Rudolfo Monteil - Mexico
Rudolfo Monteil - Defending the
Forests
A campesino's environmental award
puts Mexico on the defensive
by John Ross
Toward Freedom magazine, June/July
2000
When I get out of here, I'm going right
back to defending our forests," vows Rodolfo Montiel, a wiry,
toothless campesino currently locked up in Guerrero state prison
in southern Mexico. A 44-year-old father of six, Montiel has been
in custody for more than a year, awaiting a judge's verdict on
arms possession and drug-running charges. But as the July presidential
election looms, he's become an embarrassment to the government
by winning the prestigious Goldman international environmental
prize.
"The prize the government has given
me for defending our forests is prison," says the man regarded
by many as a heroic leader of a band of "campesino ecologists."
Allegedly arrested and beaten into confessing crimes he didn't
commit, Montiel had defied political and business interests by
defending his upland countryside from destructive clear-cut logging.
In one logging dispute, 17 unarmed protesters were killed in a
clash with police near the village of Aguas Blancas in mid-1995.
Human rights groups say no one has been prosecuted for the deaths.
In the same year, Boise Cascade, the US timber giant, took advantage
of the North American Free Trade Agreement to move into the Petatlan
mountains, making a deal with the Guerrero state governor and
the boss of a union of ejidos (communal producers).
"I've seen a lot of logging operations,
but never one like Boise," says Montiel. People sent in by
the ejido's union leader "came in and took everything-live
trees, dead trees, old trees, young trees. We wrote to [Mexico's
environmental secretariat], but they wouldn't listen and called
us 'narcos' and guerrillas instead."
By 1997, clear-cutting had affected rainfall
in the sierra. Farmers complained that crop yields were suffering
amid soil erosion and drought. "The river of Mameyal got
so dry," recalls Montiel, who grew up in a nearby village.
"Everyone knew the logging was drying up the rivers. The
trees bring us water, and without water there is no life. We had
to do something.
Uniting local subsistence farmers and
environmentalists, Montiel helped start the Organization of Campesino
Ecologists of the Petatlan Sierra. In February 1998, they blockaded
narrow mountain roads and cut the flow of logs to Boise's sawmills
on the south coast. Later that year, the company left Guerrero,
citing "difficult business conditions." But indiscriminate
logging, as well as protests, continued.
Next, the army was sent in on the pretext
that left-wing guerrillas were prowling the forests. On May 2,
1999, soldiers arrested Montiel and a fellow campesino, Teodoro
Cabrera. A third farmer was shot dead as he tried to resist.
The two detainees said soldiers showed
them a sack of guns and another full of marijuana, then beat them
without mercy into confessing that the contraband was theirs.
They were also accused of being guerrillas, but those charges
were never pursued. The men later retracted their confessions,
but could face long custodial sentences if found guilty.
In April, Montiel won the annual $125,000
Goldman prize, which honors grassroots environmental achievements.
The Goldman Foundation has honored another renowned prisoner,
Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni activist who was later hanged by Nigeria's
Abacha regime. Montiel s supporters fear the same fate could befall
him. Up in the Petatlan sierra, soldiers have hung nooses from
trees, and say they're for the campesino ecologists.
On the day Montiel s award was announced,
soldiers ransacked homes in Mameyal village and arrested two young
campesinos, reportedly members of his group.
Another member was kidnapped by armed
men, and the campesinos' legal defense team has been harassed.
Pressure on the government to intervene
in the case and free the men has been growing. Amnesty International
has adopted Montiel as a prisoner of conscience, and used the
Goldman award as an opportunity to lodge a protest with Jorge
Madrazo, Mexico's attorney general. Madrazo professed ignorance,
hut promised "to look into the matter." Mexico's national
human rights commission also says it will investigate.
President Zedillo has kept silent on the
subject. The publicity surrounding the case comes at a bad time
for his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose presidential
candidate Francisco Labastida faces a tough challenge in July
from the conservative National Action Party's Vicente Fox.
In the meantime, Montiel remains defiant.
"I didn't win this prize-the trees did," says the peasant
ecologist. He promises to spend the money on irrigation projects
in the sierra.
John Ross is a journalist and poet who
has covered Mexico for more than 30 years. In 1995, he won an
American Book Award for Rebellion from the Roots-Indian Uprising
in Chiapas.
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