This Day in History: 2001-07-19

Activists jailed — Two Mexican “campesino-environmentalists” are convicted on trumped up drug charges on this day in 2001. Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were fighting illegal logging in Mexico, where, between 1994 and 2000, more than a third of the 560,000 acres of forest in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero state was cut down, according to a satellite imaging survey. Both were freed after international protests and exonerated by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights. For more see the year 2000 Goldman Prize citation.