Mexico: Environmental Activists Face Growing Danger

Twenty-nine environmental activists were killed in Mexico between July 2016 and December 2017, according to a new report published by the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda) on Tuesday.

RELATED:

Mexico Most Dangerous Country for Being Indigenous AND a Woman

The “report about the situation of environmental, human rights defenders in Mexico” registered 88 attacks against activists with 29 incidents resulting in death.

These attacks are not isolated cases and include multiple aggressions against the same person or group of people. In total, 110 aggressions were recorded against 240 people.

The Mexican government was the primary aggressor and credited with committing 36 percent of the attacks with state and local authorities perpetrating the majority of attacks.

Seventeen of the attacks were related to mining and land grab, followed by infrastructure projects in 14 cases. Hydroelectric projects, water administration, real state projects, renewable energy, transgenic crops and illegal logging issues where related to the other cases.

“During this period we could observe a greater level of violence in comparison with previous years in the attacks against defenders, with physical violence, criminalization and murder cases increasing. Regarding murder, 17 cases were identified, in which 29 people were killed,” says the report.

Isidro Baldenegro (up-left) with other Goldman Prize laureates and the prize founder in 2005.

Among the murdered people was Isidro Baldenegro, an Indigenous Raramuri activist who had been awarded the Goldman Prize for his role defending the forest and the land. He had received many death threats and was hiding in his uncle home in a remote area of the Sierra Madre mountains when he was shot six times on January 15, 2017.

His father, Julio Baldenegro, was killed for the same reasons in 1986.

“It's unbelievable that in the 21st-century people and civil society members defending environmental, human rights in Mexico are in such high risks regarding their physical integrity,” said Gustavo Alanis Ortega, the president and founder of Cemda.

Alanis says he would have expected a diminishing of violence in a country that “internationally brags about being respectful of human rights,” but says reality is different in practice.

Murders were only 15 percent of the cases, as other types of physical attacks and criminalization of activism are the most common form of aggression.

In 2018, the environmental activist and Cheran's forest ranger Guadalupe Campanur's remains were found near her hometown.