Lawyer Jailed for Opposing Tres Santos Resort’s U.S. Developer in Baja Sur Rodrigo Soberanes - Mongabay
go to original July 22, 2017

For Moreno Rutowski, the real reason for his arrest is that he has stated five popular accusations that oppose the real estate project called Tres Santos (BajaSurTV)

Every morning at dawn, the fishermen of Punta Lobos take their boats out to the high seas to find shrimp boats and give bread, cookies, and soft drinks to the crew members in exchange for shrimp heads to use as bait.

They do this out of necessity. Deep down, they surely would prefer not to have to depend on this. The boats usually arrive at the beaches of Todos Santos, in Baja California Sur, from the neighboring state of Sinaloa. The fishermen practice trawling — taking in tons of shrimp and young sole, a species that artisanal fishermen work with and protect.

The shrimp heads are for the fishermen, and the small sole go back into the sea dead. For decades, the members of the Punta Lobos Fishing Cooperative have seen tons of dead fish thrown overboard and have spoken out about it with anger as they take their afternoon breaks.

But nowadays, this is the least of their problems: in 2013, the Mexican government approved the construction of a hotel on Punta Lobos Beach and the lawyer who defended the members of the cooperative, John Moreno Rutowski, has been incarcerated in the height of a full legal battle against the company developing the project.

In 2004, very far from there in Colorado (United States), real estate agency Black Creek Group developed a multimillion-dollar real estate business partnership. They named it “Limited Partnership Interests in Black Creek Mexico Residential Fund LP” to make investments “principally in Mexico,” as they stated to the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, the agency responsible for making sure that laws are followed in the stock exchange.

It was the beginning of a story that would turn out to be similar to that of the fishermen, and is now changing the life and landscape within the calm town of Todos Santos. Todos Santos is a getaway for seamen, businesspeople, and American tourists located right in front of a whale sanctuary and beaches perfect for surfing. But the town also has a history of legal battles, displacements, protests, violent evictions, arrests, imprisonments, and loss of natural resources.

The beach that has long been the workplace of the fishermen — they figure that their parents and grandparents have worked there for the past 100 years — as well as the swamp and wetlands around it are being replaced by Hotel San Cristóbal. The hotel is part of the tourism development by Black Creek Group, whose motto is “the epicenter of well-being.” The company plans to build 4,472 houses in 25 years (Todos Santos has fewer than 6,500 inhabitants), a tank to store 400,000 liters of water, and two additional boutique hotels like the one being built on Punta Lobos Beach.

“After a life of working here, this mega-development group ‘Tres Santos’ appeared overnight saying that now they own everything, and the government tells us that now we have nothing,” lamented Rosario Salvatierra, one of the most experienced fishers in Punta Lobos.

The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) of Mexico approved the Tres Santos project in 2013. But the Punta Lobos Fishing Cooperative decided to fight for their right to fish with the help of lawyer John Moreno Rutowski.

“We told him ‘look, John, we want you to help us,’ and he said ‘sure, I’ll get involved,’” remembers Salvatierra.

Moreno Rutowski — who has dual Mexican and American citizenship — wants the cooperative to file a lawsuit for the delimitation of the private property, and for the federal land to be established in accordance with its historical rights. This would give the members of the cooperative the possibility of continuing to fish there.

But on May 19, after more than two years of legal disputes, Moreno Rutowski was arrested in Todos Santos upon leaving his office. The lawyer was jailed in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur. He was accused of “dispossession” in a case filed in 2014 in which he defended Joella Corado, a young woman who also has dual citizenship, who wanted to recover a piece of land that her parents had inherited in Todos Santos.

The case was closed “as non-execution of criminal action,” which means that the Public Ministry determined that in that moment, there was insufficient evidence to continue with the accusation filed by the other party, the person who was said to own Joella Corado’s family property. But three years later, for no apparent reason, the case was revived, according to Moreno Rutowski’s lawyer, Arturo Rubio.

The fishermen, who don’t have much experience with legal disputes against companies as big as Black Creek, have put their faith in Moreno Rutowski, who — in addition to his legal knowledge — has an ideology that aligns with the fishermen and others who work with the ocean.

Translated by Sarah Engel

Read the rest at Mongabay | Español

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!