Authorities in Mexico’s Jalisco state announced on Sunday that the body of anti-mining activist Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz had been discovered. The Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office reported that De la Cruz was killed in an area between the states of Jalisco and Colima. The activist’s body displayed a gunshot wound.
Higinio Trinidad de la Cruz was a vocal environmental defender belonging to the indigenous community of Ayotitlán in Jalisco and a member of Jalisco’s State Indigenous Council. He took an active part in exposing land dispossession caused by mining and illegal logging.
The NGO Global Witness said that 54 out of 200 environmental defender homicides recorded globally in 2021 occurred in Mexico.
In addition, an annual report by the free speech group Article 19 indicated that Mexican journalists faced record levels of harassment, intimidation and violence in 2022. Journalists in Mexico face pervasive threats, evidenced by an annual report recording 696 crimes against Mexican journalists in 2022. Article 19 says state actors and security forces were responsible for over 40 percent of the aggressions, with more than half related to reporters investigating corruption, reflecting a dangerous environment marked by harassment, intimidation, and violence.
