Saving trees

In a world where it seems we're surrounded by nothing but viciousness, cowardliness, and venality, it is a gasping shock to come across something like this.

ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico, July 12 - Felipe Arreaga, a farmer-turned-environmentalist, has been sitting in a cramped, squalid jail here for eight months, charged with murdering the son of his nemesis, a wealthy landowner who brokered the sale of much of the lumber in the nearby mountains.

Mr. Arreaga, the 56-year-old leader of a peasant antilogging organization, said he believed his real crime was trying to stop the destruction of the forests in his state and stepping on the toes of a local political boss, Bernardo Bautista Valle.

Mr. Arreaga and his lawyers argue that he has an airtight alibi. He was a three-day drive away from the scene of the 1998 attack on Mr. Bautista's sons and being treated for a bad back. The doctor who treated him has told prosecutors that Mr. Arreaga could hardly move, much less shoot a gun.

"I was accused of a crime I didn't commit," said Mr. Arreaga from behind a chain-link barrier in the jail's concrete visiting room. "It's fabricated. If they are going to condemn me, they should condemn me for what I have done."

Mr. Arreaga doesn't expect to be released, nor does he care since he expects to be murdered if he leaves jail. I don't know whether to be inspired by the man's courage and valor, or saddened by what his courage and valor have caused him.