Sirkis is leaving with our illusions.

Alfredo Sirkis died on the day that a general, occupying the vice-presidency of the Republic, made commitments to wealthy businessmen to reduce the rate of destruction of the Amazon.

The day before, the general had promised the same thing to international investors. These are not commitments to the country, to Brazilians, to environmentalists, or to the forest peoples. These are agreements with the moneyed people.

And it all seems very natural. Sirkis died in this environment of destruction and pressure from businessmen, because Bolsonarism harms their interests.

We are reverting to pre-Sirkis approaches. The journalist had renewed the environmentalist discourse in Brazil. He was the one who politicized what, when he returned to the country in the 80s, was called the ecological movement.

Sirkis was a fresh face, the angel Gabriel of ecology, in a context of activism by women and already mature men. He is the one who expands the concept of the green struggle, continuing the movement led by people from Rio Grande do Sul.

José Lutzenberger, Magda Renner, Augusto Carneiro, Hilda Zimmermann, Giselda Escosteguy Castro, Flavio Lewgoy, Sebastião Pinheiro, Caio Lustosa – all of them were concerned with air, rivers, forests, and animals as a struggle of organized groups on the fringes of politics.

Sirkis, inspired by what he saw in Europe, offered political discourse to the activists. The war was serious, it was more than ecological, it was environmentalist. The concept and its scope were broadened. They founded a Green Party.

Today, we have remnants of almost everything that came after. Brazil shows the world the most tragic portrait of environmental destruction with what is happening in the Amazon. But it must be one of the most resigned countries in the face of this destruction.

It's disheartening. Sirkis, the man who revitalized the environmental movement, watched as an old man as young people mobilized around the world last year in defense of our forest – which they consider a common good – while young Brazilians watched the street protests on TV.

The feeling that the Amazon could be destroyed is today much more of a dilemma for young foreigners than for Brazilians.

We have nothing similar to the women (many women) and mature men who captivated young people at the end of the 20th century. And today we don't have young people who even try to imitate Greta Thunberg.

On Thursday, General Mourão, president of the National Council for the Amazon, told foreign investors that he will do everything to change the government's image regarding the Amazon.

But, among other things, he also said that indigenous people don't need drinking water (which Bolsonaro has withheld) because "they get their water from the rivers." And on Friday he told Brazilian business leaders that the government will reduce deforestation to a tolerable level.

The day before he died, Sirkis learned why the government refuses to provide water to the indigenous people. But he must have died without knowing that Mourão will mobilize efforts to avoid losing the trust of the capitalists.

The Amazon Council of the general has no representatives from Ibama and Funai, but it does have 15 colonels, one general, two major-brigadiers, and one brigadier.

Mourão and the military will be tutors to Ricardo Salles, the minister in charge of pushing through controversial policies. Salles remains in office because it is his job to meet the demands of land grabbers, illegal miners, and all kinds of murderers of indigenous people.

Alfredo Sirkis must have imagined one day that the Amazon would be saved by the actions of a group of long-haired kids inspired by former guerrillas turned environmentalists.

The forest ended up under the management of old men in uniform, some already in pajamas, who allied themselves with the follies of a government that was negligent and complicit in the actions of criminals.

Those indigenous people who don't die from the coronavirus will die from the effects of the chloroquine that the military is distributing in the villages. Rondon had already failed. Alfredo Sirkis' generation also failed.