Justice Under the Ax in Mexico

Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, Mexican peasants in the state of Guerrero, are sitting in a jail cell because they could no longer bear the sight of loggers stripping the mountains near their village.

A local judge, who refuses to make public the specific charges against them, sentenced Montiel to six years and 10 months and ordered Cabrera behind bars for 10 years. The two men were brought in by the army a year ago, accused of being armed and on the run after soldiers caught them growing marijuana. It stretches the imagination that two men so vigorously opposed to rapacious logging of their mountains were also involved in the drug trade. Certainly environmentalists aren’t buying that scenario.

Human rights and environmental groups from Mexico and the United States insist the charges are bogus, just one more example of the “perversion of Mexican justice,” as one group says. Environmentalists are giving the two men a high profile. A San Francisco-based foundation awarded Montiel the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize when his plight was brought to the attention of the board.

Montiel had written to local authorities expressing his concerns about the logging. “When there are rows and rows of trees,” the letter said, “the clouds crash and water falls, but if in one row there are no trees, the clouds pass by and one or two drops fall and the crops are lost.”

His next move was to round up peasants from his village and block the way of the logging trucks. That did it: Montiel and Cabrera, who worked with him, were arrested.

Lawyers for the two farmers turned environmentalists have announced their intention to appeal the sentence. If they fail, they intend to bring their the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Court.

Whatever body ultimately takes up the case is expected to find it a sham. Defense lawyers insist a confession made by Montiel was extracted under torture.

Authorities in Mexico City need to look into this dispute immediately or face the prospect of an international embarrassment. Let the men go back to their mountains.