One of Mexico's most iconic species,
the Monarch butterfly, has just lost
perhaps its greatest advocate.
If we are to analyze Homero's death,
he was saying things that perhaps
other people didn't want to listen to
and he was also dealing with people
linked to organized crime.
Homero Gomez, the manager of the sanctuary
was found dead after police say
he was beaten and thrown down a well.
His family says he had recently received threats
warning him to stop the campaign against illegal logging.
Because the police investigation has been so opaque
and because people are so fearful to speak
and tell journalists the truth
because of the kind of society of fear,
which has been created around speaking truth to power,
then it is likely that we might not ever know
why Homero ended up in an irrigation ditch
in late January, 2020.
The Monarch butterfly migration is one
of the most impressive natural phenomena in the world.
Every year, swarms of black and orange-colored butterflies,
about the size of a small kind of saucer
travel 2,500 miles from North America, Canada area,
all the way to the forest of Central Mexico.
The Rosario sanctuary where the story sort of takes place
is in the state of Michoacán.
It's a protected area with tremendous amounts
of woodland, mainly pine.
It's a very beautiful and very sort of singular area
within Mexico, geographically and biologically speaking.
Homero was a local to the area
to La Huella Rosario, which is in Michoacán.
He grew up with the Monarchs
and actually his grandparents often told him
that the Monarchs were effectively
the spirits of his ancestors.
When you've got an area like a biosphere,
which is obviously a very fertile place
with a lots of natural resources,
you have all sorts of conflicts.
So you have people that want to use
the trees for logging,
you know, both legal and illegal.
When there's so much money at stake
and there's all this land which could be used,
then yes, there are conflicting interests.
Homero and his family worked in the timber industry
and the local environment,
which they inhabited was their biggest economic resource.
So when the biosphere was formed
or certain parts of it were protected over the years,
Homero wasn't necessarily in favor.
However, as the international community came in
and the scientists were sort of observing
this natural phenomenon,
which is an incredible thing to witness,
I think he began to see the butterfly
as something extremely important
and a way that could not only preserve the way of life
that he had become used to and the community,
but was something that was
of national, international importance.
He then became one of their biggest advocates
and became an extremely important figure,
both nationally and internationally
for the protection and the diffusion of the story
of the Monarch butterfly in Mexico and abroad.
He was a larger than life person.
There's a Spanish expression called, Don de jentes,
which is like a person who really has,
you know, a way with people.
You know, he could, he was charismatic, charming,
and he was the type of person that
if they went to a local event,
all the local politicians would know him.
He really was an advocate for the butterfly
and worked extremely hard to tell their story.
He wouldn't take no for an answer.
I think he rubbed up a lot of local politicians,
the wrong way, as well as the local scientists.
He had friends in powerful places as well.
And I think that was just the nature of his job.
When one wants to rise to become a public figure in Mexico,
and one is willing to criticize people openly
or even not criticize,
but sort of fight against certain aims,
then he or she puts himself at risk.
The south west state of Michoacán
is where Mexico's drug war began.
Michoacán state where the story took place
is probably one of the most dangerous states
in Mexico, at present.
There's lots of drug routes.
It's full of natural resources.
And also it is the epicenter for the avocado trade.
What's happening now in Mexico is very interesting.
Cartels are moving towards
almost legitimizing themselves in a way.
So they're moving into ordinary businesses
and they're moving into things like avocado trade,
which is an incredibly lucrative trade
worth about $2.4 billion annually
and 80% of the avocados that are imported,
in the United States, come from Mexico itself.
The cartels will come in and use physical violence,
wipe farmers off their land,
take over the land and therefore
infiltrate themselves into the trade.
There's almost like a civil war
between the drug cartels in Michoacan state.
So everyone's fighting for the drug smuggling routes,
the avocado trade, the natural resources.
And what happens when you exist in a state
in which the authorities are corruptible
is very easy to infiltrate these areas.
And you've seen that a lot in the Western part of the state
where the tactics have almost become medieval.
People hanging from bridges, massacres,
kidnappings of big avocado farmers,
just because there's so much money at play.
Where the sanctuary itself is situated
is further to the east.
So it's near the state of Mexico
closer to Mexico City itself.
And that area isn't too effected by organized crime.
but even so they're kind of the shadow,
the looming nature of organized crime
means that people are always wary of talking to outsiders.
Homero's wife, Rebecca, lived in a constant state of fear
because she knew where she lived.
And she said that she would often tell him,
you know, please be careful.
And he said, "No, no, no.
These people are my friends."
Around midday on January 13th,
Homero Gomez attended what would be his last meeting.
It was an ordinary meeting.
It was to take place in the butterfly sanctuary at Rosario.
The only thing that people really remember
from that meeting in fact is that
Homero himself was receiving constant phone calls.
His phone was buzzing constantly, constantly, constantly.
According to some of the people who attended that meeting,
he eventually picked up the phone
and the other person on the other end of the line
was trying to convince him to go to a local event
in a town called El Soldado,
where there was like a local kind of fair.
I think there was horse racing, drinking, eating,
a local kind of party where
a lot of the local politicians would be,
activists, you know, people that Homero
normally kind of hung around with, so to speak.
And he arrived according to his family
and to other people that attended the event
in El Soldado around about 4 or 5 pm.
There he met with local politicians
and they described him as being kind of normal,
his normal charismatic self.
And then it was around about 7, 8 pm,
that one of the politicians that I spoke to
who was at the event,
saw him for the last time.
Obviously, people became very worried
because in Mexico, if someone goes missing,
then it's obviously a bad sign.
And that's when his wife, particularly,
began to worry because she knew very well
the types of people that Homero hung around with,
who he dealt with.
The next day, they reported it to the police.
The police said that they would take it very seriously
because he was a public person.
Within, you know, a matter of days,
search parties were formed
in which the family took part in,
the national police, the local police.
I think even the federal police
actually, helped in these searches.
The days went on and the search party searched,
kept searching, kept searching, kept searching,
and nothing was found.
That was until the 29th of January,
when a local shepherd found
the body of Homero Gomez
in an irrigation ditch,
which was about 150 meters
from where the local fair had been taking place.
One of the search brigades had searched that area
about a week before and they'd found absolutely nothing.
Homero's son told me that people had even thrown
stones down into the irrigation ditch
to check to see if there was anything there.
And while the police kind of kept quiet about this,
that led a lot of people to suspect
that the body had been put there, after the fact.
When the police came out
and offered their official statement on the case,
they said that the body had received blunt head trauma
and had been strangled or asphyxiated.
However, they weren't willing to say, definitively,
that this had been a murder.
It could have been an accident.
While the family weren't obviously,
willing to believe this,
Homero Jr. himself told me on many occasions
that he thinks his father was murdered.
I regularly check in with the family
and they say that there has been no update in the case
that no one really has been in contact with them.
That the police seemingly have sort of forgotten.
Being an activist is a very dangerous thing to be.
Quite a few activists in the last few years
have been murdered for the message
that they're trying to spread in the same way
that journalists there are often murdered
for trying to do their job
or having become involved in corruption.
And I think what that says about the state
is that if you want to speak out against power
or illicit activities,
it's one of the most dangerous things that you can do.
Because the police investigation has been so opaque
and because people are so fearful to speak
and tell journalists the truth,
then it is likely that we might not ever know
why he ended up in an irrigation ditch
in late January, 2020.