“They took my father from us, they took everything from us”: activist José Baldenegro was murdered in Chihuahua

The activist José Trinidad Baldenegro López, in Chihuahua.RR.SS

The violence against the defenders of the forests has taken as its epicenter the town of Coloradas de la Virgen, Chihuahua.

In this community, made up of a handful of ranches hidden in the Sierra Madre Occidental, the activist José Trinidad Baldenegro, 51, was murdered last Monday.

The brother of the murdered activist Isidro Baldenegro in 2017 was shot at as he left his house on his way to the corn and bean fields of that town located in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo.

Moments later his family was intimidated and forced to go out with what he was wearing from home so as not to suffer the same fate.

"They took everything from us, they took my father from us and they took everything else from us," laments Yurisa Baldenegro, the activist's daughter.

The 25-year-old, the last person to see the social fighter alive, tells EL PAÍS that her father left for work that morning before eight in the morning.

Not even ten minutes had passed when the first shots were heard.

She and an 11-year-old nephew went out to see what was happening, but there was nothing to be seen between the mountains.

Moments later, a group of eight armed men arrived at her home to threaten her.

At that time, she was taking care of her two children, five months and three years old, and a nephew, 11 years old.

“They started kicking the door and demanding that I open the door and get out, then they asked me over and over again if there were other people inside.

They told us 'get out of here because more people are going to come and they are going to kill you and burn you down with everything and your house”, says the 25-year-old girl.

The woman was stripped of the few pesos she was carrying.

She was only able to carry a change of clothes for the baby.

She grabbed the little ones and the four of them ran out of the house, terrified, still not knowing what had happened to her father.

They left behind their heritage, the grocery store, and the corn and bean lands.

They walked for hours until they found a safe place.

Hours later, at night, a huge cloud presaged a tragic discovery: his house and his business engulfed in flames and the lifeless body of his father next to him.

For Yurisa, one of the activist's four children, this attack is a direct affront against her father and the work he did to support the Las Coloradas community.

“For not wanting to leave the ranch and for helping people, we brought clothes for the area there, we had been giving clothes away, we also had errands, really many people visited us,” she says.

At no time, she adds, did her father, better known as

, tell her about any recent death threat.

Gunshot death has marked the Baldenegro family for decades.

In 1986, Mr. Julio Baldenegro, father of Isidro and José, died after being shot at.

Although his death was never clarified, the versions of the time suggested that his defense against loggers was behind his murder.

At that time, Isidro, 20, took up the cause and founded Fuerza Ambiental, a group dedicated to combating clandestine logging in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua.

His strong defense of the Tarahumara mountains earned Isidro the 2005 Goldman Prize, known as the Nobel Prize for Ecology.

However, his fight also earned him numerous enemies, one of them took his life with six shots, right in the Coloradas de la Virgen community.

His brother, José, took over his work as defender of these lands after Isidro's death and just five years later has met the same fate as his brother.

Now, with a lump in her throat, Yurisa admits that her father was very saddened by the death of her brother.

The Alianza Sierra Madre association has condemned in writing the murder of José Trinidad Baldenegro and points out that for years the inhabitants of the region have been displaced by members of crime, who intimidate them and force them to leave their lands.

"The climate of insecurity in Coloradas is permanent, there are displaced families and there is an absence of the State," accuses the group that has worked in the area since 2007. At the end of last year the

Yurisa agrees that Las Coloradas has gradually become a ghost town due to the presence of crime, they were one of the few who had refused to leave the place: “Who is not going to be afraid that they will continue to be killed? to the family”, he concludes.

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