Two butterfly activists are murdered within days of each other near a conservation reserve in Mexico
- Mexican authorities say they are investigating the possible murder of a tour guide working at a famous butterfly reserve in the western state of Michoacan
- Murder comes just two days after its former environmental activist was buried
- Raul Hernandez’s body was found in the area in the early hours of Saturday, with different parts beaten, and a head injury possibly caused by a sharp object
- Earlier this week, Mexicans in El Rosario mourned the death of activist Homero Gomez, who had fought for a decade to protect the monarch butterflies
- It is unclear whether the two deaths are connected
- Sudden disappearance of such a high-profile campaigner had sparked an outcry in Mexico, an increasingly violent country where activists are routinely killed
- Michoacan state is home to the country’s largest monarch butterfly reserve
- The state is also where rival drug gangs, who battle to control smuggling routes through often-arid terrain to the Pacific and the interior of the country
A guide in Mexico’s monarch butterfly preserve has been found dead days after a butterfly activist in the same region died in mysterious circumstances.
The Michoacan state prosecutors’ office said the body of guide Raúl Hernández Romero was discovered on Saturday in the municipality of Ocampo. His body showed multiple bruises and a knife-type wound to the head.
Hernández’s family said he has last been seen on January 27 when he left his home in a neighboring municipality, Angangueo.
A guide in Mexico’s monarch butterfly preserve, Raúl Hernández Romero, was discovered on Saturday. it comes just days after the suspected murder of activist Homero Gomez, who had fought for a decade to protect the monarch butterflies
A monarch butterfly takes off from a tree trunk in the winter nesting grounds of El Rosario Sanctuary, near Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico
It wasn’t clear if the case might be related to the death of Homero Gómez González, a prominent defender of the butterflies against illegal logging, whose body was found days earlier in a holding pond in the Ocampo area.
Autopsies show he drowned and had a head wound, but officials haven’t determined the circumstances of the death.
The sudden disappearance of such a high-profile campaigner had sparked an outcry in Mexico, an increasingly violent country where activists are routinely threatened, harmed or even killed as a result of their work.
The butterflies’ annual migration through Canada and the U.S. to Mexico, threatened by logging, avocado farming, pesticide use, and climate and environmental change, has been a source of income for people in the impoverished mountains of Michoacan state where the insects winter, clumped to oyamel pines.
Millions of the orange and black insects make a 2,000-mile journey each year from Canada to winter in central Mexico’s warmer weather.
But Michoacan state is not only home to the country’s largest monarch butterfly reserve, a World Heritage Site, but also rival drug gangs who battle to control smuggling routes through often-arid terrain to the Pacific and the interior of the country.
In Gomez’s killing. relatives speculated his death wasn’t accidental and said bad things were happening to human rights and environmental activists in Mexico, and people are afraid.
‘Something strange is happening, because they´re finishing off all the activists, the people who are doing something for society,’ the dead man’s brother, Amado Gomez, said last Thursday at the funeral.
The body was discovered Wednesday in a holding pond near the mountain forest reserve that Gómez González long protected. Michoacan state prosecutors had said a few hours later that an initial review indicated a drowning and found no signs of trauma, but their latest statement said more detailed autopsy results produced evidence of a head injury.
Authorities gave no other information on the injury and did not say how it might have been inflicted. They said an investigation continued, suggesting the case wasn’t considered an accident.
Homero Gomez Gonzalez, pictured became one of the most vocal defenders of central Mexico’s monarch butterfly population
Gomez, a strenuous defender of the monarch butterfly, was found dead in a well in the state of Michoacan local authorities said Wednesday
Remedios Argeta Gonzalez, 73, sheds a tear as she mourns her son, environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez, in the family’s shared kitchen in Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico
The threadbare clothes of the mourners and the few candles and simple floral arrangements at Gómez Gonzalez´s funeral underlined the tough background of the struggle being played out in the butterflies´ winter nesting grounds, where the creatures shelter in the tall pine and fir forests.
Grinding poverty and gang violence fuel twin threats to the butterfly reserve – illegal logging and encroaching plantations of avocados. The latter is the only legal crop that provides a decent income in this region.
For the last decade, Gómez Gonzàlez fought to keep loggers out of the reserve, leading marches, demonstrations and anti-logging patrols. He tried to persuade the government to increase the meager stipend that local farmers receive for preserving trees.
He also worked to convince about 260 fellow communal land owners that they should replant trees on land cleared for corn plots. By local accounts, he managed to reforest about 150 hectares (370 acres) of previously cleared land.
Mourners pray around the coffin of environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez. The famil don’t know whether he was murdered or died accidentally
Municipal police guard the funeral procession for community activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez in Ocampo
Mourners fill a church for a funeral Mass for the community activist. Hundreds of farmers and agricultural workers attended the funeral Friday
Like other places in the world, increasingly scarce water also plays a role in the conflict. Gómez Gonzàlez and other communal land owners had asked the nearby town of Angangueo for payments in return for water they receive from clear mountain streams that survive only because the forests are protected.
His death has sparked fears among fellow conservationist who didn’t have his education and public speaking skills.
‘A lot of the communal land owners fear that with his death, the forests are finished,’ said Amado Gómez.
‘I would like to ask the authorities to do their job and do more to protect activists like my brother, because lately in Mexico a lot of activists have died,’ he said. ‘With his death, not only my family lost a loved one; but the whole world, and the monarch butterfly and the forests lost, too.’
International organizations have drawn attention to attacks on environmental activists and conservationists in Mexico in recent years.
Flower petals fall as family and friends grieve around Gonzalez’s grave
A mourner wipes tears during a wake for environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez
London-based Global Witness counted 15 killings of environmental activists in Mexico in 2017 and 14 in 2018. In an October 2019 report, Amnesty International said that 12 had been killed in the first nine months of that year.
On Thursday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described Gómez Gonzàlez’s death as ‘regrettable’ and ‘painful.’
‘It’s part of what leads us to apply ourselves more every day to guarantee peace and tranquility in the country,’ López Obrador said. There were 35,588 homicides in Mexico in 2019, a new record, but a total that rose at a lower annual rate than recent years.
The activist’s relatives had reported him missing January 14, after not seeing him since the previous evening at a traditional celebration.
His body was found in a small agricultural reservoir in Ocampo, state prosecutor Adrián López Solís said. The pond is approximately 32 feet square and 20 feet deep, but only about half full of water, and is on land adjoining property where Gómez González attended the party.
Mourners pay their respects next to the coffin of environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez at his wake
Prosecutors said Thursday night that robbery appeared not to be a potential motive, since almost $500 in cash was found on his body. López Solís also said earlier that relatives had received a ransom call demanding money, but an investigation determined it was not credible and just an attempt to extort money.
While the circumstances of the death remained unclear, Greenpeace Mexico issued a statement calling it a ‘murder.’
‘We condemn the fact that defending the land, natural resources and biodiversity converts activists into targets for threats, persecution and the cowardly act of taking their lives,’ the group said.
Activists in Mexico said the death could be related to disputes over illegal logging, water or income from visitors’ fees to the El Rosario butterfly reserve. Gómez González was the head of the reserve’s management council.
López Obrador raised criminality surrounding illegal logging. ‘It’s tied to criminal organizations and we’re working on this,’ he said.
Last month, during Gomez’s disappearance, 53 local police officers were called in for questioning over the long-time promoter and protector of the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly
Mexico has clamped down on illegal logging, which was once a major threat to the reserves but which has fallen to about one-third last year’s level. But there have been reports of increased ‘salvage’ logging of supposedly sick trees.
Orley Taylor, an ecology professor at the University of Kansas and director of Monarch Watch, said it wasn’t immediately clear what impact Gómez González’s death would have on conservation efforts in the reserve.
‘There are increasing pressures on the forest from both the illegal loggers and the avocado growers and possibly the gangs that extort protection from various parties in the region,’ Taylor said. ‘This dynamic is widely known, but how to deal with these threats to the forests, residents and monarchs will be a challenge for the (Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve), its residents and local and regional authorities.
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