the Body Shop's "Brazilian Healthcare Project" which began in 1991. Body Shop literature states that the Project was created when the "Kayapo recognized a new priority of looking after the health of their people (Body Shop-FAQ's)." The Body Shop's lawyers financed this project by finding an unused US $2,93 million loan and convincing FUNAI, the Brazilian Bureau of Indian Affairs to use the loan for the health care plan, an undertaking which the Body Shop describes as "some of the biggest learning lessons of the project (Body Shop-FAQ's)."
      These activities generated large amounts of free, favorable publicity for the Body Shop. In 1993 the company announced that it had reached the world's first cultural and intellectual property agreement between a Western company and an indigenous tribe, the tribe being the Kayapo. In the wake of this announcement the Body Shop started a massive advertising campaign using a photograph of Kayapo Chief Pykati-Re in full traditional dress, giving a thumbs up gesture, presumably to the Body Shop. This image was displayed in franchises around the world, as well as decorating the Body Shop factory in England (Petean, 1995). An additional photograph of Pykati-Re and Body Shop founder Anita Roddick was used in an American Express campaign.
      In 1996 Chief Pykati-Re, with the assistance of former Body Shop representative Saulo Petean, sued the Body Shop for the uncompensated use of his image in both campaigns. The law suit stated that the Kayapo had no formal contract allowing the Body Shop to use their images or intellectual property. The Body Shop responded by dismissing the allegations as the machinations of an embittered employee. Pykati-Re eventually dropped his suit. But the suit was only the beginning of the Body Shop's problems.
      In an article entitled "Broken Promises" Saulo Petean enumerated the injustices that had become a part of the Body Shop's dealings with the Kayapo. The article included the allegation that the suite brought against the Body Shop by Chief Pykati-Re was dropped due to the Body Shop's threats to discontinue all trade with the Kayapo villages. The suite came at time when the Body Shop was under attack in other areas as well, including their animal testing policies and the "naturalness" of their products.
      A second allegation made by Petean against the Body Shop involved the company's suppression of a study it commissioned from the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University. The study states that the Body Shop consistently misrepresented their relationship with the Kayapo. Other charges include the disruption of long standing social relationships. The Body Shop actually employed only 70 out of 3,500 Kayapo in two out of 14 villages. The study describes this as the source of unusual tensions and inter- and intra-village competition. Petean goes on to list a number of instances in which the Body Shop defrauded the Kayapo of funds they were entitled to.

"The Body Shop says that it pays $35 a kilo for the oil, well above the "world market price." In fact, there is no market price for the oil since the Body Shop is the only commercial user of the product. Body Shop unilaterally sets the price it pays to the villages... Over five years, Body Shop has sold 1.4 million liters of Brazil nut oil conditioner valued at $28 million. From this the Kayapo of Aukre and Pukano villages have received $686, 000."

(Petean, 1995)

      The Kayapo also never received the bulk of the money they were owed for the American Express campaign, eventually obtaining $1,632.50, while Roddick received $600,000 for the use of her image.
      The Kayapo's involvement in an American Express campaign has a certain amount of irony, as the company, through a wholly owned subsidiary, Lehman Brothers, provided financial support for the building of the James Bay II hydroelectric scheme, which is scheduled to flood a large portion of the native lands of the Cree Indians of Quebec. In 1988, the Kayapo skillfully used the international media to prevent World Bank financing of a pair of dams which threatened to flood their ancestral lands. They invited the media to a rally of all of the native groups affected, and generated huge amounts of embarrassing, international publicity. The Brazilian government was forced to end the planned dam construction, after the World Bank withdrew its promised funding.
      The Petean charges leveled against the Body Shop fueled already growing suspicions of the company's polices and practices. The company had been caught in a rather flagrant violation of its own goals. The Body Shop has steadily lost money over the past few years, and is now in a state of decided financial decline, which some see as an illustration of the impossibility of a multinational corporation with a social conscience. As the McSpotlight, a London based consumer criticism group put it:

"The Body Shop's operations, like those of all multi-nationals, have a detrimental effect on the environment and the world's poor. They do not help the plight of animals or indigenous groups, and their products are far from what they're cracked up to be. They have put themselves on a pedestal in order to exploit people's idealism...The truth is that nobody can make the world a better place by shopping."

(The Body Shop in McSpotlight)

      The Kayapo, while not the sole reason for the Body Shop's current disfavor in the eyes of various environmental groups, did play a part in the company's decline, mainly by refusing to act in a suitably savage manner.
      The Kayapo function as a cultural unit which can incorporate new knowledge and symbols, in a classic example of Sahlins' "develop-man." This ability to incorporate allowed the Kayapo to use a traditionally Western tool, the legal system, to work against a multinational company, and bring to light a situation of exploitation that the company would have rather left buried, in an example of "jiving to the world beat, while dancing to their own music (Sahlins, 1993)."
      The Kayapo's rather mercenary attitude towards their resources and images has made them an especially questionable source of environmental imagery. Their well publicized defense of their territory in the face of the World Bank backed dam complex made them heros to many, but their deals with gold miners and logging interests have tarnished their image in the eyes of the more informed environmentalists.
      Kayapo Chief Paulinho Paiakan first achieved international prominence as an indigenous environmental activist. He was well honored for his work towards preserving the integrity of the Kayapo's environment and his outspokenness about the problems of the Amazon, receiving a number of environmental awards and accolades. The prominence and international legitimacy of their leader's environmental leanings must have made the Kayapo a very attractive target for those capitalizing on the idea of the neo-noble savage. In 1992, Paiakan was repaid for his success with charges of savagely beating and raping an employee. However, the facts of the police case and the facts that were stated by witnesses were at odds, bringing elements of political set up into the situation. The support the charges received in the popular press seemed more like an off-shoot of public disapproval of Indian sovereignty over some of the more valuable land in the Amazon, than a fair representation of the facts (Cockburn, 1992).
      In addition to this unfavorable publicity, which was for the most part eventually dismissed, the Kayapo's economic activities were not favored by the environmental community. The Kayapo made themselves the richest Indian tribe in the country, through practices such as keeping fifteen percent of the gold taken from their land. Many of the extraction operations the Kayapo profited from were illegal under the Brazilian constitution. While many feel that those with the power in the Kayapo villages are also those who benefitted the most from any shady dealings, many Kayapo maintain that the money was used to buy food, medicine, and to keep them from the same position of powerlessness that resulted in the 1993 massacre of sixteen Yanomami by gold miners squatting on Yanomami territory (Epstein, 1993).
      The Kayapo were not able to completely protect themselves from the problems associated with logging and mining. Even as their populations were decimated by "white man's diseases," their chiefs continued to make deals with loggers and miners. Chief Paiakan stated that preventing the Kayapo from cashing in on the mining and timber industries is blatant racism. Despite continuing economic benefits from the deals with loggers and miners, the Kayapo have begun suffering many of the hazards of modernization. As one FUNAI employee said, "Pukanuv was the last village were I saw Kayapo dignity. When the loggers got there, I decided it would soon be time for me to pack up and leave, like a defeated general (Ghazi, 1994)."
      The Kayapo are doing well in comparison to many of their contemporaries, such as the Kaiowas. The Kaiowas are a branch of the formerly huge Guarani nation located in Mato Grosso del Sul. There are approximately 25,000 of them in the area, far more than the indigenous Kayapo. The Kaiowas have been marginalized into a kind of serf-like labor system, which forces them to work in virtual slavery (Velloso, 1997). There have been few attempts to date to gain more equitable working conditions for these people, and few international organizations which sponsor them. In the world of international influence and power visibility is everything.

"The present day Kayapo's ability to either disrupt or, through treat of disruption, create space for negotiations can be seen as the key to their success."

(Fisher, 1994)

      The Kayapo themselves have been in "direct, if often intermittent and violent" contact with Europeans and their descendants for around 150 years (Turner, 1995). They have had ample time to incorporate the idea of the fetishization of commodity that Marshall Sahlins describes as a fundamental aspect of the Western ideal of capitalism in which " the meaningful values are comprehended as pecuniary values (Sahlins, 1993)." Their assimilation of this particular aspect of Western culture seems well illustrated by their willingness to sell the resources on their reservation.
      Sahlins also describes the manner in which a culture will encompass the values thrust at it by the influx of Western influences, and remake them in a fashion that reinforces the culture, rather than diminishes it, stating "a more or less self-conscious fabrication of culture in response to imperious outside "pressures" is a normal process (Sahlins, 1993)." The Kayapo reactions to Western interferences and "pressures" have been a text book example of this. They have been based on what could be termed the traditional Kayapo warlike nature, which was originally so attractive to the Body Shop, and the use of technology and resources that have been introduced to the Kayapo through their contact with the Western world.
      It could be supposed that the Kayapo have gone past the "complicated intercultural zone where the cultural differences are worked through in political and economic practice (Sahlins, 1993)," and have started to use the Westerners' own cultural constructions against them. Such cosmopolitan cultural melding maybe a product of the environment in which the Kayapo culture evolved. The Xingu area has traditionally been fairly heavily populated with a number of different groups, especially the area known as the Xingu Indian Park which was set aside by the Villas Boas brothers in 1961. At the beginning of the decade the park was home to over 6,000 Indians from 18 different tribes.
      Taking this dense social system into account, it seems unsurprising that the Kayapo were so readily able to incorporate complex Western ideas and technologies into their own culture. Sahlins contends that the current idea of culture as having permeable boundaries, and therefore not actually existing as an identifiable entity is based on the fallacy that culture should not subsume new ideas, but should remain pure.
      The Kayapo response to foreign presences in their territory has altered with time. When the major economic activities of invaders were extraction based, the Kayapo either robbed them or negotiated with the local boss. The Kayapo have earned their warrior reputation through direct, and occasionally deadly, action against those who have trespassed against them. As late as the 1970's they were repelling cattle ranchers from their traditional lands through repeated attacks on their camps. The death toll eventually reached 13 ranchers, and the Kayapo have successfully protected the integrity of their land (Indigenous People Fight Back).
      When the economic base switched to agriculture and ranching with the creation of the various highways, the Kayapo formed alliances with the organizations which determined the current pattern of development. Finally, when the major threats to their territory became dams and other projects which depended heavily on outside financial assistance and technology, the Kayapo began to work with internationally influential environmental groups (Fisher, 1994).
      During this period the Kayapo became an object of much Western curiosity, and several films. From this experience the Kayapo learned about the Western media, and in 1984, when they finally became frustrated with their lack of legal protection they used this knowledge, as well as more traditional warrior tactics, against the Brazilian government. The Kayapo began by alerting the media to their plans and grievances, and then kidnaped the director of the Xingu Indian Park, as well as five other members of the government's National Indian Foundation. The Brazilian government responded with a display of military force, but because of the Kayapo prompted international media coverage, the government was forced to back down and give in the to Kayapo demands. This set the stage for the Kayapo's dam prevention rally (Indigenous People Fight Back).
      Through their use of the media, with a sophistication that seems not to fit with their "noble savage" image the Kayapo demonstrate how cultural awareness "entails people's attempts to control their relationships with the dominant society, including the technical and political means that up to now have been used to victimize them (Sahlins, 1993)." Is it any wonder then, that the Kayapo, being wrapped in red tape and contracts by the Body Shop, turn and make use of the same mechanisms to regain some element of the finances taken from them? The Body Shop might have done better to select a "community in need" with a slightly less violent reputation.

Conclusion: Change and the Environmental Movement

      All of the potential explanations for the repeated use of inaccurate imagery of Brazil by the environmental movement can be generalized as the conflicts of the postmodern and the modern, as well as the misflow of information from the local to the global. The Brazilian Amazon has taken a position of one of the major global ecumenes of the environmental movement, but it remains to be seen if the images that the environmental movement chooses to project of the Amazon are able to prevent the destruction of the reality.
      Here I should like to put in brief a disclaimer. Though I am critiquing the work of environmental movements in relation to the Amazon, I do not feel that all, or even the majority of this work has been wasted. Indeed, I support the efforts of many of the groups, discussed in this paper, to bring an area of the world which is environmentally threatened to the notice of a seemingly unresponsive, first world public. I offer this work as a cautionary example of how oversimplification can lead to problems and ineffective use of well-intentioned time and money. A careful study of the area a nongovernment organization wishes to assist might allow better use and distribution of the proffered resources. I also support the switch from international environmental focuses to local focuses.
      Each individual is best suited to reinforcing environmental awareness and health in her or his own community. However, I do not believe that international communication about the environment should be stopped. A dialog between regions is essential to the solving of complex problems with international implications. However, the position of the expert in these dialogs is much more effectively filled by local, grassroots activists. This is effectively demonstrated through the Chico Mendes case study.
      The majority of the problems laid out in this study resulted from a lack of attention to the complex nature of the problems that the movement has to deal with. The basic structures of environmental aid and the generation of monetary support for such aid need to be adjusted for complexity and the inclusion of the local. Starting environmental actions on a local level, and building up from there would be a far more effective manner of including all levels of complexity in problem resolution than the current models of sending foreign (often resented and American) assistance to environmentally threatened areas. Consumers of the environmental movement's products should be encouraged to change their own behaviors, rather than contributing money in order to change someone else's behavior. Personal, local action to environmental problems should be touted as the best solution.
      There are several directions which field work resulting from this study could take. Of primary interest would be working in Brazil with the populations affected by the international environmental movement. Questions which immediately spring to mind are the thoughts of indigenous peoples on major environmental discourses which many Westerners now take for granted. The Kayapo were able to use the noble savage to their benefit, but more recent colonists might not see themselves as destructive foreign invaders. Another potentially important area of research would be the images and ideals which Brazilians associate with the Amazon, and their origins and implications. If such things were better understood, perhaps foreign suggestions for Amazonian preservation could be represented in a manner more acceptable to the Brazilian public.
      A third field work option would be within the environmental movement itself. The process of creating and disseminating information should be examined from its beginnings to its final outcomes. This paper has, of necessity, dealt with only a small fraction of the issues which make up the environmental movement. I am sure that each one of these issues has a specific path along which it has developed into international prominence, different from the path of the Amazon as traced in this paper. Problems would almost certainly arise out of such a study both due to the complexity of the issues and the secrecy of many environmental organizations.
      Finally, a survey of the images that exist of the Amazon, which, while created and disseminated by the environmental movement, have almost certainly been altered when absorbed by the public. What exactly does the Amazon mean to a middle-class, first world contributor to organizations such as the Rainforest Action network? More importantly, what does it mean to such a contributor's children?
      Most importantly, how do those images relate back to the Amazon? If paternalism is the order of the day, how can that be altered? For, as a Potiguara Indian said in an interview with Cultural Survival magazine, "The largest destroyers of our land were very paternalistic ideologies like 'cross and sword.'" Environmentalism as paternalism may result in more destruction than it can prevent.

Acknowledgments

      Many people contributed to my completion of this project. I would especially like to thank my advisor, Anne Sutherland, for her time and effort on my behalf. I would also like to express life-long gratitude to my friends who have supported me through all of the more stressful elements of this process. Most of all I would like to thank my family for all of their support. I would like to dedicate the academic culmination of my time here at Macalester, this project, to them. Thanks also to my academic advisor, Anne Sutherland, Anthropology Department, Macalester College.

Literature Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large; Cultural Dimensions of Globalization; University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1997.

Barbosa, Luis C. "The people of the forest against international capitalism: systemic and anti-systemic forces in the battle for the preservation of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest." Sociological Perspectives, Summer 1996, v. 39, n. 2., p.317.

Campbell, Constance E. In collaboration with the Women's Group of Xapuri, Acre, Brazil "On the Front Lines but Struggling for Voice." The Ecologist; March/April, v. 27. n. 2. p. 46.

Cockburn, Alexander. "A Crime in Benefit of Land Grabbers; Rape Charges Against a Brazilian Indian Leader Smell of a Frame up." The Los Angeles Times; September 9, 1992.

Dias, Guillermo. "Rubber Jungle: The story of Chico Mendes and the Rubber Tappers." http://www.camguy s.com/RJsysnopsis.html

Epstein, Jack. "Battle Over Rich Brazilian Lands Indians Accused of Being 'Jungle Maharajahs.'" The San Francisco Chronicle; December 29, 1993.

Featherstone, Mike. Undoing Culture; SAGE Publications, London: 1997 Gallant, Katherine. "Friends to a certain degree." Brazzil; August, 1997.

Godfrey, Brian J. and John O. Browder. "Disarticulated urbanization in the Brazilian Amazon." The Geographical Review; July 1996, v. 86, n. 3, p. 441.

Ghazi, Polly. "The Continuing Fight for the Amazon; The Ongoing Conflict Between Economic Development in Brazil's Rain Forests and the Continuing Destruction of Brazil's Culture." World Press Review; September 1994 Hannerz, Ulf. Cultural Complexity; Columbia University Press, New York: 1992.

Howe, Daniel C., Peter H. Kahn and Batya Friedman. "Along the Rio Negro: Brazilian Children's Environmental Views and Values." Developmental Psychology; 1996, v. 32, n. 6, p. 979.

Keck, Margaret E. "Parks, people and power: the shifting terrain of environmentalism." NACLA Report on the Americas; March-April 1995, v. 25, n. 5, p. 36.

Meggers, Betty J. Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London: 1996.

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