READING REPORT Students Name Teachers Name Course : Mara Luisa Vsquez Torres : Tania : SIN 5 Time : 9:00

13:00

Why Do Environmentalists Keep Getting Killed Around the World? Summary

The article is about the recent killings of environmentalists. The author focuses specially in the case of Z Cludio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Esprito Santo, killed in 2011 in Brazil. The article presents the events leading to their death, how they were killed, and also the consequences of these. The married couple had spent more than half their life fighting to protect the forestland from illegal different dangers. In 1997, they helped creating the Praia Alta Piranheira agro-forestry settlement, in an attempt to have a sustainable living while keeping the forest intact. But, despite their efforts, 14 years later the forest had shrunk from 80 to 20%. In 2011, they were killed by two gunmen. Different facts make certain that the killings were a well-planned operation, by someone else than the killers. The deaths cause such revulsion that Brazilian officials were force to act. Looking for the killer was hard, because the couple had made a lot of enemies protecting the forest. After this, 3 men were taking into custody: Moreira (a rancher who seem to be the intellectual author) and the two triggermen. The investigators did not present the information about a larger conspiracy; so eventually, the jury freed Moreira and found the hitmen guilty. This has not stopped the intimidation toward the environmentalists; activists fear that the verdict will feed a culture of impunity. The violence against these activists in now a global trend, more than 700 environmentalists had been murdered in the last decade. In 2010, 96 were killed and in 2011, 106; by now an activist is probably killed each week. The underlying cause of these is the expanding global economy. Poor countries provide the resources needed by first-world countries to keep their economies going; this way, citizens in poor countries found themselves fighting against powerful people. The author presents cases from all around the world: Laos, Philippines, Mexico, Central Africa and Peru. Anyplace that has something needed by the powerful ones, has people fighting to keep safe their environment; and theirs leaders are being killed. This is a matter of public interest, because it is hard to prevent this to happen and even harder to find the guilty ones, as they are protected by layers of corruption.

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Personal Opinion
About the article, I liked the way the author explains this situation. He uses a main example to show details about the problems, but also presents some other examples to show the global dimension of these issues. As his main objective is trying to figure out why these killings keep happening; he also talks about the underlying causes of this problem instead on only focusing in the violence itself. I have found this article to be really interesting, because even though I knew something like this was going on, I could never imagined the size of the problem. So I could say I learned a lot from it. I also was touch by the life of these activists, that kept fighting, even when their lifes were in danger.

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This format January 2012 Idiomas Catlica se reserva el derecho de utilizar el contenido de este documento para fines acadmicos, salvaguardando la identidad del autor.