Human Rights and the Environment

Case Study: Rights Abuses Due to Logging

Country: Mexico

Region: North America

Issues: Resource Extraction, Litigation, Public Participation

Terrible human rights violations have resulted from the Mexican government's concessions to multinational corporations to log the Sierra de Petatlán in Guerrero in southwestern Mexico. On May 2, 1999, Mexican authorities took Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, two Guerrerons who had organized opposition to the environmentally harmful logging activity, at gunpoint to a military camp, where they were tortured, threatened and forced to confess to charges that they were drug-trafficking guerrillas. The former Mexican Attorney General's review of the arrest and indictment as a potential human rights violation, including arbitrary detention and torture, yielded a finding that no violations had occurred even though the country's National Commission on Human Rights has reached the exact opposite conclusion in July 2000. Regardless, in August 2000, the Fifth District Judge of Iguala, Guerrero convicted and sentenced Montiel and Cabrera.

Fifteen months later, on November 9, 2001, Mexican President Vicente Fox announced Montiel's and Cabrera's release.[1] Fox ordered the release less than a month after the defendants' lawyer, human rights champion Digna Ochoa, was murdered on October 19, 2001.[2] Although the terms of the release are not yet fully known, Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia are free and safe.[3] Meanwhile, Sierra Club and Amnesty International, among others, continue to call for a full investigation of the Mexican government's actions.[4]

In addition to Montiel and Cabrera, others have faced human rights abuses since 1995 because of the environmentally unsound logging of old growth forests and the destruction of ecosystems that the Guerreron and federal governments allow to take place. The activities rob local communities of their agricultural livelihood and the general Mexican population of their forests. Moreover, farmers who organize efforts in opposition to the logging meet constantly with violent government responses. During the summer of 1995, federal police officers stopped farmers who were traveling to the Guerreron capital for a demonstration and proceeded to open fire, killing seventeen. Despite threats like these, however, the campesinos have continued to criticize the logging contracts and have achieved some success.[5]

[1] Press Release, Sierra Club, Mexican Environmentalists Released!, at http://www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/mexico (last visited Dec. 19, 2001).

[2] Press Release, Sierra Club, Digna Ochoa, Human Rights Champion, Murdered, at http://www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/Mexico/ochoa.asp (last visited Dec. 19, 2001).

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] See Rodolfo Montiel Flores at http://www.goldmanprize.org/press/press.html (last visited Dec. 19, 2001); Amnesty International & Sierra Club, Mexico: Environmental Defenders Arrested: Urgent Action Needed, Dec. 1999, at http://www.amnestyusa.org/justearth/countries/mexico2.html (last visited Dec. 19, 2001); AIUSA Just Earth Newsletter, September 2000, at http://www.amnestyusa.org/justearth/newsletter/vol_2/caseupdate.html (last visited Dec. 19, 2001).

Last Updated: 09/09/05