Mexican Environmentalists Behind Bars.

• Author: Paterson, Kent
• Position: Brief Article

Two Mexican environmental activists remain behind bars on trumped-up charges, their supporters say.

Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera helped lead the opposition to a Boise Cascade mill in their home state of Guerrero. Their group, the Peasant Ecologist Organization of Petatlan and Coyuca de Catalan, organized protesters to halt logging trucks headed for the mill because they view deforestation as a threat to the local environment.

On May 2, 1999, Mexican troops stormed the remote village of Pizolta and arrested Montiel and Cabrera, according to Ubalda Cortes, Montiel's wife and an eyewitness to the arrests.

When a distraught Cortes finally located Montiel in jail, she found him complaining that he had been tortured. Authorities charged Montiel and Cabrera with drug and weapons possession and linked the men to the Popular Revolutionary Army, a rebel group that operates in Guerrero. But the real reason the men were arrested, says Cortes, is that they were active in obstructing logging trucks.

"They haven't proved a thing because the charges aren't true," says Cortes.

Last November, more than 100 activists from seven countries sent a letter to high-level Mexican government officials demanding that Montiel and Cabrera be freed. "We support the efforts of the farmers of Guerrero to resist the degradation of their forests for the economic benefit of transnational corporations like Boise Cascade," wrote the signatories. "We make a call for the authorities to support the immediate freedom of Rodolfo Montiel, Teodoro Cabrera, and others who have demanded their. rights to have water, land, and a healthy forest ecosystem to sustain their communities." They also demanded that illegal logging in Guerrero be...