An Unlikely Alliance: Chico Mendes, the U.S. Senate, and the Making of a Conservation Martyr

Daniel Martin
Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:45:00 PDT

This paper examines the unlikely partnership between Chico Mendes, the Brazilian rubber tapper and communist sympathizing labor organizer, and a trio of U.S. Senators, John Heinz, Timothy Wirth, and Robert Kasten, as they advanced overlapping, yet distinct goals for Amazon conservation in the 1980s. Drawing on primary sources from Mendes and his collaborators, the Congressional Record, and the Senate Archives of John Heinz at Carnegie Mellon University, Robert Kasten at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Timothy Wirth at the University of Colorado, Boulder, this paper argues that though Mendes and his Senate allies had a common throughline of their conservation work, the Amazon, their approach and political desires were vastly different. Mendes focused his conservation actions on protecting the autonomy and economic viability of local communities who relied on harvesting the natural resources of the Amazon, while the Senators approached Amazon conservation as part of a broader struggle about multinational development bank funding, environmental protection, and the emerging science of climate change. Despite this contradiction, the partnership achieved tangible outcomes, including halting the BR-364 road project. Mendes’ assassination in 1988 abruptly changed the dynamic of the relationship as U.S. policymakers rushed to memorialize Mendes in order to emphasize aspects of Medes that aligned with their views and deemphasize aspects that did not. The paper challenges the prevailing narratives of Chico Mendes as only an environmental martyr and reveals how U.S. politicians highlighted his legacy to bolster their own conservation agendas, creating narratives that persist today.