📺 🎧 This is the podcast episode for the post below on a consequential scoop by a Brazilian environmental journalist revealing how the confessed murderer of an environmental hero in the western corner of the Amazon River basin 35 years ago quietly rose to regional influence under a religious nickname 1,500 miles to the east.
My guests are:
Cristiane Prizibisczki, the O Eco journalist who broke the story
Angélica Mendes, Chico Mendes’s granddaughter, who has a biology Ph.D. and is president of Comitê Chico Mendes
Why should anyone outside of the region pay attention to the reemergence of Darci Alves Pereira as “Pastor Daniel” in Medicilândia, a remote Amazonian town of only 30,000 people? This incident is a tiny window on a big and worrisome reality in Brazil.
There’s been enormous progress stanching fires and forest clearing since the election of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, but the rural right-wing and evangelical movements supporting former Presiden Jair Bolsonaro still have substantial power and Lula’s victory was by a very thin margin. And Bolsonaro and allies face an ongoing investigation of allegations of a coup attempt.
So please listen, subscribe if you don’t already and share this post with others.
Read the companion post for lots more:
Here’s some of my election coverage and here’s my post on the slain Amazon defender, Chico Mendes, and my 1990 radio interview about my book on Chico with the famed broadcaster and writer Studs Terkel.)
Here’s Medicilândia.
Amazon Career Track? Confessed Assassin, 1990, Rising Local Right-Wing Leader 2024