Good afternoon, everyone.
That's feeble.
You probably didn’t eat much at lunch.
(Chuckling)
First of all, thanks for the invitation from my comrade, Denis.
He said he'd be on vacation, but he's probably here in the audience.
Thanks, otherwise I wouldn't have had this chance
to tell a bit about my story.
I see me as the thousands of extractivists
who are underneath the layers of the forest.
I wouldn't have this opportunity, Denis,
to talk to such an important audience
in such an important moment
when everyone is working together
to create a better and fairer world for all,
because we deserve it.
As was already mentioned, I'm Manoel Cunha,
from the town of Carauari in the state of Amazonas,
about 700-750 km from here as a crow flies.
It takes much longer by river.
I was born on March the 2nd, 1968.
I'm not that old,
but I know much about a sad story,
a sad and old story
that disrupted the lives of people.
Many interesting things have happened in my life
that I'd like to share with you.
We're 14 siblings at home,
raised by an old man called Joaquim Cunha.
We didn't have many opportunities in life
and one we didn't have was to study.
At that time - going straight to the point -
the bosses didn't want the rubber tappers' kids to study.
They said that you didn't need to study to tap rubber.
We never imagined that they didn't want us to study
so as not to turn the tables on them.
We thought they were actually right -
that to tap rubber you didn't need any schooling.
Then, when I was 11,
as I was preparing myself to accompany my father
to help him tap rubber,
a neighbor of my boss managed to arrange a school for us.
It wasn't a proper school, but permission for the boss' wife
to teach the people who lived in the country.
It took us about an hour and a half to get there by canoe,
as our comrade from the Saúde e Alegria project showed very well.
Despite this, my dad made a very important decision
for his and our lives:
he sent two of my sisters to school
to learn how to read and write
so they could then teach us at home.
We couldn't go to school
because we needed to go on the rubber trail.
The teacher took pity on them
and allowed them to go to school only three days a week,
and would set them homework on the other two days.
Because I was really keen on learning to read and write,
I managed to learn from them
when they got together to do their homework.
That was the only way I learned to just read and write.
That is where my whole life started.
But I started working in rubber production,
in that degrading way of life.
I still remember
one year when Dad had some health problem
and only managed to go to the rubber forest in October.
Our summer goes from July to December.
That year, my father arrived there in October
with only two months left in that year.
The boss had a rule: on the 31st of December
we had to clear away all the cups from the forest.
With all the cups taken down we couldn't extract any more rubber.
Dad had to follow that rule
and we were harder off than ever before.
There were countless humiliations.
For example, if we fished in Mandioca lake,
in the São Romão rubber forest, where I lived.
The boss only let us fish there after the 1st of August, for example.
To fish for your livelihood
on that lake before that date,
was reason for you to lose your place.
To lose your place in that region was to almost lose your life
because all the rubber tapping places were taken
and there were none left.
We'd put up with the humiliations
so as not to lose our place.
Fishing where it was not authorized
was also a reason to lose your place.
In our work system
we didn't know the sale price of the product
nor the purchase price of goods.
At the end of the year,
we'd only hear a deep voice from behind the counter, saying,
"You're in debt, you need to produce more rubber next year."
We started to realize that the more we produced,
the more we owed,
so we had to produce more
to made him richer, as all the profit was his.
Then I and many others
- I'm speaking here on behalf of many -
started to rebel against that
and to consider that as wrong.
But we couldn't do it differently.
I was already grown up then,
married and a father of three children.
This is how I had lived up to the age of 24,
I had only known 14 beaches on a river,
the equivalent of 40 minutes by a 40 HP motorboat.
My whole life was determined by that place.
I'd never had any other opportunity,
no one ever said anything else was possible,
that it was possible to change the region,
to change someone's way of producing.
But one day, around May,
we heard an announcement on the radio
from an institution called MEB, Basic Education Movement,
linked to the Catholic Church,
that would organize things for the rubber tappers.
And we waited,
and one night, at about 8 p.m.
they went to my father's house
and spoke about how it was possible to live a different way.
I remember to this day people saying,
"You rubber tappers can organize yourselves,
those at the top, the bottom and the middle,
and form a community.
Then you'll be strong enough to demand a school, a health center,
and your kids will be able to study.
What's most interesting is that the communities down the river,
the ones closest to the town,
are already organizing an association.
The goal is to sell our own products
through our organizations
and get rid of the criminal system of these bosses."
I think that was the happiest day of my life,
because I realized that there was another way,
a different way of living,
and of living with dignity.
That's how the whole battle started.
So I'll skip ahead to 1997
when we managed to create the first extractivist reserve
in the state of Amazonas,
there in my community, in Middle Juruá.
(Applause)
Today, those same people
who were so humiliated,
as I tried to explain here,
this association has grown and organized itself.
From individual rubber tappers of the São Romão rubber forest
we've become a community
and I became its leader and a teacher as well.
Interestingly, I have never been a student,
but I was a teacher in my community for four years.
And with a difference:
I always saw beyond the three Rs in education,
I saw it as a mechanism, a path, a beacon
for the transformation of a society.
I tried to show this to the youngsters and adults that I started to teach.
I think that today, without discriminating any region,
one of the regions with the greatest number of community leaders
is the community of São Raimundo,
especially the Middle Juruá extractivist reserve.
Maybe I've been part of this story
by my different method of teaching,
preparing them to face everyday problems.
In these communities, - coming back to the present day -
looking at the way we lived,
today we sell all the production through the association
or the cooperative, directly to the consumers.
When our fellow speaker from Natura company did her presentation
one of the points she mentioned was Middle Juruá.
The Middle Juruá communities supply about 15 to 20 tons
of vegetable oil directly to Cognis, in Jacareí, São Paulo.
It goes from the factory tap inside the extractivist reserve,
to Jacareí, São Paulo,
so that Cognis can process it and then deliver to Natura.
The rubber produced by those communities
would either go to Sena Madureira in Acre,
where there was a processing plant,
or to Manicoré, in the state of Amazonas.
The meal left over from the family production
is sold at the counter of the association itself, in the town.
The products, the other products,
- brooms, oars, handicrafts -
all products are sold directly to the consumer,
or to those who do the final processing,
as in the case of Natura, which turns the oils into cosmetics.
What's interesting is that
in that period of our lives,
for much of my life I only had two shirts
and I had to hope for sunshine to dry one of them
so I could put it on when I got home,
because one we wore at work
and the other our mother would wash on the washing board.
Today, people lead a dignified life inside this reserve.
And this reserve has helped to create
more than a dozen other conservation units.
When people give talks
to organize the communities to create protected areas,
they always cite Middle Juruá as an example
of a region that got rid of its slavery conditions
and which today is totally independent,
a very strong and well-organized movement.
Recently, we implemented the Riverside Solidarity Trade
which we call canteens.
They are like small supermarkets, spread throughout all the communities.
I'm talking about a 400-km area in a straight line,
from the heart of the town to the last community we serve.
This is over 54 hours by boat
which is our means of transport,
going round all the bends in the river.
So a people who succeeded in their efforts
- despite persecution from the police, a part that I skipped,
persecution from the bosses -
who found a way of surviving.
And most interestingly, surviving in a sustainable manner.
Everything that's done in that reserve
is done thinking of the present and future generations.
And if you allow me,
I'd like to tell the story of the Andiroba tree.
When we started,
I was president of the association at the time.
We began to make a study of the potential of the Andiroba,
together with Amazonas State University.
We used to see flooring made from Andiroba in some houses,
and we'd say,
"Cut some other tree, leave the Andiroba,
we're studying it."
Andiroba was only used for homemade medicine,
or to make homemade soap
which was cheaper than industrialized soap.
When this project came through, even Natura,
because the big goal was to produce energy from vegetable oil,
which is still done today.
Anyone can go there and see this.
Natura appeared exactly at that time, in 2002,
and was interested in buying this raw material.
We said, "No, wait a minute.
Natura wants to buy at eight Brazilian reais a kilo of oil,
diesel costs about 0.92 reais a liter.
Listen, you can buy the diesel and still have money left over."
Then we started to use it in the motors,
but we sold a good part.
Now there is a contract, quite fair and organized,
between the community and Natura, the cooperative and Cognis.
The Rubber Tappers' Council is always present in the negotiation,
it's very well considered.
Now they are even discussing the Middle Juruá fund
with the aim of presenting projects.
But, going back to the subject.
The families started to sell this raw material
at 8, 10, 14, 18 reais, and today it's sold at 24 reais
a kilo of Andiroba oil or Murumuru butter.
Now, that same family
that didn't see the importance of Andiroba trees
and sometimes cut them for housing material and not to sell,
now they want to know, when they look at the Andiroba tree trails
what insolent kid walked along there
and cut the roots of their Andiroba tree,
because they fear it will ruin the fructification.
I tell this story to show our responsibility
in finding the true value of the forest,
in finding a way of valorizing the forest conservation work
that our people do.
Because when we find this
like Middle Juruá found in the Andiroba, in the Murumuru,
they need no laws or inspectors.
The best inspectors is the community itself,
the users of the environment
when they understand this process.
This shows me...
I started talking about my own life,
I was the association's president
and became president
of the National Council of Extractivist Populations.
Until July last year, it was called the National Rubber Tappers' Council.
I don't think it was because...
first, because I'm very ugly and not literate enough,
but maybe it's because I seriously defend the importance
of living in harmony with the forest.
Climate change is here
affecting our communities very badly,
and despite that, many people,
- not this audience here -
don't understand this.
I brought some water here, just to close my story.
I want to invite you all.
The Rubber Tappers' Council is a non-profit grassroots organization
supported by donations,
that does great work in the Amazon.
One project has almost 20 million hectares of forest
with extractivist populations,
and the Rubber Tappers' Council pushed this policy with the government.
To finalize, I just want to tell you
that I want us all here to help spread this message.
People think that the great devastation of the Amazon
is through greed for money.
People don't understand
that when the drinking water is gone,
when this fresh air we breathe is gone,
this here in my pocket will be worth nothing.
It won't save my life, nor that of my children,
nor the planet.
It's this money that makes us greedy.
Thanks, everybody.
(Applause)