THE WORLD IS BURNING: Murder in the Rain Forest: The Tragedy of Chico Mendes

New York, NY, U.S.A.: Little, Brown & Company, 1990. First Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. As New/As New. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. When union leader Francisco "Chico" Mendes was gunned down in the remote Amazonian state of Acre late in 1988, it seemed like just another murder in the backlands of Brazil, a vast region dominated by the world's last great primeval wilderness. But Mendes' death provoked international outrage in a Western world just beginning to come to terms with the effects of slash-and-burn policies in Amazonia on global warming, the so-called greenhouse effect. Mendes became a symbol of the struggle to save a fragile ecosystem whose teeming plant and animal life are threatened by ever-encroaching development. In this richly textured, evocative account, Alex Shoumatoff weaves a story of violence and raw, brutal politics against a backdrop of natural grandeur and a forest people's vanishing way of life. He begins with a history of the Amazon rubber trade and of the tappers' struggle to free themselves from debt peonage. Shoumatoff then details the life of Mendes: how he was taught to read and indoctrinated by a fugitive revolutionary in the forest, and how he organized human blockades against the chain-saw crews of ranchers and land speculators. The folly, corruption, and greed behind development schemes in Amazonia are fully chronicled, as is the sudden acceleration of concern about the world's rain forests. Informative, beguiling, and suspenseful, Shoumatoff's THE WORLD IS BURNING combines a profound knowledge of Brazilian culture and society with a portrait of the making of a modern martyr. As new, in fine, mylar-protected dust jacket. N33