Ecosocialism and Spirituality

In Memoriam: They gave their lives for the Amazonian forest and the Peoples of the Forest: Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang.

By Frei Betto and Michael Löwy
Belem World Forum
2009

Chico Mendes with his children, 1988

We would like to start our conference here at the World Social Forum of Belem with a homage to two personalities of high human quality, which gave their lives for the defence of the Amazonian forest, and the Peoples of the Forest: Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang. They are the best known, the visible tip of the iceberg, of many other lives scarified in this unequal battle during the last decades.

Inspired, each in his own way, by their religious faith, they struggled, to the last consequences, for the cause of the oppressed and the exploited, which is, at the same time, inseparably, the cause of nature, of the forest, of life.

Read more HERE.