Like naturalists in the 18^th century did, being in the heart of the Amazon to know and to map the fauna and flora’s richness is an experience for a few mortals. The Amazon represents over half of the remaining rainforests on Earth and comprises the largest species-rich tract of tropical rainforest.

(Image by Nasa)

Baring that in mind, Petrobras (a Brazilian heavyweight name in the oil industry) made it possible for researchers and mere onlookers.

With a simple click, hundreds of native species are within your reach, everything detailed. Videos and photos on the expeditions carried out in the last 3 years by biologists, forest engineers and other specialists are available in YouTube, Flickr and Picasa.

Many will state it is just a timid beginning, I know. But it is a great initiative.

Like the Museum of the Amazon, an initiative of the Brazilian-Italian physicist Ennio Candotti.

Four times president of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science and one of the founders of the magazine Ciência Hoje (Science Today) – one of the first magazines to inaugurate scientific journalism in Brazil –, he is a wholehearted upholder of the richness of the Amazon.

(Photo by Mário Oliveira - Ennio Candotti is the martermind behind this huge project)

He created an interactive museum that shows the biodiversity of this so famous forest in a bold and unusual way. The proposal is to make use of electronic devices spread through the forest to capture sounds and images and make it available on the internet. In a not far future, there will be 60 huge aquariums with native species, runways perched high in trees and observation towers.

This new museum breaks the paradigm of the object preserved between four walls, sacralised in a display window.

And helps to raise awareness, what is even more important.

THE FOREST CALLS FOR AID!

That is what the following photo says. And it is totally true.

(Photo by Marcelo Casal Jr. - Indians and latex workers representatives at a meeting to demand for their rights)

You can follow deforestation rates right here. 

Also, check this video!

All this passion – like Ennio’s – and preoccupations – like Prince Charles’s – first bubbled with a name some of you may recognize: Chico Mendes.

No?

Well, here we go.

HERALD OF GREEN

Poor and illiterate, his father used to make a living extracting latex rubber from the Amazon forest. When Mendes was 9, he started in the same profession. It was his only option due to the prohibition on schools in the land of some farmers of the North region of Brazil. He only learned to read and write at the age of 20.

(Photo of latex being collected/Jan-Pieter Nap)

Indignant about this life condition in the Amazon he became a leader of pacific resistance. Since then, he shielded forest, Indians and workers like his father. He totally stood against deforestation and created an NGO to defend all he believed. He also fought against the monopoly of lands in the hand of wood industries and cattle farms.

Tortured by the military regime that took place in Brazil from (1964-1985), he decided to help to create the Labour Party of Brazil (Partido dos Trabalhadores). More, he proposed to create the Union of People of the Forest, which intended to unite Indians and latex workers’ interests to protect the Amazon forest. This project included the so feared agrarian reform.

For all that, he was transformed into a symbol of fight to defend Amazon and its people. In 1987, he received the visit of some members of UNEP. There, inspectors checked out that deforestation and human rights abuses were being carried out with money coming from international banks. Afterwards, he was invited to speak to the American Congress. It resulted in the suspension of such financings and in death threats for “disturbing progress”.

He denounced that to authorities, named names and asked for police protection. He got nothing.

After a year, he shot dead at the age of 44 at the front door of his house.

In 1990, the farmer Darly Alves da Silva and his son, Derli, were to court and were found guilty of Mendes death.

Today, Brazil apologizes for what it has done with him.

Since his death the Amazon flagship has been with Marina Silva, whom we can call a disciple of Mendes ideas. She is highly respected in Brazil and abroad. Now, she is one of the candidates for Presidency of Brazil. In the near future, I hope to get an interview for TH!NK with her.

(Photo by AB)

- Immersion results will come soon =) -