Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho was born on December 15, 1944, to a family of rubber tappers in Brazil. In the rainforest there were no schools, and Mendes harvested latex full time by the time he was eleven years old. Cattle ranchers responded and purchased the rainforest land from the rubber barons. Mendes abandoned his job as a teacher and moved to the city of Xapuri, where he worked as a clerk and devoted more of his time to organizing the unions. Chico Mendes was born Francisco Alves Mendes on December 15, 1944, in the Brazilian village of Porto Rico. Most rubber tappers lived on the rubber estates and plantations. With the advance of farming and the latifundio, the rubber workers looked to worsen even more their hard circumstances; on the other hand, they felt unable to react to these kinds of attacks for lack of a trade union organization or similar group, allowing them to defend themselves.In 1985, held the National Congress of rubber tappers, who sought to find modes of exploitation the jungle-friendly and beneficial to its people, including next themselves the members of the different Amazonian tribes. In 1985, Mendes and a colleague, Maria Allegretti, spent five months organizing a national meeting of the Rubber Tappers of Amazonia, which included seminars, cultural events, and strategy meetings. The ranchers cleared the terrain for grazing. He denounced the bosses, who robbed the workers and charged inflated prices for goods-a practice that kept the workers in debt.
His first marriage to Maria Eunice Feitosa in 1969, ended in divorce. He also ran for and won a seat on the city council. Mendes influenced the rubber workers to position themselves as defenders of the rainforest: to forego the issue of declining rubber production-to politicize instead for the preservation of the rainforest environment; and to stress to the world the value of other forest products including oils, nuts, and cocoa. Although the natives treated themselves with healing plants from the forest, the tappers habitually contracted lung diseases from the irritating fumes of the fires used to cure the latex.
The Government determined then to convert the estate into a new reserve cooker hood, enraging the family of landowners; days later, Mendes fell mown by the bullets of Darci da Silva, whom his father Alves would have encouraged to commit the crime. At the Brasilia meeting the tappers established a national council and called for a system of land reform based on Mendes's earlier proposal of rural land modules. This system proved to be quite successful. He explained that cattle ranchers systematically destroyed the rainforest and created hardship for the natives and rubber tappers. The Mendes family lived in the state of Acre in Amazonia, the forest surrounding the Amazon River.