Berta Lives: 10 Years of Siembra and the Ongoing Fight for Justice

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Berta Cáceres’ Siembra (sowing), honoring the life, legacy, and enduring struggle of the Lenca Indigenous leader, environmental defender, and co-founder of Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH).

In the Lenca worldview, Siembra is not simply remembrance. It is planting. It is continuity. It is the understanding that what is rooted in community cannot be extinguished.

For most of her life, Berta organized to defend rivers, forests, and Indigenous sovereignty in Honduras. She challenged dams, mining projects, militarization, and the political and economic interests that advance them. Through COPINH, she helped build one of the most powerful Indigenous resistance movements in the Americas.

Berta was assassinated for defending the sacred Gualcarque River from the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, a project imposed without the free, prior, and informed consent of Lenca communities. She understood what so many movements across the world continue to confront: extractive projects backed by powerful political and economic interests often move forward through dispossession, militarization, and violence.

This week, Global Exchange is in Honduras accompanying COPINH and Lenca communities as they mark her 10-year Siembra, not only to remember, but to recommit.

Investigations and independent experts have made clear that the assassination was not an isolated act, but a crime linked to powerful economic interests, including members of the Atala Zablah family and financiers connected to the Agua Zarca project, as well as complicity within sectors of the Honduran state.

Accountability must extend beyond gunmen and intermediaries. It must reach intellectual authors, financial backers, and the political structures that enabled the violence.

It must also include international accountability.

U.S. security assistance, military training, diplomatic backing, and development financing have long strengthened institutions in Honduras that have failed to protect land and human rights defenders. International banks that financed extractive projects cannot evade scrutiny. Global North capital cannot remain insulated from consequence.

But the extractive model she confronted remains intact.

Across Honduras and throughout Latin America, land and water defenders continue to face threats, criminalization, and violence. Projects imposed without free, prior, and informed consent still advance. Communities defending territory still risk their lives.

We join COPINH, the Cáceres family, and communities in resistance in calling for:

• Full truth and accountability for Berta’s assassination — including intellectual and financial authors
• Accountability from the Honduran state and international actors who enabled or financed the project
• Protection for land and human rights defenders
• Respect for Indigenous sovereignty and free, prior, and informed consent
• An end to extractive violence and impunity

¡Berta no murió, se multiplicó!
Berta didn’t die. She multiplied.

GUSTAVO IRÍAS , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY STUDIES (CESPAD) IN HONDURAS

Originally published in Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/plea-democracy-honduras-opinion-1651876

November 23, 2021

Every day more than 200 Honduran families cross the southern border of the United States seeking asylum—more than any other nationality. Fleeing oppression, violence and climate-related disasters, even young, university-educated Hondurans do not see a future for themselves in their home country.

We live under the guise of democracy, but there is no separation of powers. Widespread corruption permeates the governing elite, as evidenced most recently by the sentencing of President Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother earlier this year. President Hernández himself has been identified in U.S. courts as a co-conspirator in a drug conspiracy case. Democratic institutions intended to investigate public officials linked to organized crime have been largely disabled.

Scores of human rights violations have occurred, including assassinations of political candidates, journalists, lawyers and judges. Honduras has been called “the deadliest place to be an environmentalist,” exemplified by the high-profile murder of Goldman Environmental Prize winner, Berta Cáceres in 2015 for organizing Indigenous communities to fight against displacement.

The impacts of the pandemic and two back-to-back hurricanes in 2020 have devastated an already dire economic situation. According to the World Bank, almost half of Honduras’ population lives on less than $5.50 per day, making Honduras the second poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean.

All of this can change soon, however, in the country’s upcoming election. With a new president and many other officials on the ballot, Nov. 28 is our greatest hope to escape the current authoritarian regime and restore democracy.

Yet, there is concern about recent fear tactics intended to intimidate voters. More than 30 people were murdered this year alone for political reasons, including four political leaders.

Thousands of Hondurans and dozens of international observers are gearing up to monitor this election. But we can’t do it alone. We need the U.S. Department of State to join us in making sure that human rights are not violated, and in speaking out forcefully against any acts of censorship or repression.

Recently, 29 members of Congress sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging “robust State Department monitoring and public criticism of authoritarian practices to maximize the chance of an inclusive and transparent electoral process” in Honduras. Clearly, the outcome of this election is in the interest of the United States.

After the 2017 election in Honduras, the U.S. State Department looked away when Hernández was declared the winner, despite fraud and a call for a re-do by the Organization of American States. For months, the Honduran military and police shot at protesters, killing dozens of people and detaining more than 1,300 to stop dissent. We urge the U.S. government not to make this mistake again.

Our country has been in crisis ever since the 2009 coup, which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The co-mingling of oligarchs and drug traffickers with state actors has deepened. Human security has deteriorated, and critical problems like drought, gang violence and extreme poverty have gone unaddressed. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that journalists face targeted killings, arbitrary detentions, the destruction of equipment and other obstacles that have impeded their ability to operate independently.

Despite the difficult situation in Honduras, I am optimistic. For the first time there is broad opposition to the current regime. We even have the support of some in the private sector who are fed up and want to create more opportunities for economic growth. This unprecedented level of organizing and unity in Honduras echoes the momentum that eventually led to the downfall of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

Honduras is a country that is largely marginalized and forgotten. This upcoming election is a chance to change that, and start a new chapter. It could solve many of the essential problems we face. A free, fair and peaceful electoral process represents an important opportunity for Honduran citizens to reestablish the rule of law.

It is important that the United States serve as a neutral, credible and impartial observer, while supporting an outcome in Honduras that is genuinely democratic. We need the international community to support a transparent, authentic, clear and peaceful election and an end to 12 years of crisis.

Hondurans want to stay in the country that they love. Right now, migration is not a choice for many, but a means of survival. This election could improve our quality of life, allow everyone to feel safer, have our voices be heard and stop the mass exodus.

We are ready to usher in a new era.

Gustavo Irías is executive director of the Center for Democracy Studies (CESPAD) in Honduras.