April
2001
Human
Rights and the Environment: When Defending the Planet Means
Risking Your Freedom or Your Life
By Mia MacDonald
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“When someone kills many people, he is
guilty of genocide. Someone who kills a lot of trees is guilty of ecocide.
When I see a tree cut down, it wounds me inside…Neither jail,
nor any other obstacle, will keep me from defending the forests.”—Rodolfo
Montiel, jailed Mexican environmentalist
This is a story of ecology, livelihoods and rights under siege. It
is a story of corporate power, institutional corruption, the dark underbelly
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the resilience
and commitment of two men and their communities with limited resources
and little power. The story may yet end with justice being done, but
that end is still not yet secured—individuals around the world
will have to make their voices heard quickly and forcefully (see Sidebar).
Here, then, is an Earth Day story to inspire such action.
On May 2, 1999, the Mexican army arrested Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro
Cabrera, two campesino (small-scale farmer) campaigners for human rights
and environmental justice in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Montiel
is a founder and Cabrera a member of the Organization of Campesino
Environmentalists
of the Sierra de Petatlan and Coyuca de Catalan. Beaten, threatened
at gunpoint and tortured, Montiel and Cabrera were forced to confess
to trumped-up charges of drug trafficking and illegal possession of
weapons. The far more likely reason for their arrest: the government’s
displeasure at their refusal to accept the ecological devastation being
wrought by the old growth logging operations of U.S.-based paper products
giant Boise Cascade. Despite the finding in July 2000 of the Mexico
Commission on Human Rights that Montiel and Cabrera had, in fact, been
tortured, improperly detained, and were not in possession of firearms
when arrested, last fall a high court judge upheld their convictions.
They are still in jail.
Recently, the Sierra Club and Amnesty International held a joint meeting
in New York to raise awareness of the case of Montiel and Cabrera and
what actions can be taken to help secure justice for them. A short summary
of the case is included below, followed by edited excerpts from two
of the presentations made at the meeting, and a personal message from
Montiel and Cabrera.
The Story
In 1995, Boise Cascade signed a five-year deal with local political
leaders in Guerrero to log ejidos—community-held lands that had
been protected for hundreds of years. The deal was made possible by
the terms of 1994’s NAFTA (negotiations to expand NAFTA to the
entire Americas are underway; see Sidebar p. 25), and the power of
the
local land owners or caciques, who profited from selling the hardwoods
to Boise Cascade. Many caciques have close ties to the military and
corrupt government officials.
Due to the logging, streams and springs began to dry up and erosion
increased, threatening the livelihoods of the campesinos, including
their ability to grow staples like corn and beans. In 1997, Montiel,
Cabrera, and other campesino leaders began organizing. They wrote letters
to the Mexican government demanding a fair environmental assessment,
educated their fellow campesinos about the impacts of the logging operations,
and held both dialogues with and protests against Boise Cascade. Eventually,
the company left the area, claiming as a reason “the inconsistency
of wood supply.” But the caciques blacklisted the community organizers
accusing them of planting marijuana and belonging to leftist guerrilla
movements. It is no surprise that Montiel and Cabrera were arrested.
Nor is it a surprise that almost immediately after their arrests hardwood
logging in the area resumed.
Excerpts from remarks by Alejandro Queral, the Sierra Club’s Human
Rights and the Environment Campaign Director:
Since the WTO protests in Seattle, human rights and labor organizations
and environmental organizations have come together and begun to develop
new ideas on how to respond to this corporate globalization. On December
1st, 2000, after 70 years of one party rule, Vicente Fox from the National
Action Party was sworn in as the new president of Mexico. With him
come
a great deal of expectations—from environmental and human rights
activists in Mexico and throughout the world—because President
Fox has made quite clear that his administration is committed to protecting
human rights and the environment in Mexico.
The case of Rodolfo Montiel will certainly be a litmus test for this
new administration. My fear is that even though we may never see Montiel
and Teodoro Cabrera executed, they may spend the next 10 years in jail.
The only reason why they have gone through this ordeal—torture,
beatings, threats to their family—is because they were able to
affect the economic interests of large logging corporations and the
local economic interests doing business with these corporations.
In this case, we have our work cut out for us. We want to let the new
Mexican government know that we are not going to stop watching or stop
acting on Montiel’s and Cabrera’s behalf for the simple reason
that it is the right of any citizen in a democracy to speak out to protect
the environment, to organize, and to live the way they want to live.
Rodolfo and his fellow campesinos were not allowed that choice. More
and more activists throughout the world are demanding that the Mexican
government address this issue as soon as possible. There have been urgent
appeals [in support of Montiel’s and Cabrera’s freedom] filed
with the European Union and several appeals from national parliaments
of different countries—New Zealand and Brazil among them. We must
continue to work on Rodolfo and Teodoro’s behalf and that of environmentalists
around the world.
Excerpts from remarks by Bill Weinberg, journalist, WBAI radio host
and author of Homage to Chiapas: the New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico
(2000)
Ejidos [communal lands] in Mexico have roots that go back to the
Aztecs and were recognized under Spanish law. But in the colonial era,
more and more of these lands were taken over by domestic elites to
grow
coffee and raise cattle. The takeover of these lands became the raw
material of rural unrest. To buy peace with insurgent peasants, the
government that began to coalesce after the Mexican revolution [1910
to 1919] protected the ejidos in the Mexican Constitution—as the
inalienable right of peasant communities that could not be bought or
sold or privatized.
This was the social contract that held the Mexican state together from
1919 until 1993 when, in preparation for NAFTA, Mexico’s then
President Carlos Salinas pushed through changes to the Constitution.
With these
changes, the ejidos could now be bought, sold, privatized, and dissolved.
Of course this has led to resistance. The most dramatic is the uprising
of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas on January
1,
1994, which was, significantly, the same day that NAFTA took effect.
But struggles in other parts of Mexico have remained conveniently invisible
to the outside world, such as Guerrero, site of the extremely egregious
case of Rodolfo Montiel.
Mexico is now our biggest trading partner after Canada. The Mexican
military and federal police are being armed and trained by the Pentagon
in the name of the war on drugs. We citizens of the U.S. bear an awful
lot of responsibility for the situation in Mexico. The ties of international
solidarity need to be strengthened.
From a letter from Montiel and Cabrera released in late 2000:
….we would like to greet all of our friends of all ages from
all around the world… We would like to thank them for the great
support that they have given us and we hope that they keep up their
spirits and that we can increase our efforts to protect all forms of
life. We must look after our forests, our springs, our rivers and our
wild animals, in fact all our natural resources. There is still time
to fight for a new world full of peace and harmony…we must not
exchange the future of our children for a few coins. Let’s be united,
hand in hand with this new world that is for all of us… With courage,
good luck and faith anything can be achieved.
More information about Cabrera and Montiel and the campaign to secure
the human rights of environmental defenders can be found at: www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/.
To get involved contact Laura Hepler of the Environmental Justice Committee
of the Sierra Club’s New York City Group at: lhepler@rockco.com
or 212-448-9118.
