Of course, there were people who did not agree with Chico. Some businesses and people from the government tried to stop him. At one time he want to prison, but he did not stop his fight. In 1988, Chico led rubber tappers from Xapuri to try and stop a rancher called Darly Alves da Silva. Darly Alves wanted to cut down the trees in one part of the forest, but it was the same part that the rubber tappers wanted to make into a reserve. The idea of the reserve was that the tappers could take rubber, nuts, and fruits from the forest, and at the same time they could protect it.