For the second time within a few days, a Mexican environmental activist known as a butterfly protector has been found murdered. The battered body of Raul Hernandez Romero was found in the state of Michoacán on Saturday, the prosecutor said yesterday. His wife had reported him missing five days earlier.
The body of the renowned activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez had been discovered in a fountain in Michoacán shortly before – about two weeks after he was reported missing. The 50-year-old, like Hernandez Romero, had worked to protect the monarch butterfly, a butterfly that travels thousands of kilometers each year from the United States and Canada to spend the winter in the south.
Environmentalists from the region see a connection between Gomez’s death and his violent resistance to illegal deforestation in Michoacan, where the monarch butterflies often seek protection from the cold. The state is the stronghold of a number of powerful criminal gangs that also fight for shares in the lucrative timber trade.
