While many of us were celebrating Earth Day on Sunday, environmental activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera spent another day in a Mexican jail. Soldiers arrested the pair in May 1999 and, says Amnesty International, tortured them until they confessed to guerrilla ties. Amnesty rejects this, saying the men are political prisoners.
The men's real crime apparently was organizing communities to oppose the destruction of old-growth forests in Mexico's Guerrero state. When they started their work, the clear-cutting of Guerrero's forests was being fueled by the Idaho-based timber company Boise Cascade, which had struck a deal with the Mexican government in 1995 to secure exclusive rights to timber in the area.
But Boise Cascade became so frustrated by Montiel and Cabrera's activities that it pulled out of Guerrero in 1998, citing "difficult business conditions." The timber giant's withdrawal likely gave the Mexican government all the reason it needed to find Montiel and Cabrera guilty of crimes against the free market.