The road through the state of Rondonia was partly financed by the World Bank. It was paved to help hundreds of thousands of colonists from other areas of Brazil move into the region to farm, but the effects on the environment were catastrophic, and measures to protect the Indians were proven inadequate. Ironically, many of the settlers gained very little. Poor soil and poor planning have meant that many attempts to farm the decimated land failed.

The story is told in three chapters, the last of which deals with the late Chico Mendes, the leader of the rubber-tappers union, who was assassinated for his courageous efforts to halt the devastation of the rainforest and to create protected areas to be managed by local rubber-tapper communities. These "extractive reserves" have since been characterized by the World Bank as "the most promising alternative to unsustainable agriculture and cattle ranching."

The scope of the film is epic, and to U.S. audiences it has a special resonance. It provides us with an uncanny insight into how our western frontier was opened, while documenting a burgeoning human and environmental disaster in the Brazilian rainforest.

This program is an earlier, condensed version of The Decade of Destruction Series.

Other films produced by Adrian Cowell are The Last of the Hiding Tribes series, The Heroin Wars series and The Fires of the Amazon.



Grade Level: 9-12, College, Adult
US Release Date: 1988     Copyright Date: 1987
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-369-2     VHS ISBN: 1-56029-003-X

Reviews "Gentle, detailed, immensely thoughtful." The Daily Telegraph "Provides compelling evidence that our U.S. tax dollars are used to destroy the rainforest." Randall Hayes, Rainforest Action Network "A must for a wide range of college classes from political science and anthropology to environmental science and ecology." Choice