The Burning Season

by Revkin, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781559630894
• ISBN10: 1559630892
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-30
• Publisher: Island Pr

Summary

"An admirable work...compelling." "A clear, informative account of the clash in the dark heart of the rain forest." -NEW YORK TIMES "In the rain forests of the western Amazon," writes author Andrew Revkin, "the threat of violent death hangs in the air like mist after a tropical rain. It is simply a part of the ecosystem, just like the scorpions and snakes cached in the leafy canopy that floats over the forest floor like a seamless green circus tent." Violent death came to Chico Mendes in the Amazon rain forest on December 22, 1988. A labor and environmental activist, Mendes was gunned down by powerful ranchers for organizing resistance to the wholesale burning of the forest. He was a target because he had convinced the government to take back land ranchers had stolen at gunpoint or through graft and then to transform it into "extractive reserves," set aside for the sustainable production of rubber, nuts, and other goods harvested from the living forest. This was not just a local land battle on a remote frontier. Mendes had invented a kind of reverse globalization, creating alliances between his grassroots campaign and the global environmental movement. Some 500 similar killings had gone unprosecuted, but this case would be different. Under international pressure, for the first time Brazilian officials were forced to seek, capture, and try not only an Amazon gunman but the person who ordered the killing. In this reissue of the environmental classic The Burning Season, with a new introduction by the author, Andrew Revkin artfully interweaves the moving story of Mendes's struggle with the broader natural and human history of the world's largest tropical rain forest. "It became clear," writes Revkin, acclaimed science reporter for The New York Times, "that the murder was a microcosm of the larger crime: the unbridled destruction of the last great reservoir of biological diversity on Earth." In his life and untimely death, Mendes forever altered the course of development in the Amazon, and he has since become a model for environmental campaigners everywhere.

Author Biography

Andrew Revkin is a science reporter for The New York Times.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2004 Edition	xiii
1. The Burning Season	1	(16)
2. Amazonia	17	(22)
3. Weeping Wood	39	(23)
4. Jungle Book	62	(16)
5. Coming of Age in the Rain Forest	78	(20)
6. Roads to Ruin	98	(25)
7. The Fight for the Forest	123	(27)
8. The Wild West	150	(15)
9. Joining Forces	165	(20)
10. The Greening of Chico Mendes	185	(23)
11. An Innocent Abroad	208	(23)
12. Into the Fire	231	(24)
13. The Dying Season	255	(23)
Epilogue	278	(21)
Afterword	299	(6)
Notes	305	(10)
Appendixes
Map of South America, Brazil, and the Amazon	315	(1)
The Murder Scene	316	(1)
A Resource Guide	317	(3)
Acknowledgments	320