Defending the Forests: The Strugle of the Campesino Environmentalists of Guerrero (2000)

In Mexico's Guerrero state, villagers are uniting to combat escalating deforestation in their mountains, a problem worsening since 1950. Instead of addressing the issue, the government has responded with repression, military force, and even more deforestation. Following the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Boise Cascade Corporation, a multinational company, logged vast stretches of rainforest. This film chronicles the Organization of Rural Environmentalists (OCE), formed in 1998, and their efforts to slow down the destruction. It also reveals the Mexican government's campaign to dismantle OCE, including arrests and torture of villagers by the military. OCE's leaders were later wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison terms of seven and ten years.