From the May-June 2019 issue of News and Letters

by Gerry Emmett

Thousands marched in Mexico City, Feb. 22, to protest the murder of journalist and environmental activist Samir Flores Soberanes. He had been shot twice, execution style, on Feb. 20, at his home.

Samir Flores Soberanes, Jan. 26, 2018, at a radio station in Morelos, Mexico. Photo: Wikimedia.

Flores, a member of the Front of Peoples in Defense of the Earth and Water, was a vocal opponent of the Proyecto Integral Morelos, a project for development of a natural gas pipeline and thermoelectric plants in Morelos state. The project would contaminate the water supply of Indigenous people.

The gas pipeline would pass through more than 60 rural communities as well as over the slope of Popocatepetl, an active volcano. 

Flores had challenged Mexican government representatives at a public meeting about the plan just days before he was murdered.