Mascot of the Apocalypse: Backward Feet, Forward Lies

He once devoured hunters. Now he sells T-shirts.

There’s a boy wandering the Brazilian forest with flame-red hair and feet that point backwards. His whistle confuses, his footprints deceive, and his wrath—if you’re greedy with the land—is legendary. He is Curupira, and for centuries he’s haunted the dreams of those who tried to take more than they gave. Not anymore.

Curupira has been tamed. Smoothed. Brightened up for the cameras. He is now the official mascot of COP30, the UN’s next major climate summit, to be held in the heart of the Amazon in 2025. The divine trickster has become a state-endorsed branding tool. The forest wears a costume now.

At first glance, this seems poetic—empowering, even. Brazil, long caricatured as a passive victim of global ecological exploitation, is staging its comeback. And what better face for that comeback than Curupira: an Indigenous mythological spirit, born in resistance, reborn as a defender of climate justice?

But something about this feels wrong. Not just ironic—wrong.

Myths Don’t Consent to Branding

Curupira isn’t just a fun story passed down in oral tradition. In the cosmologies of many Tupi-Guarani-speaking peoples, he was—and still is—a sacred entity, a spiritual guardian of the forest. Offerings were left at the start of hunting expeditions to appease him. He was feared not because he was evil, but because he was a force of balance. He punished excess. He punished arrogance. He protected life.

But enter the Colonizer, stage left. In the letters of 16th-century Jesuit missionaries, Curupira was recorded not as a protector but as a demon—diabolical in the European imagination. Christian cosmology could not accommodate a non-binary being of the forest who lived somewhere between deity and ghost. So they flattened him. Demonized him. Then, centuries later, rebranded him.

By the 20th century, Curupira had lost his sharp teeth and gained a teaching role. He was repackaged for children’s books and environmental PSAs. A little strange, maybe. A little magical. But safe. Forgiving. Marketable.

And now, he is the face of an international conference sponsored by oil-lobbying nations, development-focused state agencies, and the very institutions that treat Amazonia as raw material to be audited.

The trickster, it seems, has been tricked.

When Sovereignty Becomes Symbolism

This is not about folklore. This is about power. About the quiet, systemic erasure of Indigenous voices from the very frontlines of climate debate. Because it’s one thing to celebrate an Indigenous figure—it’s another to actually listen to Indigenous people.

Curupira’s mascotization is emblematic of a dangerous tendency in global environmental discourse: to aestheticize Indigenous wisdom while ignoring Indigenous sovereignty. We love Indigenous motifs—feathers, flutes, forests—but not Indigenous demands for land back, for political autonomy, for control over their own narratives.

Instead of inviting Indigenous peoples to design the framework of COP30, the organizers invited them to decorate it.

We’re left with a sacred forest protector reduced to a cartoon with big eyes and a friendly grin, waving from digital banners, smiling on mugs. The same smile, perhaps, as the one on the jaguar at the last World Cup. Branding knows no gods.

The Boy with Backward Feet Is Still Running

Let’s be clear: symbols matter. Children growing up with Curupira on TV screens and textbooks might be inspired to care more for the forest. They might even learn to question extractive capitalism. Representation, when done right, can be a gateway.

But representation without reparation is spectacle.
And storytelling without redistribution of power is propaganda.

To use Curupira as a mascot and then continue to approve mining licenses in Indigenous territories is not just hypocrisy—it is cultural violence wrapped in green glitter.

Curupira doesn’t need to be forgiven. The forest doesn’t need an ambassador. It needs allies with the courage to confront the systems that are killing it. Not with poems. Not with pledges. But with policies. With radical restructuring. With land returned.

Whose Myth Is This Anyway?

The most haunting thing about this whole situation is how familiar it feels. Colonization didn’t end—it rebranded. It stopped burning villages and started sponsoring summits. It stopped killing spirits and started licensing them.

Curupira is not just a mascot now. He is a mirror.
And what he shows us is our willingness to trade spiritual depth for public relations, to replace ancestral truth with infographic-friendly mascots, to flatten everything we don’t understand into something we can sell.

In the end, the question isn’t whether Curupira should be the face of COP30.
The question is: will we let him speak?
Will we hear the whistle, even if it confuses us?
Will we follow the backward footprints, even if they lead us away from profit?

Because if we don’t, we’ve done more than dress him in costume.
We’ve buried him under asphalt, and called it progress.