Remembering the Heroism of Activist Berta Cceres Four Years After Her Assassination: an Interview W
MARCH 2, 2020
Remembering the Heroism of Activist Berta Cáceres Four Years After Her Assassination: an Interview With Her Daughter
by VIJAY PRASHAD
On July 15, 2013, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), led by Berta Cáceres Flores, went to protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. This river, in western Honduras, is considered to be sacred by the indigenous Lenca community. No one from the company that wanted to build the dam had talked to the Lenca. The company—Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA)—was owned and controlled by one of the most powerful families in Honduras, the Atala Zablahs. The Honduran Army, at the behest of DESA, guarded the site. The soldiers opened fire at the protesters and killed Tomás García.
Three years later, on March 2, 2016, gunmen broke into the home of Berta Cáceres and assassinated her. These men, and some of their immediate handlers, have been sentenced to prison terms that will run from 30 years to 50 years. Evidence presented in the court—including phone logs and WhatsApp conversations—shows quite conclusively that these assassins, many veterans of the Honduran army, acted on the orders of the executives of DESA. None of the owners of DESA, many of whom were on these WhatsApp chats, have been charged with the crime.
Now, four years after the assassination of Berta Cáceres, I spoke to her daughter Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, the general coordinator of COPINH. It is important to mention that when Zúñiga Cáceres returned from her studies in Mexico City to take up the mantle of COPINH, she herself faced an attempt on her life on June 30, 2017. The assassination of Berta Cáceres came alongside the March 15, 2016, murder of Nelson Noé García of COPINH, and the October 18, 2016, murders of José Ángel Flores and Silmer Dionisio George of the Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguán (Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán, or MUCA). It is now well-known that Honduras has amongst the highest murder rates in the world; but that is not why these people are killed—they are killed for what they stand for, and whom they stand against.
Collusion
Zúñiga Cáceres tells me that the past four years have been “very challenging for us” because she and her colleagues at COPINH have had to struggle to make sure that the “process is not silenced.” It is true that the Honduran investigators, under immense international pressure, arrested the main shooters and some of their immediate handlers. These handlers include Douglas Bustillo, a former head of security at DESA who ran the operation; Sergio Rodríguez, an executive at DESA; and Roberto David Castillo Mejía, the president of DESA. None of the “intellectual authors” of the crime have, however, been arrested; these “intellectual authors” would include the owners of DESA and members of the government.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/02/remembering-the-heroism-of-activist-berta-caceres-four-years-after-her-assassination-an-interview-with-her-daughter/
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