"I, as supreme chief, have received many calls and (expressions of) support from our indigenous brothers, and if the state and federal governments do not give us justice, all that is needed is a call for them all to come and support me so there will be justice by our own hand," Alejandro Ramírez said on May 23.

He also said he still believed in justice and that was why he was waiting to see what the response to the crime would be.

Aldo Zamora, 21, and his 16- year-old brother, Misael, were doing a study on the impact of illegal logging on the forests of San Juan Atzingo in the State of Mexico on May 15 when they were intercepted by four loggers.

The men attacked the vehicle in which the Zamoras were riding, killing Aldo and wounding Misael, who was able to identify two of the assailants.

There were other witnesses who recognized the suspected killers, but the men remain free.

In response, Greenpeace, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Center for Human Rights and the Red Todos los Derechos para Todos y Todas, along with 30 other civic organizations, have publicly demanded justice in the case.

The victims´ father, Ildefonso Zamora, who is the head of the council that manages communal lands and resources in San Juan Atzingo, said that if action was not taken against the suspects by this Sunday, the community would cut off the flow of water to the neighboring state of Morelos.

Zamora said the Tlahuica movement had nothing against the residents of Morelos, but it did oppose the government and officials in the neighboring state, saying they were corrupt and did nothing to halt illegal logging.

The forests of San Juan Atzingo, which stretch across parts of Lagunas de Zempoala National Park, cover 10,800 hectares (26,666 acres), of which 3,000 hectares (7,407 acres) have been damaged by loggers.

Of this total area, between 250 and 300 hectares (617 and 740 acres) have been completely deforested, Greenpeace forest campaign coordinator Héctor Magallon told EFE.

The environmental activist said the forests held 2 percent of the total biodiversity of the planet and were protected areas where, if reforestation started now, it would take at least 80 years for the land to recover.

Ildefonso Zamora accused Arnulfo Gómez Barron, a political boss from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico for 71 years and remains powerful at the state and local levels in parts of the country, of being "the intellectual author of the murder."

While acknowledging he has no evidence, the elder Zamora said Gómez Barron had been targeting his family for years.

Zamora thanked President Calderón for deploying Army troops last week to protect the forests from loggers and announced that a reforestation project would begin next week that would run through the summer.

In a letter addressed to Calderón and the Supreme Court, Greenpeace and other groups identified the killers of Aldo Zamora as Luis and Alejo Encarnación.

The brothers are well-known loggers in the area and the sons of Feliciano Encarnación, one of chiefs of the illegal logging gangs in the region.