By Ana María Zabala Gómez
On March 3, 2016, Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores was murdered by armed intruders who broke into her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. Berta had spent the last three years of her life sheltering from the army.
The witness of a violent crisis
Berta Cáceres was born on March 4, 1971 in southwestern Honduras, in the heart of the Lenca indigenous people. Her mother, Austra Bertha, a community activist and midwife, taught her the importance of solidarity and social justice by taking in refugees fleeing the armed conflict in El Salvador. Berta grew up during the violence that ravaged life in Central America in the 1980s.
The “Central American Crisis” began when Ronald Reagan became president of the United States and imposed a ruthless policy of anti-socialist intervention in Central America. The triumph of the 1979 Sandinista Popular Revolution in Nicaragua had overthrown the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza and galvanized struggles for socialism throughout the region. Reagan and his administration funded the “Contras”, a group of terrorist insurgents in Nicaragua, and financed counter-revolutionary violence throughout Central America, escalating armed conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala.
The region was plagued by horrendous massacres, crimes against humanity and human rights violations. Berta Cáceres witnessed this violent crisis and trained to be a student leader. At the age of 19, she co-founded COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) to confront illegal logging and mining that threatened the Lenca people.
The hydroelectric dam threatens the sacred Gualcarque river
Years later, the Río Blanco community turned to COPINH when they saw construction machinery in their territory. They didn’t know what it was about, but it was certain that it would attack the Gualcarque River-a sacred entity in the Lenca cosmovision centered on the earth and balance with all beings. Upon inquiry, COPINH discovered that it was one of 47 hydroelectric concessions and hundreds of mining projects that were made in the context of the 2009 military coup d’état. After the coup (which was the first in the world of the 21st century) almost 30 percent of Honduras’ territory had been earmarked for mining concessions. The dictatorship of coup origin approved 21 of these 47 dams in indigenous territories without prior consultation of the communities as required by law in Honduras. Among these projects was Agua Zarca of the Honduran company DESA and the Chinese company Sinohydro, the largest dam builder in the world.
AguaZarca would build a dam on the Gualcarque River violating the Lenca people’s territorial rights. Berta Cáceres went to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and appealed against the World Bank, which was financing the project. She also organized peaceful protests in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. The government ignored her complaints and misrepresented the notes of a community meeting to the effect that AguaZarca had been approved. However, the community had voted against the dam in an assembly organized by COPINH. In addition, local mayors offered cash to community members in exchange for their signatures on documents approving the project.
Collective resistance in defense of the river
Seeing that the complaints did not stop the advance of the hydroelectric dam, Berta united the Lenca people in a human barricade that blocked the access road to the construction. The community maintained the blockade for more than a year, resisting eviction attempts and violent attacks by militarized security and armed Honduran forces. In one of these attacks, Tomas Garcia, a Lenca leader from Rio Blanco, was killed while peacefully resisting. He was killed by a soldier trained at the U.S. military counterinsurgency center, the School of the Americas. Others were attacked with machetes, discredited, detained and tortured.
The murder of Tomás García generated great outrage, prompting the Chinese company Sinohydro to withdraw from the project at the end of 2013. Later, the World Bank withdrew funding, declaring concerns of human rights violations. The struggle of Berta and the Lenca people succeeded in stopping the AguaZarca project and to this day, the Gualcarque River flows free. What did not stop were the death threats against Berta. That same year, she told Al Jazeera “the army has a list of murders of 18 human rights defenders with my name first.”
To give one’s life in defense of rivers
In 2012, Berta was awarded Germany’s Shalom Prize for those who risk their lives for justice and peace in the world. In 2015, upon receiving the Goldman environmental award she said “the spirits of the girls teach us that to give one’s life in multiple forms for the defense of the rivers is to give one’s life for humanity and the good of this planet.”
Two months after Berta’s death, four men were arrested in connection with her murder. Two of them had documented ties to DESA, the company behind AguaZarca. A U.S.-trained Honduran special forces soldier later confirmed Berta’s words, reporting that “Cáceres’ name had been on a blacklist for several months prior to her murder.”
Tragically, Berta is only the most prominent of a number of activists murdered and assassinated in Honduras in recent years. There, as in so many Latin American countries, there is no security for those fighting for social and environmental justice. Berta was clear about this: “This struggle is not isolated, it is a global problem in this continent. We are not the only ones facing it, but all peoples who are fighting against colonialism and who have a sense of justice and emancipation.”
Today, 6 years after her death, we remember Berta Cáceres for her courage, sacrifice and activism resisting the current forms of colonialism.
“¡Despertemos! ¡Despertemos, humanidad! Ya no hay tiempo. Nuestras conciencias serán sacudidas por el hecho de solo estar contemplando la autodestrucción basada en la depredación capitalista, racista y patriarcal”.
(Let’s wake up! Let’s wake up, humanity! There is no more time. Our consciences will be shaken by the fact that we are only contemplating self-destruction based on capitalist, racist and patriarchal predation)
Berta Cáceres
References
Blitzer, Jonathan. (2016). “Should the U.S. Still Be Sending Military Aid to Honduras?”, The New Yorker. Retrieved on 03/01/2022.
Climate Diplomacy. (2019) “Agua Zarca Dam Conflict in Honduras” Retrieved on 03/01/2022.
DW Español. (2018) El legado de Berta Cáceres [Video]. Youtube.
Goldman Environmental Foundation. (n.d.) “Berta Cáceres 2015 Goldman Prize Recipient South and Central America,” The Goldman Environmental Prize. Retrieved on 03/01/2022.
Molina, Florencia. (2015). “Política Exterior de los EE.UU Durante el Gobierno de Reagan en Centroamérica.” Retrieved on 03/01/2022.
Muñoz, Lina. (n.d.) “Berta Cáceres: La Guardiana del Río”, The University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project (Acceso). Retrieved on 03/01/2022.
Wallace, Arturo. (2019) “1 años del golpe de Estado en Honduras: qué ha cambiado en el país (y qué no) a una década de la salida forzada del presidente Manuel Zelaya”, BBC News Mundo. Retrieved on 03/01/2022.