Cartels Versus Environmentalists
Organized crime targets Mexico's defenders of nature
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Jesús and his wife and children have been running for years. Hailing from the indigenous Tarahumara (also known as the Rarámuri) people in the mountains of northern Mexico, they have labored to preserve their traditional way of life and to harvest from their forests without destroying them. But this puts them into conflict with illegal loggers who want to clear swathes of woodland for a quick profit.
While these disputes go back decades, the loggers have now merged with a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that operates in southern Chihuahua, especially in their municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo. Cartel thugs armed with Kalashnikovs and AR-15s target Tarahumara community leaders who stand up to the loggers.
Jesús fled his native village to hide out in another settlement. But after sicarios kidnapped him, beat him to near death and murdered various friends, he had to flee again to take refuge in Chihuahua City where he worked as a welder, while supporting the struggle back in the mountains. In September, he went to his workshop and what looked like cartel gunmen waited for him outside.
“Violence is out of control and the government isn’t taking action,” Jesús, 60, tells me in Mexico City, where he came as part of a group to appeal to President Claudia Sheinbaum for support. He asked that his real name not be used as he is worried about repercussions.
“Right now in the state of Chihuahua and the Tarahumara mountains, all the indigenous people are terrified,” says Felipe Valencia, 66, a community leader from the municipality of Guachochi, who also came to Mexico City. “Many sleep at night in the fields instead of their homes because of threats.”
In Mexico, cartels (or networks of paramilitary organized crime, as I define here) threaten and murder environmental defenders, who stand in their way to fell timber, run wild cat mines, or clear forests to grow opium poppies and run meth labs. These attacks have propelled Mexico to become one of the most dangerous countries to be an environmental defender, making it another hazardous job like journalist or mayor.
A report by Global Witness (an NGO) documents the murders of 18 environmentalists and the disappearance of another one in Mexico in 2024. That makes it the third most lethal country in the world for such activism behind Guatemala and Colombia, which have similar problems of paramilitary organized crime. In 2021, Mexico actually had the number one spot, with 54 murders and disappearances of defenders of nature.
It’s not always cartels behind the killings of course, but activists point to them in many cases. And in various areas, cartels are accused of working with corrupt cops and mayors who get a cut of the profits.
Jesús said that in Guadalupe y Calvo a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel linked to the Mayos are behind the violence, conspiring with local caciques (traditional “big men”) and the police. The violence has caused a major displacement of Tarahumaras from the mountains to cities, part of a broader refugee wave driven by cartels.
At the same time, cartels in Mexico are increasingly shaking down operations of legal mines, which can themselves be accused of damaging the environment. Activists who opposed legal projects have also been murdered, although most of these killings are unsolved.
Some writers have gone as far as to contend the war on drugs is simply a cover for armed groups to hit environmentalists. I don’t think this adds up. Mexico suffers more than 30,000 murders a year and only a very small percentage are likely linked to the environment. It is more convincing that other core forces drive the Mexican Cartel Wars, which then seep into these environmental conflicts and make them more perilous. However, the murders have a far reaching effect in deterring others from taking a stand and allowing cartels and their partners to savage forests, mountains and rivers.
Companies working in Latin America can get pulled into the conflicts. Down in Honduras in 2021, an executive for an energy company was convicted of hiring an assassin to kill environmental activist Berta Cáceres for standing in the way of a dam development. International firms in mining and other projects in Mexico are nervous not only about being threatened by cartels but also about being accused of being complicit with them.
These concerns have intensified after President Donald Trump designated six cartels in Mexico as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, so working with them (or some fear just paying them protection) could open potential liability. I go deeper into companies’ problems and the plots to murder environmentalists below.
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