In the Sierra Tarahumara, gangs ‘disappear’ those who resist their lucrative illegal tree-felling operations
ecades ago, the children of Rochéachi village in the Sierra Tarahumara – pine-covered mountains of north-west Mexico’s Chihuahua state – would run through the forest by night. In the rainy season, they would collect fireflies whose glimmering light would flicker through the hollows of the pine trees.
“We had peace. We used to walk and play and be together,” says one mother of three, who asked to remain anonymous, about the forest she once knew. “Now, children can’t go out to play. We don’t know what might happen.”
Since the mid-2010s, criminal groups, including factions of the Sinaloa cartel, have intensified illegal deforestation, seizing control of communal land known as ejidos through intimidation, extortion and murder.
The ecological toll has also been severe. According to the environmental organisation Water and Forests for Life, 9,000 hectares (22,400 acres) of forest in the Sierra Tarahumara have been lost to illegal logging since 2001.
