Homero Gomez Gonzalez managed the El Rosario butterfly reserve in Michaocan, Mexico before his family reported him missing in mid-January. A couple weeks later he was found dead in a nearby holding pond with a traumatic head wound.
Raul Hernandez Romero, a tour guide at the same sanctuary, was also found beaten to death on Feb. 1.
Gonzalez was a prominent defender of the monarch butterflies. He had led a campaign against illegal logging that threatens their nesting grounds. Robbery has been ruled out since he had the equivalent of $500 on him.
Apparently a persuasive orator, Gonzalez had convinced about 260 area landowners to re-plant trees to increase the insects’ habitats in areas that had been cleared for crops.
Rebeca Valencia, Gonzalez’ widow, said his death has left “many people outraged. He was an ecologist at heart.”
Gonzalez’ son, Homer Gonzalez Valencia, said that besides fighting to protect the butterflies, “He fought for his town, and that fills me with pride. A lot of the things we have are due to that struggle, which took many years. He fought against a thousand things. He taught us to be a united people.”
Millions of monarchs migrate thousands of miles, some even from Canada, to their winter homes. Experts say their numbers have nearly collapsed, diminishing 95% since the 1990s, a result of global warming, illegal logging and an increase in hurricanes along their path.
The monarchs aren’t the only species in danger. Human activists are losing their lives with alarming regularity.
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.
Worldwide, Global Witness reported 164 killings of activists in 2018 and 201 killings in 2017.
The Philippines is the world’s worst offender with 48 murders of environmentalists in 2017 and 30 in 2018.
In Mexico, suspicions point to the drug cartels, which have relatively legitimate businesses like logging and agribusiness to cover for their multi-billion dollar dope dealings.
Turf wars raised known murders in Mexico to about 35,000 last year, and that’s not counting the thousands of disappearances that occur every year.
When will the Mexican government see that the only way to end this terrorizing carnage is to legalize the drug trade?
As for the murders of Earth’s defenders around the world, when will we legalize nature?
Sources for this article include BBC News, Time magazine, ABC News, The Guardian and the New York Times.
Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote”. Email: . To read a free excerpt of Lingo’s novel, visit EarthVote.world. email:lingofrank@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2020
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