Four years ago my mom told me in my ear not to be afraid, that in this country they can do anything to you, but not to be afraid. My mother's name is Berta Cáceres, in some places they call her "the guardian of the rivers" and in the Lenca town she is known as one of our great ancestors.
MORE INFORMATION
- Berta Cáceres' death amplified her fight
- The price of activism
- Justice for the Guardians of Nature
Berta walked the roads that unite the communities, encouraged the struggles in defense of the rights of the peoples, called the women to come out of their houses, grabbed their hands and, together, led the demonstrations. She was a woman who defied great powers.
In 2009 she was one of the main leaders in the fight against the coup d'état, that visibility cost her great smear campaigns and many threats. One of the main complaints he made was that this coup signified the massive entry of extractivism into indigenous territories. Today, this extractivism is evident in the large packages of concessions that have been handed over to companies by the majority of the rivers that are in our territory, including the sacred Gualcarque River.
This State policy to enable looting has meant the total violation of the right that indigenous peoples have to be freely, previously and informedly consulted. In recent years, and with more force in January of this 2020, the State has tried to impose a consultation law, which takes away from the peoples the possibility of refusing these projects and, on the contrary, facilitates the installation of extractivism and the dispossession in the territories. A not only legal but military structure has also been created that enables criminalization and attack against those who oppose these policies.
The murder of Berta Cáceres is a clear example of this, behind which there is a company and members of the army involved, in coordination with corrupt officials, to end their fight. I refer to the judicial persecution by the State, to the 33 threats she received, the vast majority linked to DESA, the company that tried to impose the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, to the smear campaigns by the national media, to the harassment by members of the military. These events correspond to an accumulation of violence that has as its peak this territorial femicide.
Almost four years have passed since his heart stopped beating and a part of me lived that moment over and over again. I fell to the ground in pain and my mother's love returned with the faces of hundreds of people who were outraged and wept over this murder. And so, from many and many, we had to demand justice and despite the fact that we moved the world, still four years after the murder of Berta Cáceres we continue talking about impunity.
Why do we talk about impunity? Because the intellectual authors are missing, those who paid and benefited from this murder
While there are seven people convicted of it, these are the gunmen, the most vulnerable people within the structure that worked for this murder. There is also a trial against David Castillo, the manager of the DESA company, a former military man, who belonged to the intelligence service and who was trained in the United States. He also has an open trial for corruption, in which there are several public officials, since large irregularities were found related to the granting of the Agua Zarca project in the sacred Gualcarque river.
But then, why do we talk about impunity? Because the intellectual authors are missing, those who paid for and benefited from this murder. They are lacking because they have political and economic power and are the ones who maintain the violence against the Lenca people who, to this day, continue to face threats, burning of their crops, invasions of their territories, kidnappings and attacks that, as usually happens in Honduras, remain unpunished
If they are not prosecuted, there is no justice. And if justice is lacking, this crime will be repeated many more times. Justice is the first step to non-repetition and that is why we fight. We also fight because our Berta deserves it and because that is where we find her.
It has been four years of fighting with a State that protects criminals and persecutes those who fight. Four years of defying impunity, of being outraged by the indignation of seeing accomplices articulate to appropriate our symbols, and of swallowing the pain so that the bad guys don't look at us fragile.
But the ancestors protect our ways, they lull our souls and while the Lenca women, the Berta sisters inhabit this planet, life is safe and justice will be contested and built. Water flows through the sacred Gualcarque, now protected by the guardian of the rivers.
Laura Zúñiga is the daughter of Berta Cáceres.
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