Ildefonso Zamora

Ildefonso Zamora Baldomero (23 January 1961 – 5 July 2020) was a Mexican human rights activist. He was known for his defence of the ancestral lands and forests of the Matlatzinca people from logging, for which he was arrested and imprisoned.

Personal life Zamora was born on 23 January 1961 in San Juan Atzingo, Ocuilan, State of Mexico, and grew up at the foot of Zempoala, in a Matlatzinca family. As an adult, he was an active member of Ocuilan civil society, including serving as the president of the municipality's parents association, and as a steward, commander, and municipal delegate. Between 2000 and 2011, Zamora was the president of the communal land of San Juan Atzingo; in 2015 he was elected as the Ocuilan councillor for tourism and the environment.

Activism Zamora was a defender of the Lagunas de Zempoala National Park, a mountain and forest that provides three-quarters of Mexico City's water supply. Increasing human habitation on the mountain's slopes led to high rates of logging; in 1998, Zamora filed his first criminal complaint about the impact of illegal logging on the local area. Zamora went on to file numerous further complaints in which he denounced corruption within local authorities, and detailed his attempts to protect species native to the forest. Zamora's sons, Aldo and Misael, joined their father in his activism; the three became activists for Greenpeace Mexico, and carried out a public campaign against illegal logging by displaying a large "SOS" on the mountainside. On 15 May 2007, Aldo was killed during an ambush by loggers in Santa Lucía, Ocuilan; Misael was injured and subsequently arrested and tried on charges of illegal logging, for which he pleaded not guilty. Two of Aldo's killers, Fernando Jacinto Medina and Silvestre Jacinto Medina, were arrested in Ocuilan on 1 August 2007; two other assailants, Luis Encarnación and Alejo Encarnación, remained at large. The arrest was condemned by human rights organisations such as the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Greenpeace and Amnesty International as being arbitrary and in retaliation for his environmental activism. Luis Tapia Olivares from the praised Zamora as a "defender of the forests", and stated that his impact could only be measured in "millions of trees".