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Sierra Club and Amnesty International Rally in Los Angeles in Support of Montiel and Cabrera
Coming two days after a Mexican appeals court denied the appeal of Mr. Montiel and Mr. Cabrera, the rally helped to highlight this case in a city with close ties to Mexico. As the two-hour rally was coming to a close, officials from the Mexican Consulate came out to meet with our event organizers and invited us to meet with the Consul General for 20 minutes.
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On a sunny Los Angeles Friday morning, July 20, 2001, the Sierra Club and Amnesty International held a joint rally in front of the Los Angeles Mexican Consulate to highlight the wrongful detention of Mexican environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera. Rodolfo Montiel's wife, Ubalda Cortes, and Nydia Bautista, a spokesperson for Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA), joined the event, which was attended by a number of media outlets and several dozen supporters.
During the meeting, the Consul General first said that President Vicente Fox was a reformer and did not want to interfere with the court process in Mexico. To this, we responded that President Fox had every opportunity to instruct his Attorney General to drop the case against the environmentalists, but failed to do so. This point left the Consul General without a response, except to assure us that our message would be sent to the Mexican government.
During the trip, Alejandro Queral, the Human Rights and the Environment Program Director, and Ubalda Cortes scheduled a number of press interviews, particularly on Spanish-language news services. We thank all of those who helped organize the event and encourage others to host similar events in front of local Mexican Consulates, a list of which can be found