There was a time not too long ago that we were not worried about our civilization being destroyed by Muslims. We were afraid we were destroying ourselves. The environment was hot and the Amazon was burning. To convince us of the seriousness of the situation, the analogies ran from one football pitch a second to one England a year of tropical rainforest that was lost. In the mid of this the leader of the rubber tappers and portector of the rain forest Chico Mendes was killed in the Amazonian state of Acre. Since 1964 landowners have contracted some 1.600 killings and none received any international attention. Chico?s death however led to an invasion of foreign journalists and a heated fight for the movie rights to his life story.

One of the journalist descending on Chico?s hometown Xapuri and state capital Rio Branco is Alex Shoumatoff. He has travelled in the Amazon before, speaks fluent Potuguese and keeps a distance from his colleagues. His book is an account of his seach for the reasons why Chico Mendes was killed. Not carefully constructed, but following the steps in his research. All parties have their own version of the truth and the future of the Amazon.

The possible extention of the BR-364 road to Peru sums up the Amazonian dilemma. Completion of the road would give Acre a better change of development, but would almost certainly lead to the destruction of the rainforest along it and the indians living in the area. But what right do we have to forebid Brazil, from doing what we did ourselves. Sacrificing forrest for development? Furthermore Brazil sees the Amazon as an internal question and suspects America of using environmental concerns as a guise to keep Brazil down.