Latin America is among the world’s most dangerous regions in which to campaign for environmental and land rights, and two recent murders suggest that this state of affairs won’t change anytime soon. On Dec. 8, members of a paramilitary group gunned down Hernán Bedoya, a campaigner against expansion of agro-industrial plantain and African palm plantations in territory held collectively by Afro-Colombians in Colombia’s far western department of Chocó. Then on Jan. 16, the body of a Mexican indigenous organizer against illegal logging, Guadalupe Campanur Tapia, was found in her home state of Michoacán—the victim, authorities say, of strangulation. Campanur’s body was discovered near the town of Irapio by residents of that community, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Cherán, where she lived... [Log in to read more]