Protesters carried their pictures outside the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. Web sites compare them to Brazilian environmentalist martyr Chico Mendes. But the two farmers who sit in a prison cell amid the wild mountains of Mexico's central Pacific coast are surprised by all the attention. Before, when somebody opposed the logging, they would just send hired gunmen to kill them. Eventually, most of the group's leaders were forced to flee the mountain village of El Mameyal, and Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, a member of the group, were arrested.
Local officials tell a different story.
One former protester in El Mameyal conceded many residents grow marijuana as a cash crop. There were things going on there in their culture and society that we just didn't understand. The Association of Ecologist Peasants of the Sierra de Petatlan began its logging blockades in February 1998. Montiel and Cabrera were arrested in the village of Pizotla last May 2. Soldiers killed one man.