Activists Seek Release of Mexican Farmers

A group of Los Angeles environmentalists, politicians and activists has begun lobbying for the release of two Mexican farmers who led efforts to save a forest near their village.

Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, who were convicted of drug trafficking this year, are the focus of a national campaign coordinated by the Sierra Club and Amnesty International.

Human rights groups charged Mexican authorities last year with arresting Montiel and Cabrera as punishment for their complaints about excessive logging in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

The two men blamed logging companies in the United States and Mexico for drying up rivers and ruining crops that support peasant families. Attorneys seeking to appeal their convictions allege that the men were illegally detained and tortured into signing confessions. The lawyers also accuse Mexican military officers of planting marijuana, guns and other evidence used to convict Montiel and Cabrera.

In a news conference last week at the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles, mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa joined the plea for Mexican President Vicente Fox to intervene in the case.

“We know this fight is an important symbol in determining whether or not Mexico is now going to be true to its word,” Villaraigosa said, referring to pledges made by Fox to uphold human rights.

Despite findings by a government human rights commission that Montiel and Cabrera were tortured, the Fox administration maintained last week that the men appeared to have been tried fairly. Los Angeles Consul General Jose Luis Bernal said he is willing to meet with local groups that disagree.

“We realize there are conflicting opinions surrounding this case,” he said. “It would be beneficial for us to transmit their concerns to Mexico City.”

For the Sierra Club, the campaign is part of a shift toward environmental justice causes, locally and abroad.

Alejandro Queral, a Sierra Club director, said the Montiel and Cabrera case has a lot in common with such local concerns as the stalled Belmont Learning Complex just west of downtown Los Angeles and plans to expand Los Angeles International Airport.

“Environmental activists come from a similar perspective: that a clean environment is everyone’s right,” he said.

The new focus may help the Sierra Club restore credibility with minorities in urban areas who have felt estranged from the group. Those feelings reached a climax for Latinos in 1998, when some Sierra Club members sought to formally condemn illegal immigration. The measure--meant as a call for population control--was overwhelmingly defeated.