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PROFILE
DEFE of the
Felipe Arreaga is stirring a vat of pork rinds as he sips beer and jokes with his family. After 10 months in a cramped prison cell, he wears his freedom well, like the new cowboy hat on his head. But come nightfall Arreaga will retreat indoors and stay put. He knows his enemies are powerful and has heard rumors of the revenge they still seek. Arreaga, a farmer who looks younger than his 56 years, is a central figure in a long-running and violent struggle between peasants who live off the land and powerful logging companies that raze the pines from the hills of the southern Pacific state of Guerrero. Before his arrest, the activist led local farmers in a valiant fight against powerful caciques, land-owning bosses with political connections. Arreaga and his fellow activists eventually turned their Peasant Environmentalist Organization of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP) into a formidable obstacle to loggers who were accustomed to getting their way. His activism marked him for retribution, a frightening prospect in this poor, rural and lawless state. In November 2004 a local cacique named Bernardo Bautista pinned the 1998 murder of his son, Abel, on Arreaga. During a trial plagued by irregularities, Arreaga—who had not been convicted of any crime—was imprisoned in Zihuatanejo, a steamy coastal city. There he shared a tiny cell, meant for six men, with 14 others. “We were locked up at 6 p.m. and left shoulder to shoulder in that cell until six in the morning,” says Arreaga, trembling as he
recalls his prison experience. “I only ate meat twice while I was there; the rest of the time it was tortillas with salt. I’d never been caged up like that. It was such a horrible place.” As his trial dragged on, Arreaga’s opponents slung mud at him and his activist network. They said the activists were growing marijuana and poppies and opposed logging in order to keep their illegal crops hidden. Some farmers do supplement the miniscule profits from their corn and bean fields with illicit crops, but Arreaga appeals to common sense. “If I were growing drugs, do you think I’d be thrown in jail?” he asks. “It’s precisely those who are mixed up in that business who are protected here. I’ve had no part in that game.” Arreaga was finally acquitted of murder on Sept. 15, after a state judge ruled that the charges were bunk, and released. Many here believe the court responded to the national and international attention Arreaga’s case had generated. Since 2003 lawyers from the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Mountain, headquartered in Guerrero, worked closely with groups such as Amnesty International and the Sierra Club to build support for his release. The groups mounted grassroots letter-writing campaigns targeting Mexican officials and drew national and international media attention to Arreaga’s case. Amnesty International considered Arreaga to be a prisoner of conscience and issued three urgent actions on his behalf this year. “As hard as this has been, in terms of lives and suffering, the international community
Monica Campbell is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City. She contributes regularly to The Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle.
8 amnesty international
winter 2005
Monica Campbell
For standing up to corrupt landowning bosses and international logging interests in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero, activist Felipe Arreaga was framed for murder and thrown in prison. Now free, Arreaga faces a precarious future as a man marked for revenge.
Felipe Arreaga in Guerrero.
