Remembering Berta Cáceres, Assassinated Honduras Indigenous & Environmental Leader
Remembering Berta Cáceres, Assassinated Honduras Indigenous & Environmental Leader
March 04, 2016
Guests
Silvio Carrillo
nephew of Berta Cáceres. He is also freelance video journalist in San Francisco.
Beverly Bell
longtime friend and colleague of Berta Cáceres. She’s currently the coordinator of Other Worlds, a social and economic justice organization. Bell is also an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres has been assassinated in her home in Honduras. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras. In 1993, she co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH. For years, the group faced death threats and repression as they stood up to mining and dam projects that threatened to destroy their community. Last year, Cáceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s leading environmental award. We hear Cáceres in her own words and speak to her nephew, Silvio Carrillo, and her longtime friend Beverly Bell.
- video at link -
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres has been assassinated in her home. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras. In 1993, she co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH. For years, the group faced death threats and repression as they stood up to mining and dam projects that threatened to destroy their community. Last year, Cáceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s leading environmental award. In a video released by the foundation, she described how she helped organize indigenous communities in Honduras to resist a hydro dam on the Gualcarque River because it could destroy their water supply.
BERTA CÁCERES: (translated) In more than 150 indigenous assemblies, our community decided that it did not want that hydroelectric dam.
ROBERT REDFORD: Berta filed complaints with the Honduran government and organized peaceful protests in the nation’s capital. As her visibility increased, she became a target for the government.
BERTA CÁCERES: (translated) We denounced this dam and were threatened with smear campaigns, imprisonment and murder. But nobody heard our voices—until we set up a roadblock to take back control of our territory.
ROBERT REDFORD: For well over a year, the Lenca maintained the roadblock, with standing harassment and violent attacks. Tragically, Río Blanco community leader Tomás García was shot by the Honduran military at a peaceful protest.
BERTA CÁCERES: (translated) Seeing these men murdered, the community became indignant, forcing a confrontation. The company was told that they had to get out.
PROTESTER: (translated) We have 500 people here, and we are Río Blanco comrades. We will defend Río Blanco, and we will not let them pass.
BERTA CÁCERES: (translated) And that is how Sinohydro left Río Blanco. But it cost us in blood.
AMY GOODMAN: That was a profile of 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres. It was narrated by Robert Redford. In accepting the award, Cáceres vowed to continue standing up for the rights for Mother Earth and indigenous communities.
BERTA CÁCERES: (translated) In our worldviews, we are beings who come from the Earth, from the water and from corn. The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet. COPINH, walking alongside people struggling for their emancipation, validates this commitment to continue protecting our waters, the rivers, our shared resources and nature in general, as well as our rights as a people.
Let us wake up! Let us wake up, humankind! We’re out of time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction. The Gualcarque River has called upon us, as have other gravely threatened rivers. We must answer their call. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of this Earth and of its spirits.
I dedicate this award to all the rebels out there, to my mother, to the Lenca people, to Río Blanco and to the martyrs who gave their lives in the struggle to defend our natural resources. Thank you very much.
More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/4/remembering_berta_caceres_assassinated_honduras_indigenous