CRIME: Chico Mendes: Killed for the Trees

Chico Mendes was a Brazilian rubber tapper who became one of the world's most important environmental activists, organizing peaceful resistance against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. By the 1980s, he had drawn international attention to the violent clash between cattle ranchers clearing the forest and the communities who depended on it to survive. His activism made him a global symbol of the fight to save the Amazon, and it also made him a target. In December 1988, Mendes was shot and killed outside his home by a rancher's family, a murder that exposed the deadly stakes of standing between profit and preservation in the Brazilian frontier. His death sparked international outrage and made him a martyr for the environmental movement. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson tells the story of Chico Mendes, the movement he built in the heart of the Amazon, and the land and power struggles that cost him his life.

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