Life of chico mendes

Twenty years ago Amazon environmentalist Chico Mendes was shot dead in front of his home in the remote Brazilian state of Acre.

He had campaigned for years to stop the slashing and burning of the rainforest.

Brazil specialist Sue Branford, who met him, reflects on his life and legacy:

I will never forget the death of Chico Mendes.

A friend in Brazil phoned early in the morning to tell me that he had been shot dead outside his home.

Chico mendes childhood

I felt not surprise but anger and sadness that the Amazon forest, already in 1988 under serious threat from loggers and farmers, had lost such a powerful ally.

I had met Chico some two years earlier, on a visit to his home town of Xapuri in the state of Acre in the west of the Amazon basin.

Sitting on a bench in the town's square, he told me that his parents, like hundreds of others, had been brought from the dry, impove