By Joshua Partlow July 6 at 6:29 PM
CHAJUL, Mexico — The esteemed biologist awoke in her jungle dorm to face a midnight apparition from an almost forgotten past.
Three men had traveled by boat up the murky Lacandon River, carrying guns and wearing the black balaclavas made famous two decades ago in a peasant rebellion born in this same rain forest. They broke through the mosquito screen into a sitting room hung with posters of dolphins and scarlet macaws. Shining a flashlight in her face, they informed Julia Carabias, a former Mexican environment secretary, that they belonged to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and were taking her to meet their leader.
Three of her students were also sleeping at the solar-powered research station inside the Montes Azules biological reserve. Forced to the floor at gunpoint, they listened as Carabias was dragged off.
"We could hear her screams," one recalled.
The kidnapping that April night, now thought to be the work of men impersonating the Zapatistas, escalated a long-running conflict over who has the right to the fog-draped forests in this far-off corner of Mexico: the biologists who track jaguars and tapirs under the green canopy, or the indigenous tribespeople who want more authority over land they can own but not use.
Biologist Valeria Towns climbs up a ceiba tree in the jungle in order to check the canopy cameras for new photographs. (Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post)
Land struggles have a storied history in Mexico. They were at the heart of the country's biggest political upheavals, dating to its decade-long revolution at the turn of the 20th century. During the 1994 Zapatista uprising here in Chiapas, the masked Mayan farmers who seized towns across the state demanded respect, an alternative to NAFTA-era global capitalism and the right to live by their own rules on their own land. The latest jungle conflict is a test for the Mexican government — one that is being replicated in other vanishing ecosystems across the country — over whether it is committed to conserving its protected areas or will let the pressures of development prevail.
