Footage of the Mexican activist Homero Gómez González in the Netflix documentary The Guardian of the Monarchs depicts his arms spread wide, monarch butterflies fluttering and landing on him like a favorite tree. His son often filmed him educating the world and welcoming the visitors to El Rosario, the sanctuary where these "brides of the sun" would rest after their arduous North American migration.
Gómez was president of El Rosario, the largest sanctuary in the state of Michoacán, where millions of monarchs seek safe harbor. Their massive weight hugging the oyamel trees is enough to break boughs, and swaths of forest are painted orange thanks to the color of their wings. This natural wonder attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, providing a source of tourism income to an impoverished region. Gómez's untimely and mysterious death in January 2020 highlighted the threats to monarch butterflies, the forests they call home, and the people who defend them. These losses affect the health of the planet and all people.
The Guardian of the Monarchs uncovers the suspicious details around Gómez's death—tragically, one of countless in one of the world's most dangerous countries for environmental activists, where hundreds receive death threats. Mexico is equally dangerous for journalists, undermining and jeopardizing the reporting of violence nationwide.
According to a 2021 Global Witness report, 1,733 environmental defenders were killed in the past decade, the highest documented number in Mexico; more than half involved Indigenous peoples. Murders, abductions, extortion, threats to families, and forced disappearances (often at the hands of corrupt police) reverberate within communities and have lasting public health consequences.
Human health suffers in myriad ways with the absence of trees
Michoacán's resource-rich forests fall along illicit drug trafficking routes and are highly contested among criminal groups, which also seek economic gain through the multibillion-dollar harvest and trade of avocados. Michoacán is a top exporter to the United States.
Gómez urged the Mexican government and the world to stop the rampant illegal logging that stripped his beloved butterflies of their place of respite, making him a target of organized crime. Threats to his family even thwarted his mayoral pursuit. Loved ones recalled his grim understanding of a "serious problem he wouldn't be able to solve." The monarch butterfly population has recently decreased by 22% as deforested land permanently changes their delicate habitat.
Mexicans live two-thirds of their lives at risk of violence—up from less than a third in 2005—according to a 2016 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. This perceived risk adversely affects the psychosocial well-being of a country and stagnates longevity. Regarding her husband's disappearance and death, Gómez's wife pleads to viewers, "What message are we sending if there is no accountability?" The documentary explains that Gómez noted a 70% reduction in visitors to El Rosario as criminal groups violently seized control, eroding perceived physical safety and economic security along with the forests.
Human health suffers in myriad ways with the absence of trees. In the case of Michoacán, where forests are burned by arson and converted into avocado plantations, water is stolen from rivers and streams to support the monoculture of the thirsty fruit trees, according to experts featured in the documentary. These practices aggravate water stress and drought in a country where more than half of the population lacks access to a safe water source. By 2050, most Mexicans will be living with water scarcity. In an ever dryer and hotter Mexico, this combination is already deadly, leading to 125 heat-related deaths in May and June alone. Thousands of cases of heat stroke and power outages have already been reported this year.
Deforestation in Mexico can cause drought throughout the tropics, the Americas, and beyond. Forests stabilize and cool local and global climates, and when people convert these areas into cropland, average daytime high temperatures can increase by more than 7 degrees Celsius.
Forests function as a protective barrier for humans; as they disappear, people become more vulnerable to extreme weather, pathogens, and pollutants. As the globe continues to reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, preserving forests can be a tool in preventing novel zoonoses—infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans.
According to the 2021 Harvard Global Health Institute report on preventing pandemics, land-use change and specifically deforestation—as in the creation of Michoacán's avocado plantations—is a primary cause of viral zoonotic spillover. Agricultural drivers cause more than half of all such infectious diseases in humans. The report also states that the animals that survive and thrive during deforestation are more likely to withstand human activity and infect livestock and humans.
Another study has quantified how deforestation in Mexico influences the health of its tiniest human residents and can compromise lifespans. The results show that deforestation leads to reduced birth weight and Apgar scores in babies, contributing to worse health and economic outcomes later in life. This trend is likely due to warmer temperatures and poorer air quality in deforested areas affecting mothers during the gestational period. Even in the womb, no human is safe from the effects of a neglected environment.
Forests function as a protective barrier for humans; as they disappear, people become more vulnerable to extreme weather, pathogens, and pollutants
With new presidencies taking root in Mexico and the United States, including the former's election of climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum, the opportunity to mitigate damage to planetary health is now. Sheinbaum inherits one of the world's lowest-performing countries in climate change policy. After security threats to U.S. Department of Agriculture employees in Michoacán in June, the two nations will continue to confront the sobering shared effects of ever-increasing violence and illegal deforestation.
Restoring power to Indigenous activists in Mexico, the original forest custodians, and incorporating them in decision-making will be integral in any conservation and land management efforts. In The Guardian, Gómez's comrades pledged to continue his legacy of protecting the forests.
Consumers can become more aware of the practices and systems that produce what they eat, and demand transparency and accountability from legislators, joining the fierce tradition of land protectors such as Homero Gómez González.
