These photos were taken in and around Xapuri, Brazil, where in December 1988, the environmentalist and rubber tapper Chico Mendes was assassinated. As a direct result of his legacy, condoms started to be be manufactured 25 years later from locally tapped rubber - providing protection not only to the Amazon forest but also to thousands of Brazilians against STD's and HIV.

The end of the 19th century rubber boom brought a wave of immigration from the impoverished north east of Brazil to work in the Amazon as "Seringueros" - rubber tappers. The boom ended in 1910 as rubber seeds smuggled out of Brazil by the British proved to be easier to cultivate in Asia, but the rubber tappers continued to eke out an existence in the forest. 

In the 1970's the Government embarked on a programme to develop the Amazon and ranchers from the South were encouraged to buy and clear the land. Threatened with the destruction of their livelihood, the rubber tappers resisted. One of their leaders, Chico Mendes, developed the strategy of 'empates"  or standoffs,  where Seringueros would form human blockades around trees to prevent clearance. 

Mendes's great achievement was to forge an alliance between the interests of the rubber tappers and environmentalists.  Mendes saw rubber tappers as the natural custodians of the forests.  Prior to Mendes, environmentalists claimed the Amazon could only be saved by leaving it free of all human development. In 1985
Mendes organised the first national rubber tappers conference. Here the idea for creating extractive reserves originated, where those living in the forest would be able to earn a living extracting products from the forest, whilst protecting the forest from clearance. 

In 1987 the rancher Darly Alves bought the rubber estate - Cashoeira - where Mendes was born.  Mendes organised the resistance to the clearance.  On the 22.12.88 Alves's son murdered Mendes.  This proved to be a turning point.  His murder brought international media attention. A year later in 1989 Cashoeira was one of four areas turned into extractive reserves.  

I visited Xapuri for the opening of a condom factory that supplies the Brazilian Government with 100 million condoms a year.  The factory is unique in the world in that it uses natural latex collected by rubber tappers.   The company - Natex - is a joint venture between the local state of Acre and the ministry of health. It represents Acre's new vision for the Amazon. - "Florestania" - raising the living standards of it's inhabitants whilst preserving the forest, through increasing the value of the products extracted from the forest. The factory is a direct legacy of Mendes's life's work. 

Postscript. Several years after visiting the area,  in 2018, an ally of the current president Bolsanaro, Gadson Cameli, won the state governorship, bringing to an end the vision  of "Florestania" under 20 years of Workers Party governors.  Like Bolsanaro,  Cameli  is  opposed to the previous regime's environmental policies.   Unsurprisingly there has been a large increase in deforestation, with burning even in the Chico Mendes Extractive reserve increasing by 340% between 2018 and 2019.  The lure of livestock grazing and the fall in prices for Brazil nuts and rubber has  led to many former rubber tappers taking up cattle rearing. Currently Cameli is embroiled in a corruption scandal and with opinion polls suggesting that the former Worker's Party president Lula will win next Presidential election,  there is a chance that the policies of Florestania could be revived.