Mexican Indigenous leader Filogonio Martínez Merino was killed on October 26, 2022. He was the Ejidal Commissioner of Paso de la Reyna from 2008 to 2011 and had been defending the Río Verde for 15 years against the Río Verde and Paso de la Reina hydroelectric projects. Filogonio Martínez Merino was a municipal agent in 2021, when the five defenders of the Council of Peoples United for the Defence of the Río Verde (Copudever), Fidel Heras Cruz, Noé Robles Cruz, Raymundo Robles Riaño, Gerardo Mendoza Reyes and Jaime Jiménez Ruiz, were murdered. Oaxaca state's prosecutors said the body of Filogonio Martínez didn’t show signs of violence, but the office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights says that Martínez was shot to death.