Funeral of monarch butterfly activist in Mexico

Hundreds of farmers and agricultural workers attended the funeral of activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez on Friday, following his death earlier this week.

Gonzalez was a staunch defender of the Monarch butterflies native to the Michoacan region of Mexico.

The butterflies annual migration, threatened by logging, avocado farming, climate and environmental change, has also represented a ray of hope and income for the impoverished, pine-clad mountains of Michoacan state.

Gomez Gonzalez's body was found this week at the bottom of a holding pond with a head wound.

He had previously campaigned to stop logging, reforest and bring tourists to the butterflies wintering grounds.

In an area where crime, construction work and wood cutting provide some of the only sources of income, Gomez Gonzalez provided a way out, ensuring income for the communal farmers who actually own the land in the butterfly reserve ls.

"Thanks to him, many of you had work, or more work, " said Rev. Saul Saucedo in the funeral homily. "Those who sell food in the reserve, those who sell their handicrafts, those who bring their horses to carry visitors into the reserve."

It may sound like low wage jobs, but it is that tenuous economy that keeps the pine and for trees from being cut down and preserves the butterflies marvelous migration from the United States and Canada each year.

It keeps the family of communal farmer Raul Garcia Gonzalez, 68, fed.

"When there's no work here, I go out and look for day labor jobs, said the string, weather beaten García Gonzalez.

Like many of the communal land owners, he fears that Gomez Gonzalez death could add to the already bad reputation that drug cartel violence has given to the western state of Michoacan.

"We hope that all the people who come to the reserve will feel safe, because what happened to him was an accident, he said.

But his death was not so clear: autopsy results showed Gomez Gonzalez drowned in the holding pond after leaving a party on 13 January, but they also showed he had a head wound.

There would have been no shortage of people for whom life would have been easier if Gomez Gonzalez wasn't around.

García recalls how, in 2019, Gomez Gonzalez led hundreds of communal farmers in a demonstration in the nearby town of Angangueo, to demand the town pay for water the town receives from the mountain streams that are born on their properties.

They never got an answer.

While known as a friendly, big-hearted man who liked to pose for photographs surrounded by the swarms of black and orange butterflies that roost in trees here each winter, Gómez Gonzàlez was a leader and a community activist- a dangerous profession in Mexico, where scores are killed each year.

His son, Homero Gomez Valencia, 19, said his father could lead angry, resolute demonstrations, like the time he led farmers in taking over the state capitol building in the city of Morelia to demand development aid.

Dolores Zamudio a Handicraft Maker from Angangeo, a town close to Ocampo Michoacan, had a 25 year collaboration with Homero Gomez, although she is grateful for the prosperity Homero Gomez actions brought particularly to artisan in the Sanctuary, was keen to request the news of his autopsy not made public: "I think this news shouldn't become public. Somehow he was very well known in several places. And… Because it will affect us. It could affect us a lot. Look I was recounting of how many artisans, just saying I caculate around 300 artisans"

(Image Credit: Pixabay)