Don Quixote of the jungle (part 2)

Sydney Ferreira Possuelo has defended indigenous rights, on all fronts, throughout his life: earning the respect and friendship of the indigenous peoples and defending their rights at the highest levels, such as when he was president of the Indian Protection Agency's department of Isolated Indians, or "FUNAI", as part of President Color de Melo's government, he delimited the largest indigenous territory in Brazil's entire history. Sydney preferred to stay with his friends instead of sitting in his presidential office in Brasilia.

In this way and only in this way did he succeed in protecting the territory of isolated tribes such as the Zoé and in expelling those who wanted to eliminate them. To do so, he went to the top, and by means of the Ministry of Justice, involved the heart of the State of Brazil. It is no wonder that the Zoé receive him as one of their own.

Above all, Possuelo is a man of action; he is one of our own, don't forget... and he knows the destructive capacity of our marvellous modern society. Though a cosmopolitan activist, he spends half his life here, where the real struggle is, in the deepest, most remote forest. And from the very start, he risks his neck.

Sydney made his first appearance in the worldof the Indians in 1975, after a crash landing in which his co-pilot lost a finger. The encounter was not as bucolic as in the adventure films.