The sidewalk of Calle Barran do Rio Blanco in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, received environmental legislation exactly 20 years ago, on November 12, 2005. The demonstrators were protesting plans to build an alcohol and sugar factory in the Pantanal, in the Paraguay River Valley. The atmosphere was peaceful, but just before noon a man spread out two mattresses on the ground in the shape of a cross, doused them with two gallons of gasoline and attempted to self-immolate.
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Other protesters watched in horror. Screaming in pain at the center of the fireball was Francisco Anselmo Gómez de Barros, known as Francelmo, a 65-year-old environmental activist who has been fighting for the preservation of the Pantanal for 30 years. The activist suffered burns to 100% of his body. He was taken alive to Santa Casa de Campo Grande, but died the next day. Several letters left by environmental activists were later discovered.
Among the recipients of the letter were his wife Iracema Sampaio, his sisters and several people close to him. He wrote to fellow environmentalists: “We are being left behind by the interests of bad politicians, bad businessmen and hired doctors (…) In the Pantanal they want to turn the Paraguay River into a shipping route with ports for big ships (…) Now they want to build alcohol factories in the Paraguay River (…) We do not have the right to vote to save the Pantanal, so we will risk our lives to save it.”
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Twenty years after his death, the activist will be remembered during his work at the Climate Conference (COP30) in Belém, Pará. The Zona Verde School of Creative Economics in Parque da Cidade will host next Saturday a seminar promoted by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) titled “Lives That Leave, Struggles to Stay: Francelmo, the Pantanal, and the Climate Defenders.”
In 2005, a bill authorizing the construction of the plant was submitted by Governor Zeca Matogrosso do Sul of PT. Under pressure after Francelmo’s suicide, state lawmakers rejected the proposal. In 2008, the National Environment Council (Konama) approved a motion to designate November 12 as Pantanal Day. Francelmo, president of the Mato Grosso do Sul Nature Conservation Foundation (Huconamus), was one of the founders of Conama.
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A former Air Force corporal from Salvador, the environmental activist moved to the Pantanal and became an environmental activist. He founded Fuconums in the 1970s precisely to prevent the construction of alcohol factories in the Pantanal. The mobilization was successful and the distillery plan was reversed. In 1982, the Legislative Council of Mato Grosso do Sul approved a law prohibiting the construction of alcohol factories in the Midwestern biome. This was the law that Zeka’s PT government was trying to change.
People close to Mr. Francelmo said he appeared restless, fearing the environmentalists would lose the fight, but no one doubted that the activists intended to self-immolate. “I started dating him in the 1970s, and I never imagined he would do something like that,” his activist friend Asturio Ferreira dos Santos, president of the Amadora Fisheries Association, said at the time. “Our movement is peaceful and Anselmo has always been a calm and restrained person.”
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On November 12, 2005, during a protest in the Calzadao da Barranco in Rio Blanco, an activist handed Jorge Gonda, then director of Fuconamance, a folder containing all the farewell letters. Suddenly, during the demonstration, environmentalists saw a fire break out and a man inside. Some people used fire extinguishers to save the person without even knowing who the person was. It wasn’t until the fire department arrived that everyone realized it was Francelmo.
“My life has always been that of a clergyman of nature,” the activist wrote in the letter. “This is our home and God’s greatest gift. If God gave his life for us, I will give my life for God and protect the future of my children. Please continue to fight for me.”
A few days later, the Mato Grosso poet Manoel de Barros paid tribute to Francelmo in a public letter, calling him “Brazil’s last hero”.
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