Until last year, Rodolfo Montiel and his wife Ubalda Cortés were unknown outside the mountain villages of Guerrero state, where they sold clothes and the occasional load of corn. Though Montiel joined hundreds of others two years ago to protest unchecked logging in the region, few outside Guerrero’s isolated Sierra Madre del Sur mountains had ever heard of the movement. But Montiel’s controversial arrest last year by Mexican soldiers and his subsequent conviction on drug and weapons charges have thrust him into the spotlight and generated a growing international campaign for his release. So far, Mexican judges haven’t bought the defense argument that Montiel and his co-defendant Teodoro Cabrera were framed for threatening logging interests. In August, a federal judge in Guerrero found the... [Log in to read more]