Marina Silva

Marina Silva on the founding of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) in 2007

Maria Osmarina Marina Silva Vaz de Lima (born February 8, 1958 in Rio Branco ) is a Brazilian environmental activist and politician . She was a colleague of the rainforest protector Chico Mendes, who was murdered by the landowners . Until 2009 she was a member of the Workers' Party and served as senator and environment minister (2003-2008).

In the 2010 and 2014 presidential elections , Silva stood as a candidate for the Green Party and the Partido Socialista Brasileiro , taking third place with 19 and 21 percent of the vote, respectively.

Private life

Marina Silva leads an "empate", a form of peaceful resistance, in the Fazenda Bordon in Xapuri

Marina Silva in front of a photo by Chico Mendes

Chico Mendes in 1988 in the back yard of his home in Xapuri, Acre

In 2007 the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação e Biodiversidade, ICMBio) was founded

Marina Silva was born deep in the Amazon in the pile dwelling settlement of Breu Velho near the rubber collecting settlement ( seringal ) Bagaço, which is about 70 km from the state capital Rio Branco in the state of Acre . At that time there was no road to Breu Velho, nor was there a school. She was the second oldest of a total of eleven children of Pedro Augusto da Silva and Maria Augusta da Silva, a Seringueiro family who tapped rubber trees in the woods. Even before she was 6 years old, she was helping to collect rubber in the remote forests. Three of her siblings died in childhood; she herself had to struggle with hepatitis , malaria , leishmaniasis and poisoning from heavy metals .

The family lived in Manaus and Santa Maria do Pará for a short time , but returned to the rubber area after a few months. Since the father had to go into debt in order to be able to return, the children also had to work as rubber tappers: At twelve, Marina Silva became a full-time rubber tacker ( Seringueira ). After her mother's death, she took over her role at the age of 15. She was very aware of her precarious life and dreamed of becoming a nun. She met her first husband Raimundo Souza in 1980 and gave birth to daughter Shalom and son Danilo. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985. In 1986 she met Fábio Vaz de Lima and married a second time; they had two daughters, Moara and Mayara. In 2004 she converted and joined the Assembleia de Deus , an evangelical Pentecostal church of particular importance in Brazil.

Education

When she was 16, she came to Rio Branco in search of medical treatment. There she first worked as a domestic servant. She began her school education with the literacy program MOBRAL (Movimento Brasileiro de Alfabetização) of the military dictatorship . Later she attended a Catholic school and lived in the sisters of the "Servas de Maria". She learned about liberation theology through Clodovis Boff and Dom Moacyr Grechi , who was then bishop in Rio Branco . She began to get involved in the grassroots communities and theater groups, in the rubber tappers union, and finally in politics. Within a few years she reached the university entrance qualification and finished her training as a historian at the Federal University of Acre at the age of 26 .

politics

At the university she joined the Partido Revolucionário Comunista (PRC, Revolutionary Communist Party), a clandestine group that fought against the military dictatorship and later became part of the Workers' Party (PT). In 1984, towards the end of the military regime, she and Chico Mendes founded the regional branch of the left-wing trade union confederation Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) in the Amazon state of Acre. Chico Mendes became the voice of the CUT in Xapuri , where he lived, and Marina Silva in the capital, Rio Branco. They developed the idea "desenvolvimento com a floresta em pé", which today can be translated as "sustainable management of the forests" ( extractivism ). They fought for the creation of so-called "collector reserves" where the rain forest is maintained and the rubber tappers or Brazil nut can earn their livelihood collector systems. In these struggles for the preservation of the rainforest, rubber collectors and indigenous peoples cooperate - the enemies of yore became close allies.

Joined PT and elected MP

In 1985 the military dictatorship was overcome, there was a spirit of optimism in Brazil and Marina Silva joined the PT. The following year she ran for the House of Representatives in Brazil . She got one of the highest numbers of votes in Acre, which the PT but not enough for a seat in the small state.

In 1988 she was elected with the most votes in the city council of her hometown. She provoked her competitors by returning the donations she received as a member of parliament and by demanding the same from the others in court.

In 1990, Silva was again elected as a state MP with the highest number of votes. After a year in office, she suffered from severe poisoning from heavy metals for a long time; to this day, this has restricted her health.

Election to the senator

In 1994, at the age of 36, she was elected to the Federal Senate in Brasília as the youngest female senator in Brazilian history . This is remarkable because in Brazil former governors or large landowners are often elected to the Senate.

In 2002 she was re-elected to the Senate with a further increase in the number of votes; her term of office ran until the beginning of 2011. She chaired the committees for the environment and for the constitution and justice.

As Environment Minister in Lula's cabinet

In January 2003 she was the first female minister to be appointed by Lula after winning the election; she was appointed to the government as environment minister . But in the same year Lula decided - against her vote - to use genetic engineering in agriculture. After years of political and legal disputes and breaking election promises , Lula finally released the cultivation and enforced the legalization of the previously illegal genetically modified soy .

In 2007 Lula pushed through two superlative dams - also against Silva's vote -: the Jirau dam on the Rio Madeira and the Belo Monte hydropower plant on the Amazon tributary Xingu , the world's third largest hydropower plant. Projects of this dimension are seen as a source of corruption. The state-owned companies Eletronorte and Eletrobrás are the domain of the Senate President and Lula ally José Sarney . The social and ecological costs are also immense: 20,000 people would have to be resettled on the Xingu. The habitat of several indigenous peoples would be destroyed, as would large parts of the rainforest. Later, however, Silva stated that she was not fundamentally against the Belo Monte power plant, but only considered the time of the tender to be premature.

Resignation as environment minister

Marina Silva in July 2010

Stephen Schneider , Marina Silva and Thomas Lovejoy (from left to right) 2010

At the beginning of 2008, the Guardian counted her among the 50 people "who can help save the planet". But on May 13, 2008 she resigned as environment minister because she could not sufficiently enforce her strategic environmental goals within the government. The trigger was the Plano Amazônia Sustentável (Plan for a Sustainable Amazon), which focuses on the development of the rainforest region with land and waterways for agribusiness as well as the construction of new dams for aluminum smelting and consumption in distant industrial areas - which in fact is the deforestation of the Amazon allowed on a large scale. At the time of her resignation, Chancellor Angela Merkel was visiting Brazil and above all wanted to talk about the environmentally friendly cultivation of energy crops and the protection of the rainforest. Merkel described Silva's resignation as a "warning sign".

Joined the Partido Verde and ran for the presidency in 2010

Due to similar political differences, Silva left Lula's Workers' Party (PT) on August 19, 2009, after 24 years, joined the Greens ( Partido Verde ) and announced her presidential candidacy for the October 3, 2010 elections . At the beginning of the campaign, she was given outsider opportunities because she was briefly on par with Dilma Rousseff in surveys. In the first round of the presidential elections on October 3, 2010, Marina Silva did surprisingly well for many. She came third with 19.4% of the vote. Marina Silva even won with 42% ahead of Dilma Rousseff in the capital Brasília , which had been shaken by corruption scandals. In Rio de Janeiro she got 32%. With 20 million votes, Marina Silva secured the largest share of the vote for a candidate for a Green Party worldwide. With her good performance, Marina Silva messed up the established party system and forced the later winner Dilma Rousseff into a second ballot against the challenger José Serra.

Lula had single-handedly chosen his previous head of cabinet Dilma Rousseff as his successor candidate, she was then elected as the first woman in the presidential office of Brazil in the runoff election. As a growth-oriented technocrat, Rousseff was previously Minister for Mining and Energy and headed the “Program to Accelerate Growth”. Not least in her coordinating role as Lula's head of cabinet, Rousseff had often tipped the balance in favor of industrialization. During these years she was seen as a direct opponent of the then Environment Minister Silva.

Network foundation and presidential candidacy 2014

With Eduardo Campos 2013

In 2011 Marina Silva resigned from the Green Party and founded the Rede Sustentabilidade party (REDE, German network sustainability , analogously also sustainability network ) in February 2013 . After the accidental death of the socialist presidential candidate Eduardo Campos , she stood for election in 2014. Originally, she ran for the vice presidency. With 21 percent of the vote, she finished third, just like four years earlier, behind Aécio Neves , whom she supported in the second round.

2018 presidential nomination

Marina Silva was a candidate for REDE in the 2018 presidential election , having formed an electoral coalition with the Green Party . The official announcement was made on August 4, 2018.

Political priorities

Marina Silva has linked social issues with environmental protection from the start. At the local level she fought for survival e.g. B. the rubber collector in the rainforest to be preserved . Later as senator and minister, she did this on a national and international level. In her endeavor to pursue a sustainable environmental policy, she tried to slow down the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and biodiversity . It is due to their influence that around 240,000 km² have been placed under nature protection and around 100,000 km² have been designated as Indian sanctuaries. She created environmental policy plans for all ecosystems in Brazil: Caatinga , Cerrado , Mata Atlântica , Pampa , Pantanal and the coastal and marine areas.

She regularly came into conflict with groups who wanted to enforce other uses of the Amazon or other natural areas. But their plans also did not match the development goals of the Lula government, which were often based on traditional growth paths. She wanted to anchor environmental policy in all ministries, Lula wanted growth with large agrobusiness , dams and highways, including in the Amazon basin .

Awards

• In 1996 she won the Goldman Environmental Prize with Cristina Narbona Ruiz ;
• In 2007 the United Nations Environment Program recognized her with a Champions of Earth Award ;
• In 2009 she was awarded the Sophie Prize .

Movie

The Brazilian filmmaker Sandra Werneck filmed Marina Silva's life for the cinema.

literature

• Ziporah Hildebrandt: Marina Silva - Defending rainforest communities in Brazil. 1st edition. (Women Changing the World). Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 2001, ISBN 1-55861-262-9 .
• Dimas Antônio Künsch: Fé e política: Marina Silva. (coleção Fé e Política). Editora Salesiana, São Paulo 2001, ISBN 85-7547-003-5 .
• Marina Silva , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/2009 from November 3, 2009, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Commons : Marina Silva  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Marina Silva's website
• Documentary: Marina Silva, A Salvadora da Amazônia (The Amazon Savior)
• Speech Sustentabilidade
• Marina Silva on Twitter

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christian Schwägerl: Patron saint of the rainforest resigns . Spiegel Online , May 14, 2008
2. ↑ Marlies Uken: Defeat for the rainforest . ZEIT online, May 15, 2008
3. ↑ Senadora Marina Silva. In: archive.org. wayback.archive.org, archived from the original on September 1, 2012 ; Retrieved August 18, 2018 (Brazilian Portuguese, biography on Brazilian Senate website). 
4. ^ Ziporah Hildebrandt: Marina Silva - Defending rainforest communities in Brazil , p. 24
5. ↑ Tom Phillips: Brazil's former environment minister leaves ruling party over 'destruction of natural resources'. August 19, 2009, accessed August 18, 2018 . 
6. ↑ boell.de
7. ↑ 50 people who could save the planet . The Guardian, Jan. 5, 2008; Retrieved June 15, 2010
8. ↑ Daniela Toledo, Paulo Roberto Figueira Leal: A personificação política: uma análise da postura adotada por Marina Silva nas eleições de 2010. In: Publicidade e Propaganda do XIX Congresso de Ciências da Comunicação na Região Sudeste, realizado de 22 a 24 de May de 2014. May 2014, accessed on August 18, 2018 (Brazilian Portuguese, conference contribution, p. 4). 
9. ↑ Attack of the Apostates . taz.de
10. ^ Runoff election for Lula's desired successor - Green Triumph in Brazil , taz
11. ↑ Brazil's green flag bearer Marina Silva ready to get back in the race , The Guardian April 22, 2013
12. ↑ Thomas Fatheuer: Marina Silva - green hope for Brazil . Böll Foundation, August 20, 2009; Retrieved June 15, 2010
13. ↑ Website of the Rede Sustantibilidade ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Brazilian Portuguese). 
14. ↑ Marina Silva: The Amazonian candidate who would be Brazil's next . In: The Independent . ( independent.co.uk [accessed August 18, 2018]).
15. ↑ Dirigentes do PSB confirmam indicação de Marina Silva , ZH of August 16, 2014 (Portuguese)
16. ↑ ^{a b} Kenneth Rapoza: The Top Five Politicians Likely To Be Elected Brazil's President In 2018 . In: Forbes . ( forbes.com [accessed August 18, 2018]).
17. ↑ Gustavo Garcia, Rosanne D'Agostino: Speech confirma Marina para presidente e Eduardo Jorge para vice; candidata defende fim da reeleição e mandato de 5 anos . In: G1 . August 4, 2018 (Brazilian Portuguese, globo.com [accessed August 18, 2018]).
18. ↑ Time.com. Leaders & Visionaries: Marina Silva and Cristina Narbona Ruiz, by Bryan Walsh .
19. ↑ Winner of the “Champion of the Earth” award 2007. UNEP . Retrieved August 18, 2018.
20. ^ The Sophie prize 2009 ( Memento from April 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).

predecessor	Office	successor
José Carlos Carvalho	Environment Minister (Ministra do Meio Ambiente) January 1, 2003 - May 15, 2008	Carlos Minc