social activists rewarded with Goldman Environmental Prize

CNN.com - Activist priest wins environmental prize - Apr 18, 2005: "...Tamayo is one of two prize winners chosen from Latin America this year. The other is Isidro Baldenegro Lopez, a Mexican farmer who fought for land rights and forest protection in the Tarahumara mountains of northern Chihuahua state, home to some of Mexico's last old-growth forests.

Baldenegro spent more than a year in jail on charges he and a fellow activist were carrying assault rifles and marijuana seeds.

The plight of the two Tarahumara Indians became an international cause celebre in environmental circles, with Amnesty International declaring the two men 'prisoners of conscience.'

Baldenegro had long maintained his innocence, but the case came to a head last May when an investigation by Chihuahua state prosecutors concluded that four state policemen had abused their authority in arresting him.

The son of an Indian rights activist killed in the 1980s, Baldenegro organized a group of neighbors -- mainly women -- to block logging roads to prevent non-Indian loggers from cutting old-growth pine. [...]"