Camera Guys' New Documentary Film seeks new Identity for Chico Mendes & Rubber Tappers of Brazil by Guillermo Diaz
The filmmaking team known as the Camera Guys are webcasting their new film, RUBBER JUNGLE on the internet at www.chicomendes.com. The story takes a fresh, albeit unorthodox look at Chico Mendes and the history of rubber tapping in the Amazon.
Chico Mendes you might recall, was a Brazilian rubber tapper and labor leader who, in 1988, was slain by a group of powerful ranchers for what the New York Times called "defending the forest."
"Back then, it was front page news." co-producer Terry Schwartz said last week, "But today almost 15 years Chico's murder, it's hard to find anyone outside the ecology movement who remembers him."
What transpired between then and now is the basis of "Rubber Jungle" an epochal documentary that chronicles the Camera Guys' 2,000 mile journey up the Amazon river as they quest for the truth about Chico Mendes and the Rubber Tappers of Brazil. Along the way, they uncover a Chico Mendes they did not expect to find.
"HEART OF DARKNESS MEETS DON QUIXOTE "
The Odyssey started when the Camera Guys, who live and work in Los Angeles, as filmmakers, got a call from an old Brazilian pal, Caito Martins.
"It was 1994," Mr. Day continued. Caito, who lives in the Amazon, had just then landed a job working on a big budget Warner Brothers film about Chico Mendes. He told the Camera Guys he had an opportunity for them to work on the project.
"We assumed he had wired us into some behind-the-scenes shooting based on our knowledge of rain forest issues," Mr. Schwartz mused. "So without asking any more questions we dropped the music video job and jumped on a plane for Costa Rica where the "Chico" movie was being shot."
"It was a dream come true," said Mr. Day. "We had read about the Chico movie project in the trades and knew it was a major film. David Puttnam (Quest for Fire) was producing, Chris Menges (The Killing Fields) was directing and Andy Garcia (Godfather, Part 3) signed on to play the part of Chico Mendes."
Mr. Day and Mr. Schwartz arrived at the film's location in Costa Rica with high expectations but soon found themselves in the middle of a Hollywood nightmare. The movie, it turned out had been canceled. Instead of seeing a film crew go through their paces, the Camera Guys watched the sets being torn down and burned.
"It was like something out of the X-files," Mr. Day laughed. "The top talent in Hollywood decides to tell the epic story of one man's struggle save the rain forest and before one frame of film can be shot, the production company torches 7 million dollars worth of movie sets - some of it constructed from local rain forest wood!"
"We had two questions at that point," Schwartz says. "Why was the movie canceled, and what were we doing there?
"Why the movie was canceled was simple," Mr. Martins answered. "They had a English producer, an American writer, and a Cuban actor, but none of them had ever been to Brazil - they didn't know what they were talking about."
After 18 months of pre-production the studio pulled the plug on the project. But then Mr. Martins, the only one working on the project from Brazil, decided that if Hollywood wasn't going to tell the story then he would give it a try his way. "I knew I couldn't make a big epic like Warner Brothers, but that was okay because in my mind that wasn't the way to tell the story."
The movie Mr. Martins had in mind was a modest-budget documentary that would trace the history of rubber through the perspective of a journey from the mouth of the Amazon all the way to where Chico lived, near the Bolivian Border. Along the way, he speculated, he could show the Camera Guys and the world what the Amazon was really like and tell the real story of Chico and the Rubber Tappers.
Pointing to Bill and Terry, Mr. Martins said, "I called these guys because I knew they were most low budget crew on the planet."
AMAZON BOUND
Pooling their credit cards and cash, the Camera Guys, and Mr. Martins headed for the city of Belem at the Mouth of the Amazon river. This where Caito and his wife Angela live with their daughter, Julia.
The Camera Guys were anxious to get on a boat, start heading up river, and tell the story of Chico, but Caito told them to relax. . "I sat them down and told them to take it easy... The Amazon doesn't flow too fast... If you want the real story, you have to go slow."
'We weren't too happy with the go slow approach, Day laughed. " But looking back now, we can see how important it was to re-orientate ourselves to the ways of the Amazon.
Mr. Schwartz said. "To understand the life and ultimately the death of Chico, one must see it through the context of Amazon Rubber History."
DEPARTURE
It was almost a week before Caito finally purchased some tickets on a commercial river boat and got the Camera Guys on-board.
"It was if we were rubber tappers ourselves," Day said. Our boat had satellite TV on the deck and a live band. But the sleeping arrangements were not that much different from the old days. Everyone brings their own hammocks and finds a place to hang out.
It was called the Rodrigues Alves, and it carried over 200 passengers
A GREAT RUBBER SEED HEIST.
"One of the first places we stopped," Mr. Schwartz explained, "was a little riverside village. This is where Caito recruited a local guide to take us to see something called "The Mother Tree."
"The Mother Tree is a huge piece of ecological history," Day said excitedly.
Back in 1876, the story goes, a thin and pale Englishman named Henry Wickham arrived on the shores of Buim with a rented boat and a small band of hired helpers. Wickham didn't tell anybody in Buim what he was up to, he only asked for a guide that could show him the legendary huge rubber trees that grew in the area.
Wickham's expedition hacked their through the forest. until the guide stopped and pointed. Wickham couldn't believe his eyes. There, towering above him, was the biggest rubber trees he had ever seen. And it was exactly what he was looking for.
"We too found the area where the giant rubber trees grew and filmed the whole thing," Mr. Schwartz pointed out. "They were huge, but the seeds they grew from were smaller than a golf ball.
"I picked up a handful of those seeds," Mr. Martins added. "I pointed at the seeds and told these guys how those little things changed the course of history in the Amazon."
According to the film, Wickham ordered his helpers to gather up all the seeds they could, put them in baskets, and hurry them back to his boat.
"When Wickham sailed away that day," Day said, "little did his helpers realize, that they had just participated in one of the biggest genetic heists in history."
After smuggling his cargo of 70,000 rubber tree seeds past custom agents in Belem, Wickham sailed directly to England. Scientists in London, learned how to germinate the seeds, then used the seedlings to grow huge plantations of Brazilian Rubber trees in places like Ceylon, Malaysia, and India.
"In less than thirty five years, there was more rubber production outside of Brazil, than inside Brazil," said Mr. Martins. "And in 1910, when the latex from those Asian Plantations were suddenly brought to market, the price of rubber plummeted. . ."
In purely economic terms, Caito claims, it was positive because it broke up the rubber barons monopoly and forced prices down, but on an social & environmental level, it was a disaster. People couldn't make any money from Amazon rubber anymore and the whole rubber economy collapsed. It impoverished the entire Amazon and made rubber trees worthless...We now know this is a very destructive & unsustainable economy with global implications.
But on the other hand, you can't expect 20 million people to starve themselves so the trees can be saved? . It is a very tough problem and you can thank the British for that.
"Can you imagine if Brazil was able to retain control of the genetic code for Rubber Trees? You wouldn't see those big fires burning up the forest -- you'd see huge corporations guarding the rain forest.
LONG GOOD-BYE FOR RUBBERS TREES
As the filmmakers continue their journey up river in the film, they learn how Henry Ford tried to revive the use of Amazon rubber by building his own rubber plantation called Fordlandia.
They also meet some old Rubber Tappers and learn about the Rubber Soldiers of World War 2.
But in each case - all the hopes of the Rubber Tappers always seemed dashed by wave after wave of exploitation by the North - namely the USA and Europe- and that is when Chico Mendes was born...
CHICO MENDES
Like many rubber tappers before him, Chico learned to live off the forest even when there was little money to be made. But just as Chico was growing up, a new force of destruction descended on the Amazon- Cattle Ranching!
"Cattle ranching was one of the most widely accepted forms of development when Rubber was economically abandoned," Mr. Martins said. "A lot of that burning and destruction of the rain forest you see on TV, is the cattle ranchers clearing the forest to make way for cows."
In one of the more bizarre sequences of Rubber Jungle, the Camera Guys wind up in an office with the ranchers accused of organizing Chico Mendes' death. The Camera Guys and Caito later attend the birthday party of a lawyer who represents the accused killers.
"They just wanted us to see things from their point of view, Mr. Schwartz said. "With Caito there, we were able to bridge the culture gap and get their side of the story."
"As incredible as it may sound, the ranchers see themselves as the victims in all this," Day said of his encounter with the ranchers.
According to Day, most of the ranchers in the Amazon region came from the ranch lands of Southern Brazil. They came to Chico's area after the Governor of the State made a pitch telling them that it was great area to grow cattle.
Most of the ranch land was sold them were old Rubber Estates. The only problem was nobody told the ranchers that the estates were occupied with Rubber Tappers.
"So when the ranchers came in to clear the land of trees for cattle grazing, all these rubber tappers literally came out of the woods and cried foul," Schwartz said. "Nobody told the rubber tappers the land had been sold!"
The ranchers, faced with taking huge loses on the land they already paid for, started to push the Rubber Tappers out and it became a very violent. It was a bloody conflict at first but then came a period of negotiation and a "resettlement" program for the Rubber Tappers.
"Chico Mendes was the lead negotiator for the Rubber Tappers, "according to a man named Jao Branco, who appears in the film.
Branco was the head of the Ranchers Union when Chico died and many people think Branco ordered Chico's killing.
In the film, Branco proclaims that he and Chico were friends. They made a few resettlement deals together and everything was going well until Chico appeared to have a change of heart.
"Suddenly he was canceling all our deals and ruining all our business, " Branco says in the film. Branco claims the change of heart was due to the local Bishop who was in league with the leftist union organizers.
The filmmakers, however, believe there was more than the Bishop at work in all this.
"The ranchers could only see the events from their own perspective," said Schwartz. "What they thought was the Bishop and his leftist allies working behind the scenes was actually a group of international environmentalists. They didn't understand the growing ecological concerns in the north - or the influence these people were having on Chico."
"In the early to mid eighties," Day added, " the international environmental movement was trying to build a case against the World Bank's development policies in the Amazon but they were having a tough time.
"We were not making much progress," says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation in the film. " because we were demanding the World Bank stops its development schemes without providing a better alternative."
But then they met Chico Mendes.
"Chico was enormously important to the ecologists," said Schwartz. "What he gave D.C. ecologists was a local representative from the Amazon who had an alternative development plan the ecologists thought would be more friendly to the forest."
With the help of organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, and National Wildlife, Chico was brought to the United States and given a full marketing blitz by the ecologists who were backing him. They created ecological awards for Chico to help get his name in the newspapers as a defender of the rain forest.
But as the film points out, there was a slight problem. "Chico wasn't an ecologist in the first world sense," Mr. Day said, retelling the story. "He was social activist from the far left - He was Marxist with ties to the Brazilian Communist Party. Che Guevara was his hero - not Thomas Lovejoy."
Faced with this nagging image problem, the film argues, the ecologists rationalized that Chico was indeed an ecologist but just didn't know it. They carefully managed Chico speeches to play down the politics and magnify the forest issues.
They had to disconnect Chico from his radical roots to make it work, California Author Susanna Hecht, says in the film. They were forced to turn Chico's world into a poetic landscape of gentle peasants trying to protect the forest."
"Chico was well aware of his image transformation but was willing to play along because he had no other choice, " Mr. Martins said. "Bottom line, if Chico wanted the world to hear the plight of the rubber tappers, he had to work with the international ecological movement."
With Chico's help, the ecologists were able to get a 100 million dollar loan from the Inter-American Bank to Brazil for road building in the Amazon canceled. It was really a loan to pave a road, but paving it was what Ranchers like Jao Branco and others hoped would bring progress and money to the area where Chico lived. The ecologists were against it because they saw it as bringing environmental destruction to the rain forest.
Another individual in the film, and one who had a great influence on Chico, was Mary Allegretti. An anthropologist from Sao Paulo, Mary met Chico while working on a school paper and became involved in the Rubber Tapper's struggle. It was Mary who introduced Chico to representatives from the U.S. based Environmental Defense Fund.
"After his trips to Washington, and helping cancel the loan, Chico almost expected to come home a hero," Mary says in the film. "But when he stepped off the bus, he found himself hated for what he did in Washington. There is a silent rule that siding with the Yankees against any Brazilian is a no-no; but getting money cut off and getting into the way of progress was unforgivable."
Most people who appear in this film consider the road loan episode the key reason why the ranchers killed Chico.
"These people (the ecologists) used Chico for their own gains," Chico's widow Ilzamar says tearfully in the film. "They used him for their own agenda... but when Chico died... He died alone. None of these people were with him.."
Steve Schwartzman, from the Environmental defense Fund, who also appears in the film, defends the ecologist actions. He says Chico Mendes was well aware of the dangers he faced but decided to continue his partnership with the environmental movement anyway. Schwartzman said the media promotion the ecologists did to get Chico into the press was their way of trying to protect him.
"We thought that if we got Chico enough publicity in the New York Times, "they (the ranchers) would leave him alone. We were wrong. The truth is, those ranchers don't read the New York Times."
Three nights before Christmas, Chico stepped outside his back door and was struck in the chest with 64 pellets from a shotgun held by a local rancher's son. Chico crawled back the house, looked up at his wife and said, "they got me." Minutes later he was dead.
A TALE OF TWO CHICOS
Chico's murder was reported all over the world; from the front page of the New York Times to the front page of local paper where Chico lived - it was much bigger news than the ranchers had anticipated.
"The interesting part of this was not the amount of coverage focused on Chico," Terry Schwartz recounted, "but the difference in how it was covered. It reveals how differently Chico was perceived locally and internationally."
In their film, the Camera Guys focus in on two different publications to make their point, the local Amazon paper where Chico lived and The New York Times.
The local paper shows a picture of Chico's riddled body on a slab in the morgue and describes Chico as a union leader. "When you look at the local paper," Day said, "you can't help thinking of Che Guevara when he was killed. If you have ever seen those gruesome pictures of Che's body, you'll know what the reportage on Chico was like. You get the feeling it was put on the front page as a warning to other leftist trouble makers, not as news. It reminds you of the Cold War and makes you think about the capitalist vs. communist struggle, not loggers vs. tree huggers."
"On the other hand," Mr. Day pointed out, "the New York Times portrayed Chico's death as if the 'Jesus Christ' of the forest had just been hung on the cross."
Marlise Simmons, the reporter for the Times who wrote the story had been involved with Steve Schwartzman and the ecologists working with Chico on previous stories. She was the one who convinced the editors to put the story on the front page."
ENTER HOLLYWOOD
"Making it on the front page of the New York Times is 'realer' than real," Steve Schwartzman says in the film. His words, although referring to Chico's image building campaign, could not have been more true as far as Hollywood was concerned.
"Within days of Chico's death," Mr. Day said, " the biggest producers in Hollywood all had copies of that New York Times story and the race to make the movie was on"
"It was a huge fight and it involved the biggest titans of Hollywood," Day chuckled. "Everybody from Ted Turner to Steven Speilberg believed the New York Times version of the story. It wasn't long before mountains of money were being spent to win the rights to the story of the world's first environmental martyr."
"It's pretty easy to see why the movie project went bad," Mr. Schwartz added. "The studio thought they were making a story about an ecologist. When the writers started digging into the story, however, it wasn't exactly an ecologist that was appearing on the page. In fact, they came back with a Chico who was more 'enemy of the capitalist system,' than tree hugger."
In the film, the Camera Guys actually recover some of the memos from the studio that were left in the trash in Costa Rica. On one memo from the frustrated "Creative Team" at the studio to the filmmakers in the field it reads "somehow our story has lost the notion that we must protect the environment."
"It's funny stuff once you figure out what the real story on Chico was, " Day said, "but it's not funny what the Hollywoodization of Chico did to the Rubber Tapper Movement."
"Ironically, " Jao Branco, the man accused of ordering Chico's murder, told the Camera Guys in an interview, " Hollywood could not have thought of a better way to destroy the rubber tapper movement. It was exactly as Alexander the Great once said, 'If you want to destroy your enemy, send a donkey loaded with gold into his castle. Human nature will take care of the rest."
"Once the money came into the picture," Ilzamar Mendes told the Camera Guys, "everybody started fighting and before long we were in a mess." Mrs. Mendes eventually got control of most of the money and used it to build the Chico Mendes Foundation across from where Chico lived. But the men who worked with Chico tried to take control and a power struggle ensued.
"We ended up in court and the judge locked up the building for years, Ilzamar frowned in the film. "Now we don't have enough money to pay a security guard to watch it. It is disappearing board by board."
The Camera Guys tried to interview some of Chico Mendes' old colleagues at the union, but without luck. "By the time we got there," Mr. Day said, they were not talking to anyone with Cameras. They were fed up with the press, the book writers, and the movie makers because they were just another wave of the 'savage capitalism' that has been destroying the rubber tappers since the rubber boom."
"All these media people showed up in Xapuri after Chico was killed and said they wanted to help," said Mr. Martins. "But as soon as they got their stories, they would just vanish and never be heard from again."
CAMERA GUYS - NEW RUBBER SOLDIERS
Arriving back home in Los Angeles, the Camera Guys knew well the film they wanted to make from their footage. "We wanted to make a film that told the truth about Chico and Rubber Tappers," they said, "but we also wanted to make a film that would promote the economic revitalization of rubber."
"The more we thought about it, the more sense it made." Day proclaimed. "Revitalizing rubber from the Amazon would give trees value. It would help the Rubber Tappers by providing them with an income. And the world would benefit by knowing the Amazon's importance as "lungs of the earth" would not be destroyed. "
Before the Camera Guys could start editing, however, they learned that the Hollywood version of the Chico movie was being made after all. Another division of the Time Warner empire, HBO, had taken the project from Warner Brothers and were already planning a lower budget cable movie of the Chico Story.
"Talk about mixed feelings", Day laughed. "We didn't know if we should applaud the project or attack it."
IlZAMAR MENDES VS. AOL/TIMEWARNER.... THE BIG LAWSUIT
Not too much later, the Camera Guys got a phone call from Caito. He said he had heard from Ilzamar and she was very angry. According to her, HBO did not have the rights to make the movie.
The Camera Guys tried to make contact with HBO, hoping to find out more about what was going on.
"It was crazy, but we really felt we had to give it a try," Mr. Day said.
The Camera Guys attempts to get any info up with HBO just got them put on hold.
After striking out with HBO, the Camera Guys decided to look up a friend who was a Hollywood insider and close to HBO.
"Her name was Gratzka Taylor and she was very close to HBO," Day said. "She pointed out that HBO and Warner Brothers were both part of the same company. In other words, it was legal for HBO to make the project. "
"But then, Schwartz added, "we got this call from a mysterious male voice who said he wanted to talk. He wouldn't tell us who he was, but said there was a terrible injustice going on."
Through taped interviews with this "Hollywood Deep-Throat" whistle blower, Day and Schwartz were alerted to the fact that HBO and Warner Brothers were indeed acting illegally in making the film.
As the mysterious man explains it in the film, HBO did not have the rights to make the film because Warner Brothers no longer had the rights. Under the terms of the original contract signed with Ilzamar, the moviemakers had the rights for only two years. When Warner Brothers threw in the towel on their film project, they also let the rights expire.
"Now, along comes HBO," claims Deep Throat. "They decide they want to make the movie, but now they don't have any rights. So somebody from TimeWarner sends a lawyer from Rio out to see Ilzamar and ask her if she would extend the old rights for $10,000. Ilzamar already knew the original rights sold for $1.2 million so she didn't think 10,000 would be a fair price. But the lawyer did not make any further offers and never called her back. The next thing Ilzamar hears is that HBO is making the movie anyway, without her permission."
The movie at this point takes a bizarre turn when the Camera Guys put Ilzamar in touch with some Hollywood lawyers and in no time at all, Ilzamar and her son Sandino and a singer from Rio are suing AOL/TimeWarner.
Ilzamar's lawyers file a lawsuit against Warner Brothers and HBO for what looks like a laundry list of crimes and the Camera Guys followed the roller coaster proceedings through a series of depositions, court hearings, and settlement talks. At one point, Lawyers for WB/HBO ask the judge to dismiss the case, but the judge refuses, and expresses dismay at WB/HBO for their activities.
"Yes," Schwartz smiles. It was a good fight. But just when you think there is justice in the world, something comes along and takes all your hope right out of your back pocket."
In this case, it was a sudden reversal of Ilzamar's own lawyers. In the middle of a winning streak,they suddenly demand Ilzamar settle with WB /HBO for a small sum. Ilzamar refuses to even discuss it and her lawyers suddenly drop out of the case and leave Ilzamar to fend for herself.
At this point, the lawyers for WB/HBO bury Ilzamar in a sea of paperwork and when Ilzamar doesn't file some paperwork on time with the court, the judge is forced to dismiss the case.
"We don't know what happened," claims Day. The lawyers were winning and they just did an about face. Who knows?"
THE BIG PREMIERE
About this same time, the HBO movie was completed. The Camera Guys decided to go to the gala premiere screening and reception in the Hamptons posing as broadcast journalists to see what the cable concern came up with.
"We almost hoped HBO would succeed where we seemed to be failing miserably," Terry remembered. "But what we found did not inspire us very much."
"Actually, it was very, very weird," Mr. Day said. "They had all the big brass up talking about ecology and rubber tappers before showing the movie but we couldn't find a real rubber tapper anywhere. Not one!
At the reception the Camera Guy's lens captures a who's who of Hollywood including a shot of Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levine out on the rain forest decorated dance floor gyrating to the Bee Gees' Disco Inferno.
"Burn'n Burn'n -- disco Inferno, " Mr. Day sang, remembering the night.
"They had enough wasted food at this thing to feed Chico's whole town for a month," Mr. Schwartz added. "It's hard to conceive the gigantic gulf that exists between what we saw that night and the real Amazon. Its enough to blow your mind."
Oddly enough, however, it was at this reception that the Camera Guys found the idea they had been looking for to promote rubber revitalization in their film.
"At the reception," Mr. Day said, "they handed out party favors which included products from the rain forest. It was mostly stuff from the Body Shoppe - you know - fragrances and stuff like that."
"That's when we wondered, why can't the Rubber Tappers start making some stuff to sell directly into the mass market made from rubber?"
"One thing led to another and now we think we are on the right track," Mr. Schwartz added.
What Caito, and the Camera Guys came up with was a simple line of rubber shower shoes made from Amazon rubber.
We call them JUNGLAS, Day said excited, showing this reporter some of the early design work.
"We want the rubber tappers to supply the raw latex for the shoes," Day said, "and then we hope to use this film and the Internet as a way to help them market the shoes."
"The shoes are cool," Mr. Martins said like a true salesman. "They even have a jungle theme to them. If half the people in America bought a pair, the Western Amazon would be spared from big open spaces and lots of cow dung. Isn't that amazing?"
Terry Schwartz laughed at Caito's optimism. Mr. Schwartz confessed he didn't think the shoe will save the Amazon but said he thought it was a step in the right direction. "Walking in the right direction is what is important. The rest is a matter of faith," he said.
Day seemed a bit more positive on the issue. He said, "If those ranchers could be convinced there is money to made from those rubber trees, you would see the cutting and burning stop overnight."
EPILOGUE
The Camera Guys want everyone to kn ow they still consider Chico Mendes a hero. "He was a great great man, " says Day. "I think it was a terrible mistake to obscure his true anti-capitalist politics. In light of the growing anti-globalization movement, and the growing distrust of corporate media giants like AOL/TimeWarner, he was ahead of his time. "
