Berta Cáceres
Honduran indigenous activist
“We have to wake up! We have to wake up, humankind! We’re out of time.”
Exactly, who was Berta Cáceres?
Berta Cáceres was a Lenca indigenous woman who, for the past 20 years, has been defending the territory and rights of the Lenca people. In 1993 she co-founded Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Indígenas Populares – COPINH (Civic Council of Popular Indigenous Organisations), which led fierce campaigns against megaprojects.
She faced off – and often won – against illegal loggers, plantation owners, multinational corporations, and dam projects that would cut off food and water supplies to indigenous communities.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/berta-caceres
Mural in The Hague University, The Hague, Netherlands
About her life
Cáceres was born into the Lenca people in La Esperanza, Honduras, the predominant indigenous group in southwestern Honduras. Cáceres grew up in the 1970s during a time of civil unrest and violence in Central America. Her mother Austra Bertha Flores Lopez was a role model of humanitarianism: she was a midwife and social activist who took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador.
After attending local schools, Cáceres studied education at a university and graduated with a teaching qualification. She found in Fr. Ismael Moreno, director of Radio Progreso & ERIC-SJ, a close friend and collaborator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berta_C%C3%A1ceres
"They are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them"
As an activist
In 1993, as a student activist, Cáceres co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), an organization to support indigenous people's rights in Honduras. She led campaigns on a wide variety of issues, including protesting illegal logging, plantation owners, and the presence of US military bases on Lenca land. She supported feminism, LGBT rights, as well as wider social and indigenous issues
In 2006, a group of indigenous Lenca people from Río Blanco asked Cáceres to investigate the recent arrival of construction equipment in their area. Cáceres duly investigated and informed the community that a joint venture project between Chinese company Sinohydro, the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, and Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos, S.A. (also known as DESA, see Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica) had plans to construct a series of four hydroelectric dams on the Gualcarque River.
The developers had breached international law by failing to consult with the local people on the project. The Lenca were concerned that the dams would compromise their access to water, food and materials for medicine, and therefore threaten their traditional way of life. Cáceres worked together with the community to mount a protest campaign. She organized legal actions and community meetings against the project, and took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
From 2013, Cáceres led COPINH and the local community in a year-long protest at the construction site to prevent the companies from accessing the land. Security officers regularly removed protesters from the site
In late 2013, both Sinohydro and the International Finance Corporation withdrew from the project because of COPINH's protests. Desarrollos Energéticos (DESA) continued, however, moving the construction site to another location to avoid the blockade
more information on the following link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berta_C%C3%A1ceres
#BERTAVIVE
Awards
In 2012 Cáceres was awarded the Shalom Award by the Society for Justice and Peace at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 2012.
She was nominated as a finalist for the 2014 Front Line Defenders Prize.
In 2015 she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.
In April 2015, the international human rights organization Global Witness highlighted Cáceres' case as emblematic of the severe risks environmental activists face in Honduras, which had the highest number of killings of environmental and land defenders per capita in the world.
In April 2019 the Extinction Rebellion group fixed a pink boat named Berta Cáceres in the centre of London's busy intersection of Oxford Street and Regent Street (Oxford Circus) and glued themselves to it, blocking traffic; it was removed by police with angle grinders after five-days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berta_C%C3%A1ceres
Berta Cáceres, Goldman award laureate 2015
Decease
On 2 March 2016, unidentified assailants broke into the home of Berta Cáceres and murdered her in her bedroom. In the previous days, Berta and other members of her organisation (COPINH) had been receiving threats. Two months later, on 2 May 2016, four men were arrested in connection with her murder. Two of the people arrested have ties with Desarrollos Energéticos SA (Desa), the Honduran company which was building the Agua Zarca dam, a project Berta and COPINH had strongly opposed and campaigned against.
On 30 November 2018, the Honduran National Criminal Court convicted seven men of the murder of woman human rights defender Berta Caceres. The Court found that the men had been hired by executives within Desa, a company constructing a dam in indigenous Lenca territory, to carry out her killing on 3 March 2016.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-berta-c%C3%A1ceres
Berta Cáceres was not just another deceased, but a victim of impunity and injustice in the region. She was a hero, a great example to follow, a brilliant soul who fought for what she thought was right, someone who never gaved up. Her legacy will continue and will always remain in our minds.
She will never be forgotten, her will is in many other Hondurans and change makers, as well as in me. It is for all this that I admire her so much. As a UWC'er seeking changes in the world for the common good, this kind of cases such as Berta's remind me of the several world's needs against inequality, injustice, impunity and many other problems. Cases such as this one motivate me to go ahead with this will.
#BERTAVIVE (Berta lives)
