Minister of the Environment says that he doesn’t know who Chico Mendes is

During a live interview on a TV show, the Environment Minister declared that he had never been to the Amazon region or knew who Chico Mendes was. He also said that agribusiness representatives told him that Chico Mendes, one of the most known Amazon defenders, “exploited rubber tappers communities”. Stirring public outrage, he went further: “The fact is that he is irrelevant. What difference does it make who is Chico Mendes now?”.