11 minute read
Defender of the Sierra
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 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
of the DEFE
Monica Campbell
ENDER Sierra
Monica Campbell
Felipe Arreaga in the Zihuatanejo jail.
–DIEGO ZAVALA, AIUSA MEXICO COUNTRY SPECIALIST
has its eyes on this situation,” says Diego Zavala, Amnesty International USA’s Mexico country specialist.
The evidence that eventually led to Arreaga’s release exposed a trail of corruption and surreptitious influence. Depositions and forensics reports in the original murder investigation took years to carry out. A key prosecution witness declared that Bautista loyalists had coerced him into implicating Arreaga and others in the murder probe of Bautista’s son. And the court that convicted Arreaga ignored the testimonies of three witnesses who said that Arreaga was receiving medical attention for back problems in another town when the murder took place.
In Guerrero’s Petatlán and Coyuquilla river valleys, the tensions between loggers and small farmers, or campesinos, have deep roots in the nation’s land reform that President Lazaro Cardenas instituted in the 1930s to quell peasant unrest. That reform broke much of Guerrero’s land into communal farm groups known as ejidos. But as the state’s logging industry developed, foreign corporations moved in, profits flowed back to headquarters and a good deal of cash was exchanged for wood rights. In reality caciques and rogue loggers, with their business and political ties, can often bribe or simply out-muscle the small landowners, who struggle to make ends meet. The conflict intensified in 1998. That’s when Arreaga, the OCESP and his wife, activist Celsa Baldovinos, took on Canada’s Boise Cascade. They say the company pur
Arreaga with his wife, activist Celsa Baldovinos. Monica Campbell
chased the pine and hardwood from illegal loggers, with much of the business arranged by Bautista. The company eventually processed the wood at its mill in another part of the state and then made it into cabinets and furniture for sale in the United States.
“We saw how they cut the trees,” says Arreaga. “They left pure stumps. The rain would come and wash away the land. Then the loggers would move to a new patch and start over.” The farmers blamed deforestation for ruining the watershed, leaving behind dried up creeks and rivers. There was little water left for irrigating their crops.
The government brushed off their complaints, so the farmers spurred into action. They blocked roads for a month, burning logs and forming human chains that stopped the daily convoy of hundreds of lumber lorries that descended from the mountains. Weeks after the roadblocks, Abel Bautista was killed for unknown reasons. Tensions flared, and Boise Cascade got jittery. Over the next two years, the company cancelled its contracts and headed out. “We stopped them,” says Arreaga. “We never asked the government for permission. There was no use in that. We just went for it, and took on a powerful part of the establishment here that is not used to being challenged.” The vendettas continued even after much of the logging stopped. In 1998, the military arrested activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera and tortured them into confessing to arms dealing and drug–related crimes. Their supporters insisted that they were framed, and Amnesty International adopted them as prisoners of conscience. President Vicente Fox pardoned them in November 2001, following a national and international human rights campaign, but authorities have not yet cleared Montiel’s and Cabrera’s names.
The clash continues to cause deep suffering. On May 19, gunmen ambushed OCESP cofounder Albertano Peñaloza Domingez and his family near their home in the woods. Two of Peñaloza’s sons, aged 9 and 20, died from shots by a rifle, a .380-caliber pistol and an AK-47. The crimes remain unsolved. Peñaloza, who once worked for Bautista as a cattle herder, believes his former employer sent the assassins. Abel Barrera, head of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, says his group will continue to pressure the authorities to investigate the deaths of Peñaloza’s sons and protect the families who live in fear of persecution. But, he says, “It hasn’t been possible for the OCESP to take on Peñaloza’s case with force because many of its members are in the same type of situation, risk and danger.”
In August, the Sierra Club gave its prestigious Chico Mendes award to Arreaga for “outstanding environmental heroism.” Baldovinos and her group, the Organization of Women Environmentalists of the Sierra de Petatlán (OMESP), also received the prize, along with Peñaloza, who is in hiding. “At the end of the day, it’s still a very unsafe place,” says Stephen Mills, director of the Sierra Club’s International Program. “I’m convinced that Guerrero is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an environmentalist.” Amnesty International is concerned about where the activists go from here. “We’re glad Felipe is free, but the problem in Guerrero does not end there,” says AIUSA’s Zavala. “All the elements that precipitated Arreaga’s case still exist: the economic pressures, the ability to falsely prosecute, the exploitation of the forests. We’re concerned that this is going to be a merry-go-round, open to more corruption and potential for abuse.”
But some Mexican federal officials are skeptical about the motives of the anti-logging network. “There’s a lot of conflict in that area that can grab the attention of environmental groups,” says Héctor González, assistant attorney general for Profepa, the federal agency charged with protecting Mexico’s natural resources. “But it’s a very complex part of Mexico, with long-standing family rivalries in an area that’s huge and impossible to oversee.” González believes Arreaga and his alliance of activists comprise a community of bitter have-nots. “You have jealousies over the profits made by the timber industry,” González says. “And then there are those who live near the forests who complain that the industry ruins their water and pollutes.” Yet scientific evidence backs the claims by local and international environmentalists that Guerrero’s Sierra de Petatlán is shrinking. Satellite images show that area has lost about 40 percent of the 558,000-acre pine and fir forest since 1992, according to Greenpeace Mexico. Environmentalists here say that the mountains have undergone a deforestation rate five times the national average, already among the world’s worst. “We’re aware of this,” admits González. “But this part of Mexico is so isolated; it’s tough to supervise. So we must rely on the municipal authorities to be vigilant. Any solution to this problem will be a slow one.”
Although he never attended school, Arreaga is a self-taught environmentalist, well versed in the local flora and fauna. He reminisces about how the highland forests looked before the deforestation. “I remember when it’d take five people, with their arms stretched out, to go around one tree trunk,” he says. “They were that huge! It was beautiful. And there was every type of animal, even jaguars. Then the companies came with their chainsaws and now we have these mini-forests dotting the hills.”
As for Arreaga and Baldovinos, they are staying in a rented house in a small town in the tropical lowlands on the northern Pacific coast of Guerrero, about a two-hour drive from the pine forests. It seems peaceful—children swing in hammocks, patios are flush with greenery, and men clump together in front of the small, brightly painted homes, weaving aqua-colored nylon string into fishing nets.
They hope to return to the Sierra de Petatlán eventually. They envision an enormous nursery with “every imaginable tree and plant,” says Arreaga. Baldovinos has led her group in an ambitious reforestation campaign, as well as efforts to teach organic gardening and pollution control to local families. The OMESP activists who remain in Guerrero— some 60 women in all—pledge to watch for suspicious activity, as they are not convinced that the government will make a real effort to stop illegal logging.
Arreaga is unsure how long he will stay here or where he will go next. For now, concerns about his safety will keep him and Baldovinos, 59, along the coastal area. “My friends in the mountains tell me to stay away, that I’ll face serious reprisals if I return,” he says. “I feel strange, out of place. Everyone asks me what I’m going to do now. I don’t know. I’m just now coming to grips with being out of jail.”
While he is well aware that his enemies are looking for ways to get rid of him, he is resolved to continue doing what he can to protect the forests. “I now believe, more than ever, that my cause in life is to leave something behind for my children and my children’s children,” he says. ai
Take Action
Despite Felipe Arreaga’s acquittal, Amnesty International believes the situation in Guerrero state is still dangerous for environmental defenders. Write to the ambassador of Mexico, urging the Mexican government to: Guarantee the safety of Felipe Arreaga, his family and other environmental and human rights activists in Guerrero. Guarantee compensation to Arreaga for his unjust detention and prosecution; cancel the arrest warrant for 13 other environmental activists who have been arrested in Guerrero. Conduct an exhaustive and impartial investigation into the Office of the Attorney General’s original investigation into the murder of Abel Bautista Guillen in 1998. Address the fundamental problems in Guerrero, including illegal logging and the abuse of power by caciques (local political bosses). APPEALS TO: Ambassador Carlos de Icaza Gonzalez/ Embassy of Mexico/1911 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W./Washington, DC 20006 amnestyusa.org/3503
Online chat with author Monica Campbell on Dec. 13 from 1-3 p.m. Eastern: amnestyusa.org/countries/mexico
