On March 11, the Associated Press reported: “An Indigenous rights activist who campaigned against illegal logging has been killed in northern Mexico, prosecutors say, five years after his activist brother also was slain.”

“Prosecutors in the border state of Chihuahua state said Friday [March 11] that Jose Trinidad Baldenegro was attacked when he left his house in the settlement of Colorada de la Virgen to go to work on Monday [March 7].”

“Baldenegro, 47, was part of the Tarahumara people who for years have fought illegal logging and mining in their territory, where drug gangs often cut down forest to plant narcotics [including poppy and marijuana crops].”

The article adds: “His brother, Isidro Baldenegro, whose campaign against illegal logging won him a Goldman Prize for environmental activism in 2005, was murdered in [January] 2017. A year later [on October 24, 2018], Julián Carrillo, another Tarahumara leader, was slain. Four of Carrillo’s relatives had been killed.”

El Pais further reports that José’s 25-year-old daughter Yurisa says the family was then forced from their home after José was killed and that the house was then burned down.

“For Yurisa, one of the activist’s four children, this attack is a direct affront to her father and the work he did to support the Coloradas community.”

The El Pais article notes: “The association Alianza Sierra Madre has condemned in writing the murder of José Trinidad Baldenegro and points out that for years the inhabitants of the region have been displaced by members of the crime, who intimidate them and force them to leave their lands.”

And El Heraldo reports: “The community of Coloradas de la Virgen, Baborigame section of the Guadalupe y Calvo municipality, Chihuahua, Mexico has a long history of violence, harassment and threats against their traditional authorities for the defense of their forest.”

It further notes: “The community is located in the south of the state of Chihuahua and the Sierra Tarahumara, being a territory of more than 49 thousand 500 hectares shared by Indigenous Rarámuri people and, to a lesser extent, Odami.”

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has accompanied the Sierra Madre Alliance (ASMAC) since 2018.

José’s brother Isidro, who fought for the preservation of the forests of the Sierra Tarahumara in the face of illegal logging and mining, was murdered on January 15, 2017.

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