International rights groups are demanding that the Mexican government do more to protect environmental activists from violent attacks and harassment as they campaign against logging.
An ambush last week that killed two sons of a longtime anti-logging activist was part of a campaign by local political bosses to crush environmental campaigners in the western state of Guerrero, according to Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Mexican rights groups.
Farmer Albertano Penalosa, a leading environmental campaigner, was apparently the target of last week’s attack but he escaped with slight injuries. Two sons were shot dead.
Carlos Gomez, Mexico director of the London-based Amnesty, told a news conference Wednesday that the group was “deeply worried” about the environmentalists’ security and called for an “immediate and exhaustive investigation” into the attack.
'Asking for justice'
“We are asking for justice,” Penalosa’s wife, Reyna Mojica, told the same news conference. Her husband did not attend out of fear for his safety.
Penalosa’s group, the Peasant Ecologists of the Petatlan Sierra, is celebrated internationally for blocking corporate logging operations in the Petatlan Sierra mountains in the 1990s.
But members have been targeted by local political bosses, or caciques, whose interests were affected and who rights groups say hold sway with the military, police and courts.
“The peasant environmentalists of the Petatlan Sierra have been fighting one of the world’s worst deforestation processes,” said Alejandro Calvillo, director of Greenpeace in Mexico.
“All they have gotten is repression. How many have gone to prison? How many have been killed?” he said.
Mother witnessed attack
Penalosa and his four children were returning to their mountain village when they were ambushed. Two sons, ages 9 and 19, were shot dead.
Mojica was in the kitchen when the shooting started outside.
“I was saying don’t shoot, don’t shoot, my children are out there,” she said. She heard a bullet pass near her before going out to find her husband and children. She found her youngest child alive, but mortally wounded.
Last November, another member of the group, Felipe Arreaga, was jailed on murder charges that rights groups say are bogus.
Earlier international case
In an earlier high-profile case, environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were held on gun and drug charges until President Vicente Fox freed them in 2001 under mounting pressure from national and international rights groups.
The United Nations says Mexico has among the highest levels of deforestation in the world.
In the Petatlan Sierra, Greenpeace says almost 40 percent of the forest was destroyed by logging between 1992 and 2000 until the activists helped stop it.
“This work is not just for us or for our family, but for everyone,” Mojica said. “It’s worthwhile.”
