Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerwald.
Speaker 1: We have a new season coming up for you in April,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime we'll be bringing you a few
Speaker 1: bonus episodes. Today, I'm joined by our new senior Global
Speaker 1: Climate Justice reporter, Nina Lakhani, who has special insight into
Speaker 1: the story of Berta Cassis. This week marks the ten
Speaker 1: year anniversary of Bertha's assassination. She was an indigenous leader
Speaker 1: in Honduras, and it's been proven that the Damn company
Speaker 1: building the Damn she was protesting orchestrated a hit on
Speaker 1: her with the help of various hitman, government officials, police, etc.
Speaker 1: It was a horrific ordeal for Bertha's family, for the
Speaker 1: whole movement in Honduras, and it also raised the profile
Speaker 1: of just how dangerous it was to be an environmental
Speaker 1: activist in Honduras. Unfortunately, in those ten years since her death,
Speaker 1: it has not gotten any better, and Nina did a
Speaker 1: deep dive on what's been going on in those ten years,
Speaker 1: what it looks like now, and what the lasting impact
Speaker 1: of Bertha's work was. Nina also wrote an entire book
Speaker 1: on Bertha's story. It's called who killed Bertha Casseres. It's
Speaker 1: really really excellent and has all of the receipts on
Speaker 1: this whole wild story. So Nina's going to walk us
Speaker 1: through that story and what's been going on in the
Speaker 1: decade since all of that happened in this episode today.
Speaker 1: That's coming up after this quick break. So, Nia, you
Speaker 1: read a whole book about Bertha, and I knew of
Speaker 1: her and her work before you started working on that
Speaker 1: book as well. What was she like as a person
Speaker 1: and a leader and what was so charismatic about her
Speaker 1: that she posed such a threat to these industries.
Speaker 2: Bertha Castides was a unique leader.
Speaker 3: She had this really incredible capacity to explain local struggles
Speaker 3: in regional and global economic and political terms, and she
Speaker 3: could communicate with people from all different sort of walks
Speaker 3: of life. So she was as comfortable in a sort
Speaker 3: of rural community as she was talking to members of
Speaker 3: Congress in the US. She wasn't a person that had
Speaker 3: any formal education. She had four kids very young, but
Speaker 3: she was, you know, a sponge.
Speaker 2: She traveled internationally.
Speaker 3: She spent a lot of time with indigenous communities in
Speaker 3: land and environmental struggles around the world.
Speaker 2: And she was just really really smart.
Speaker 3: She was a political strategist, and she had this ability
Speaker 3: to unite communities, which is really unusual in the social
Speaker 3: movement people sort of have their little fiefdoms. In a way,
Speaker 3: she could bring together the Cambasinos with students, she could
Speaker 3: bring together feminists with unionists. And I think this ability
Speaker 3: to bring people together, as well as her really.
Speaker 2: Sort of very charismatic communication style.
Speaker 3: She had this ability to convince, to really explain things
Speaker 3: to people that the elites, that political and economic elites
Speaker 3: found really threatening. And she could do this intellectually. She
Speaker 3: was very good with words, but she was a person
Speaker 3: that loved action. She now loved nothing more than being
Speaker 3: at protests organizing civil disobedience.
Speaker 2: She was a pacifist.
Speaker 3: Her organization was a non violent class through organization. But
Speaker 3: I think just this ability to be comfortable and powerful
Speaker 3: and convincing, you know, really in so many different spaces,
Speaker 3: among so many different sort of movements, really was a
Speaker 3: threat to the status quo in Honduras.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did her work first come on your radar?
Speaker 1: You were reporting in Central America when she was active.
Speaker 1: What did you first kind of see her do?
Speaker 3: I met her in twenty thirteen during my first trip
Speaker 3: to Honduras, I went for what were meant to be
Speaker 3: the first legal elections after the two thousand and nine coups,
Speaker 3: and so I went on a reporting trip and I
Speaker 3: met her integrity Gulpay in a capitol where she was
Speaker 3: participating in a press conference to international observers who'd come
Speaker 3: for the election, and she was warning them with such
Speaker 3: clarity that these were not going to be three and
Speaker 3: fair elections, but the social movement was being repressed that
Speaker 3: there was literally a hitless circulating with the names of
Speaker 3: social leaders, including her, around the country who were being targeted.
Speaker 3: I mean, and when I got to take Usigap, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was I was living in Mexico at the time,
Speaker 3: and I'd been to other Central American countries, but the
Speaker 3: level of militarization was like nothing I'd seen before. It
Speaker 3: looked like a war zone. So I met her there
Speaker 3: and I asked her for an interview. At that time,
Speaker 3: she was on the LAMB. There was an arrest warrant
Speaker 3: out for her on bogus criminal charges related to her
Speaker 3: leadership in this opposition of this internationally funded dam called Aguazadga,
Speaker 3: and at the time, her and two colleagues work had
Speaker 3: arrestaurrants against them, and so she was sleeping in different
Speaker 3: places every night. The International at that point had said
Speaker 3: that if they were arrested, they would consider them prisoners
Speaker 3: of conscious because it would be completely arbitrary and politically motivated.
Speaker 3: But she in writed me to go to Laspardanza, which
Speaker 3: is the town in western Honduras where she lived and
Speaker 3: she died, And so I went there a couple of
Speaker 3: days later and I did my only interview with her.
Speaker 3: That was the only time I got to interview her,
Speaker 3: you know, and she just laid out very very clearly.
Speaker 3: I mean a situation was like in Honduras for her personally,
Speaker 3: for her family, I mean the threats that they faced.
Speaker 2: At that point, three of her children.
Speaker 3: Were studying outside of the country because of the threats
Speaker 3: that the whole family faced.
Speaker 2: And she described to me, with a real sort of.
Speaker 3: Sadness, how what it was like to not be able
Speaker 3: to go to the river that the lenk of people
Speaker 3: consider sacred because of their rest woman, because of the
Speaker 3: militarization in the community. And I remember really clearly she
Speaker 3: said to me, look, I'm taking all the measures that
Speaker 3: I can to protect my life. But when they want
Speaker 3: to kill me, they will kill me. And I just
Speaker 3: remember that hour I spent with her. It was like
Speaker 3: one of those sort of moments you have as a
Speaker 3: journalist that are quite life changing.
Speaker 2: She was so impressive. She had such moral and.
Speaker 3: Political and ethical clarity, you know, and she knew she
Speaker 3: had been told to leave the country to safeguard her
Speaker 3: own life, but she was absolutely determined to stay and
Speaker 3: to continue fighting for a better future for people of Honduras.
Speaker 1: There's this line in your piece where you said that
Speaker 1: when you heard about her assassination, you thought to yourself, Jesus,
Speaker 1: that they can kill But like I said, as they
Speaker 1: can kill anyone. So yeah, just kind of what was
Speaker 1: it like hearing that news and how did you dig
Speaker 1: into investigating what happened there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was on vacation at the time when I woke
Speaker 3: up to various miscalls for my editor at the time
Speaker 3: saying they've killed Bertha.
Speaker 2: Killed Bertha.
Speaker 3: And at the time, she was absolutely the most well
Speaker 3: known environmental and social leader in the Americas. She'd been
Speaker 3: awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize the year previously, she'd only
Speaker 3: a few months earlier had an audience with.
Speaker 2: The poet in Rome, and so she was really well known.
Speaker 2: You know, I member the.
Speaker 3: US Conguess had taken up sort of her case has
Speaker 3: had all of the major sort of human rights organizations.
Speaker 1: To give you a sense of Bertha, here's a short
Speaker 1: clip of the speech that she gave when she accepted
Speaker 1: the Goldman Prize in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: Despertemos, despertemos u manida jian wait Tempo Luis tra concience, Yes,
Speaker 4: Louis tra conciencia, couridas porlecho, the star solocon Templando laostruccion bassale,
Speaker 4: la de preda song capitalista rasista ipatriarcal.
Speaker 1: She says, wake up, wake up, humanity, We're out of time.
Speaker 1: We must shake our consciences free of the repatacious capitalism, racism,
Speaker 1: and patriarchy that will only assure our own self destruction.
Speaker 3: And I think it was just so clear to me
Speaker 3: then that the sense of entitlement and impunity that those
Speaker 3: who ordered her murder must have felt to carry out
Speaker 3: that assassination, because there's no way that you could kill
Speaker 3: someone who was so well known internationally without there being
Speaker 3: at least a tacit sort of you know, agreement from
Speaker 3: people very high up.
Speaker 2: I arrived in Honduras.
Speaker 3: In life Spanser, I think about a month after her assassination.
Speaker 2: Where I met.
Speaker 3: It was for the first time her mother, who was
Speaker 3: such a huge inspiration to her sort of social and
Speaker 3: political work, who's ninety three.
Speaker 2: By the way now and still in life, Speranza.
Speaker 3: And the first piece I wrote then was I interviewed
Speaker 3: and spoke to many of her colleagues who were with
Speaker 3: her in those last days and weeks.
Speaker 2: I went to the oblanc Or where the dam.
Speaker 3: Had been destined and sanctioned to be sort of constructed,
Speaker 3: and what became really clear to me was.
Speaker 2: That she knew that time was running out.
Speaker 3: She was under surveillance, there were informants everywhere, and she
Speaker 3: had been making She'd been making plans, you know, She'd
Speaker 3: shared the ability to sign checks, for example, with other
Speaker 3: people in the organization. She'd said goodbye to one of
Speaker 3: her daughters a couple of days earlier. She was on
Speaker 3: their way back to Argentina, and the goodbye felt like
Speaker 3: something more than just a normal sea soon.
Speaker 2: So I think she knew had time was running out,
Speaker 2: and so that was.
Speaker 3: The first piece that I wrote, and then I just
Speaker 3: started digging, and like I was able to get hold
Speaker 3: of documents that showed that some of the Intermediris who
Speaker 3: had been paid by the Damn Company were former army
Speaker 3: officials who had received training by the US at different points.
Speaker 2: In their career.
Speaker 3: And I saw a young soldier from one of the
Speaker 3: Special Forces who went Able a few weeks after her
Speaker 3: murder because because he had been in a unit that
Speaker 3: had been passed around this hit list in which there
Speaker 3: was a name and personal details of multiple social and
Speaker 3: community leaders, some of them had an X through them
Speaker 3: who had already been neutralized, and Berta's name was on
Speaker 3: that list, And so he went Able and ended up
Speaker 3: coming to me and talked to me about this hit list.
Speaker 3: He at the time remembered a lot of the training,
Speaker 3: really awful training that he had had as a young soldier,
Speaker 3: how there'd been military trainers from Israel, from Columbia, from
Speaker 3: other countries there, and was just really frightened he had
Speaker 3: to leave the country.
Speaker 2: He's never been able to go back to the country since,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: And as I wrote those pieces, I became a target myself.
Speaker 3: The Honduran ambassador in UK wrote complaints asking for stories
Speaker 3: to be sort of retracted. The US ambassador in at
Speaker 3: the time launched a campaign to discredit me, giving background
Speaker 3: chats to all sorts of people in Honduras, claiming that
Speaker 3: I was just this woman who didn't really understand how
Speaker 3: that armed forces worked.
Speaker 2: They were forced to at least.
Speaker 3: Say they were going to launch an inquiry because the
Speaker 3: army's units that had had this hit list circulated were
Speaker 3: US trained army units, but they carried out no investigation,
Speaker 3: didn't speak to any of the people that were in
Speaker 3: my piece.
Speaker 2: But I became a target from that point.
Speaker 3: Really, there was like these online campaigns calling me a
Speaker 3: media terrorist. And really, since then, that's twenty sixteen, I'd
Speaker 3: never gone into Honduras by air. I've always gone in overland,
Speaker 3: which is very difficult, like it can take a long time.
Speaker 3: Because I was warned, you know, that I could be
Speaker 3: stopped coming in. And then I kept investigating the links,
Speaker 3: and then I was the only journalist National International to
Speaker 3: attend every day the first trial, which was for eight people,
Speaker 3: one who had nothing to do with it, but seven
Speaker 3: between them were the hit men, the hired assassins, and
Speaker 3: the intermediaries. And at the start of that trial, I
Speaker 3: had some really serious threats come my way, some press
Speaker 3: releases from these fake groups in the Baha Guan region,
Speaker 3: which is a really conflicted, dangerous part of Honduras, declaring
Speaker 3: me persona non grata, linking me to Mexican drug cartels,
Speaker 3: calling me.
Speaker 2: A terrorist, all sorts of things.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, the deeper I dug, the more threats
Speaker 3: I got, which and it's that sort of classic case
Speaker 3: of knowing that you're hitting the right things because you're
Speaker 3: really upsetting people. When I was reporting of from the trial,
Speaker 3: the threats came to me from the Aguan which is
Speaker 3: this rural sort of region where there's been long standing
Speaker 3: land conflicts between African palm magnets and Campasinos, which really,
Speaker 3: on the surface have nothing to.
Speaker 2: Do with Butter's case, But I think it really showed that.
Speaker 3: This network of economic, political, military, religious elites, the oligarchy
Speaker 3: that rules Honduras and many many other sort of countries
Speaker 3: in Latin America, you know, control the media, control the
Speaker 3: banking sector, control so much of the power in the
Speaker 3: country are connected, you know, And so a journalist that
Speaker 3: was sort of digging into the modus operandi and the
Speaker 3: structures and systems behind Butta's dev posed a threat to
Speaker 3: all of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So walk us through what we know or
Speaker 1: what's been made public so far about exactly what happened here,
Speaker 1: who orchestrated this, and how did the government play into it?
Speaker 5: Too?
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 3: We know that Butt was assassinated specifically because of her
Speaker 3: campaign thought the construction of its internationally financed dam on
Speaker 3: this river considers sacred by the Lenca people, and that
Speaker 3: her organizing and her leadership had stalled the project, which
Speaker 3: was impacting the profits.
Speaker 2: Of the Damn Company. We know now from.
Speaker 3: Investigations that have happened and from the court cases that
Speaker 3: have happened so far, that the Damn Company was part
Speaker 3: of an organized criminal enterprise which included Damn executives. It
Speaker 3: included the highest hitmen. It included military trained intermediaries, but
Speaker 3: it also included state officials and armed forces, both by
Speaker 3: acts and by emissions. And by that I mean you
Speaker 3: know sort of counterinsurgency campaign to neutralize her that lasted
Speaker 3: for many years. It included the vogu dis criminal charges,
Speaker 3: included intimidation, It included arming community members against each other,
Speaker 3: It included attempted bribes, all of those things that were
Speaker 3: classic counterinsurgency manuals from the Cold War area. They tried
Speaker 3: with bertain, and when they couldn't silence her, they killed
Speaker 3: her right And this criminal enterprise was involved in all
Speaker 3: of that in all sorts of ways, from the surveillance
Speaker 3: to we know from the evidence that I've seen that
Speaker 3: the Damn Company would learn through informants that they were
Speaker 3: paying in the community, when, for example, protests were being planned,
Speaker 3: or when a road clock was being planned, they would
Speaker 3: simply have to ask the government to send troops, to
Speaker 3: send police there to repress the community's peaceful protests. We
Speaker 3: know that the investigation into her murder at that time,
Speaker 3: the Damn Company was continuing to pay police, investigators, journalists
Speaker 3: to present information that served them. They were receiving images
Speaker 3: from the crime scene themselves right in group chats. And
Speaker 3: we also know that there was a coordinated plan to
Speaker 3: blame the murder on Gusabacastro, who was Butther's friend, who
Speaker 3: happened to be there and who they thought they had killed,
Speaker 3: but who survived by feigning death, and so he became
Speaker 3: the only winners, to blame the murder on him, to
Speaker 3: blame the murder on her colleagues, her organization to blame
Speaker 3: the murder on a romantic partner. All of this was
Speaker 3: coordinated and the Damn Company could not have done that themselves.
Speaker 2: They didn't do themselves right.
Speaker 3: There were elected officials and safe employees at every level,
Speaker 3: from the police to the prosecutor's office, the Attorney General's office,
Speaker 3: to the military to everywhere that were involved either by
Speaker 3: AXE or emissions in this right. But this was an
Speaker 3: organized criminal enterprise that orchestrated the violence against Burla. The
Speaker 3: Lenca community then attempted to cover it up. And which
Speaker 3: is one last thing. I mean the financial institutions involved
Speaker 3: in this. We also know now that two thirds of
Speaker 3: the money, two thirds of the money that was purported
Speaker 3: by two international banks to interto international development banks was
Speaker 3: diverted to pay for the surveillance, the intelligence operations, the informants,
Speaker 3: the murder itself. This armed security and the banks involved,
Speaker 3: well known international banks that an utter failure of their
Speaker 3: own due diligence obligations right and their obligations around human rights.
Speaker 3: Butter wrote to some of these banks back in twenty
Speaker 3: thirteen pleading with them not to fund this damn because
Speaker 3: of the repression that was already being orchestrated. People had
Speaker 3: already been killed, the community had already been terrorized.
Speaker 2: But they went ahead anyway.
Speaker 3: So the financial institutions that should be held accountable for
Speaker 3: their role in this, but it stems from the hired
Speaker 3: hit men, who, by the way, I interviewed in jail,
Speaker 3: and it was honestly so sad. These were kids, poor kids,
Speaker 3: exactly the type of kids that Berter was fighting for
Speaker 3: a better future before. You know, at least two of
Speaker 3: them were planning to use the money they get paid
Speaker 3: to pay a coyote to try and.
Speaker 2: Get to the US.
Speaker 3: Right, not justifying what they did at all, but there's
Speaker 3: also victims of this same sort of structural violence that
Speaker 3: exists in the country.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, ultimately they pulled the trigger, but they're not
Speaker 1: the ones that planned and orchestrated and all that. That's
Speaker 1: so sad.
Speaker 3: Just to underline, the US is sort of roleing this,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, two of the intermediates had received
Speaker 3: US training at different points of their career. A whistleblower
Speaker 3: I've already mentioned he was in this unitch called Sattrage,
Speaker 3: which had terrorized the Aguan region after the coup, and
Speaker 3: which received lots of US training, and it's worth just
Speaker 3: naming David Castillo. David Castile was the president.
Speaker 2: And founder of the Damn Company.
Speaker 3: He was an informer intelligence officer trained at West Point
Speaker 3: in New York State, and he is the only one
Speaker 3: so far to have been convicted of playing a role
Speaker 3: in masterminding the murder. He was also one of the
Speaker 3: people convicted of fraud regarding the license of the dam
Speaker 3: that was sanctioned in this post coup pro business sort
Speaker 3: of environment without due process, without proper consultations, without prop
Speaker 3: environmental assessments. But yeah, the US made him right, and
Speaker 3: he used these intelligence tactics and strategies to try to
Speaker 3: get close to about her, to infiltrate the community. And
Speaker 3: you know, the US has this long inglorious history of
Speaker 3: training people who go on to commit some of the
Speaker 3: worst sort of human rights abuses in Latin America.
Speaker 1: Totally. You spoke with gustavol Castro recently too. For this piece.
Speaker 1: I'm going to play a little bit of tape from
Speaker 1: him here and then would love to hear more about
Speaker 1: him as well.
Speaker 5: Mondon, which is on.
Speaker 1: And he says, on the one hand, it's just as
Speaker 1: you say, she's enormously missed, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: she's present in so many ways. Even in places where
Speaker 1: they didn't know her, they know her now and she's present.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about him and his work.
Speaker 1: What's his story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kristavo Castra is this really highly regarded Mexican environmentalist
Speaker 3: and anti capitalists sort of thinker and organizer. He's the
Speaker 3: founder and director of an organization called Mundos Chiapas Other Worlds,
Speaker 3: and that organization which works very closely with Bertha and
Speaker 3: ba organization. They organize around environmentally destructive mega projects, but
Speaker 3: they also do a lot of work around training and
Speaker 3: helping communities develop local energy alternatives to global capitalists projects.
Speaker 3: And him and Bertha go back years. She had some
Speaker 3: amazing anecdotes about her. They were in Quebec together in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one for the anti globalization protests. They
Speaker 3: did a lot of organizing against NaSTA together, and so
Speaker 3: you know, they'd really been in the trenches, and the
Speaker 3: two organizations would do a little back and forth of
Speaker 3: training each other and sharing experiences and knowledge.
Speaker 2: He was in Live Speranza that night.
Speaker 3: He'd arrived that day having not seen Bersa for quite
Speaker 3: some time. I mean after the two thousand and nine coup, Bertha,
Speaker 3: the whole social movement in Honduras was in this perpetual
Speaker 3: state of crisis, constantly fighting and struggling to stop these
Speaker 3: illegally sanctioned projects. Right, So they hadn't seen each other
Speaker 3: for some years, but he'd gone to live Speranza, and
Speaker 3: he was there because he was going to do several
Speaker 3: days of workshops for Lenka community members on renewable energy projects.
Speaker 3: So he'd got there, they'd stayed up late talking, you know,
Speaker 3: he was staying with her in her house, and they'd
Speaker 3: both gone to bed.
Speaker 2: They knew he was there, but we know.
Speaker 3: From the evidence from the trials and from like various
Speaker 3: sort of phone tapping documents and so forth, that there
Speaker 3: had been reconsistance missions. The ex military sort of officers
Speaker 3: that had been paid into mediries had conducted reconnaissance missions.
Speaker 2: So they knew he was there.
Speaker 3: And in fact, there was four assassins, like one who
Speaker 3: stayed in the car and three who went to the house.
Speaker 3: One shot brother and the other shot and another shot
Speaker 3: was over and they shot him in the face and
Speaker 3: it hit his ear, and so he was bleeding a
Speaker 3: lot because of it. Was like, and so he just stopped.
Speaker 3: He just laid down and pretended to be there, and
Speaker 3: they thought he was dead. So he survived an assassination attempt, right,
Speaker 3: and then stayed still and quiet until he was sure
Speaker 3: everyone had gone, and then tried to get help, and
Speaker 3: he took him hours to raise anybody. If he finally
Speaker 3: managed to get in touch with people in Mexico who
Speaker 3: got in touch with people in Honduras.
Speaker 2: Who sent help.
Speaker 3: And it's important to think that when people called for help,
Speaker 3: they absolutely did not call the police, right because they
Speaker 3: knew they weren't to be trusted. And so he was
Speaker 3: sort of whisked away by members of COPING, but then
Speaker 3: spent this almost a month trapped in Honduras as they
Speaker 3: tried to pin the crime on him. They took his
Speaker 3: boots to test for evidence. I mean they did, you know.
Speaker 3: There was just this concerted effort, and he actually ended
Speaker 3: up having to take refuge in an embassy because they
Speaker 3: were trying to arrest him. I remember interviewing his lawyer
Speaker 3: at the time and doing a story and when he
Speaker 3: was eventually allowed to leave and go back to Mexico,
Speaker 3: him and his family ended up spending two years in
Speaker 3: exile in Spain because they didn't feel safe in Mexico either.
Speaker 2: Too close.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think all of that personally has
Speaker 3: like obviously had this huge impact on his physical well being,
Speaker 3: on his psychological well being. When I spoke to him
Speaker 3: just a week to ago, saying, it's only now little
Speaker 3: by little that he's sort of reading like the court file.
Speaker 3: She's just been too difficult, and he's just realizing how
Speaker 3: close it was that he could have ended up in
Speaker 3: jail for this right, Like it was so close that
Speaker 3: he really escaped with his liberty.
Speaker 2: And I think the other thing.
Speaker 3: Of say is that for him that all of that
Speaker 3: sort of personal trauma. But like for him and many
Speaker 3: people in the social movement, her assassination, her loss was
Speaker 3: a huge hit to the whole social movement. They've spent
Speaker 3: years really focused on demanding justice for Bertha Right and
Speaker 3: trying to recuperate and refocus, and you know, it was
Speaker 3: a huge crisis that had a lot of the work
Speaker 3: that him and Bertha had initiated regionally, Like they had
Speaker 3: all of these regional sort of meetings when groups with
Speaker 3: different organizations would come together and they would plan and
Speaker 3: strategize across the region. They've only just restarted those a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that it was interesting and important reading
Speaker 1: your piece because sometimes I think at least Gustavo wasn't arrested,
Speaker 1: and like, we do know that it was the Damn
Speaker 1: Company and the government, and there's been some accountability, some
Speaker 1: people have gone to jail. Things like that. People will
Speaker 1: be like, oh, okay, the social movement fought back, and yes,
Speaker 1: in some ways that's true, but it also it creates
Speaker 1: this vacuum, not just of that leadership, but then so
Speaker 1: much time being spent dealing with the impact of that
Speaker 1: that takes away from all of the other work that
Speaker 1: they were doing for so long. Okay, speaking of accountability,
Speaker 1: you mentioned David Castillo. Who else has been tried or
Speaker 1: imprisoned or fined or whatever for their role in this.
Speaker 3: So far eight people have been convicted of participating in
Speaker 3: the murder that with Castilio is the most senior of those.
Speaker 3: The other seven are the high assassins and the intermediates.
Speaker 3: At least two of them had direct links to the
Speaker 3: Damn Company. Police officer was recently convicted of tampering with
Speaker 3: the crime scene and tampering with evidence, and that for Honduras,
Speaker 3: that's honestly nothing short of a miracle. I mean, Bertha
Speaker 3: is among almost one hundred land and environmental defenders that
Speaker 3: have been murdered in the last ten years, and there's
Speaker 3: been no accountability for any of those people.
Speaker 2: So it's small miracle in a way.
Speaker 3: And it's really thanks to who she was, right the
Speaker 3: fact that her murder triggered this international outrage, but really
Speaker 3: thanks to the persistence of her four children, of her organization,
Speaker 3: of the people who knew and who loved her, who
Speaker 3: have never stopped demanding justice. I remember when I went
Speaker 3: to like Sponanza a month after her murder and I
Speaker 3: met her daughters.
Speaker 2: And two of them said to me.
Speaker 3: They were in their early twenties at the time, and
Speaker 3: they said to me, we know that it's on us
Speaker 3: to get justice for our mother, but the state is
Speaker 3: not going to do it. That we are now going
Speaker 3: to dedicate our lives doing that. And they have right.
Speaker 3: And so there's been a huge amount achieved, and there's
Speaker 3: also been like some people, three people were convicted for
Speaker 3: the fraud around the Damn concession itself. But there is
Speaker 3: so many people and so many institutions that have not
Speaker 3: been investigated.
Speaker 2: To name a couple, the Damn Company.
Speaker 3: The financial manager was a man called Danielle Atala Millns.
Speaker 3: He and David ran the Damn Company sort that did
Speaker 3: all the day to day operations. There's been an arrest
Speaker 3: warrant out for him for two and a half years
Speaker 3: that he was involved with David in diverting the funds,
Speaker 3: in pain, the informants in pain, the assassins, all of
Speaker 3: those things. He has not been arrested, I mean, and
Speaker 3: the fact it took eight years to even issue that
Speaker 3: arrestaurant is an absolute travesty of justice. An investigation by
Speaker 3: independent experts that were supported by the Inter American Commission
Speaker 3: of Human Rights recently.
Speaker 2: Published tzo hundred page report in.
Speaker 3: Which they talk about all the different sort of levels
Speaker 3: of accountability that remain. The shareholders of the Damn Company
Speaker 3: who were in the group chats when the violence and
Speaker 3: the repression and the illegal payments were being organized.
Speaker 2: Right, who either knew or should have known.
Speaker 3: The government officials, the institutions, the armed forces that participated
Speaker 3: in the violence before, during, and after her murder have
Speaker 3: never been investigated.
Speaker 2: Right, you know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that strikes me is most sort
Speaker 3: of I guess emblematic of this is that the damn License,
Speaker 3: despite there being convictions around the ford in that license,
Speaker 3: has never been revoked. Indigenous communities across the country and
Speaker 3: other rural communities continue to face huge obstacles in obtaining
Speaker 3: community collective land titles, which means that they are.
Speaker 2: Very vulnerable to the terrible.
Speaker 3: Laws that this in Honduras, where you know, any old
Speaker 3: person can come along and lay claim to a piece
Speaker 3: of land in which there isn't a laned title and
Speaker 3: so that constant threat iLINK goes over the community even
Speaker 3: to this day.
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense now to talk about Gadifuna
Speaker 1: and Miriam so like that. To me, that's just such
Speaker 1: a classic example of this that there was this twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Inter American Court of Humanoides.
Speaker 1: Yeah that like said, yes, the government illegally allowed all
Speaker 1: of this development on these people's land. They should be
Speaker 1: have the land to return to them or be compensated whatever,
Speaker 1: And then you know what has happened in the meantime,
Speaker 1: So yeah, can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 1: And then I want to play some tape from Miriam
Speaker 1: who was birth as friend and is fighting that fight.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, me, Me and Miranda, I mean, another extraordinary woman,
Speaker 3: an extraordinary indigenous leader. How and Bertha were best friends,
Speaker 3: They were comrades, They were sort of sisters in the struggle.
Speaker 3: Both were targets of misogynists, racist smear campaigns. They were
Speaker 3: called bad mothers, they were called antidevelopment. But they always
Speaker 3: had each other. They were together everywhere. And I think
Speaker 3: Balta's loss has been you know, no one in the
Speaker 3: movement has felt it as much as Miriam has. I
Speaker 3: think just this fear, this constant fear that she could
Speaker 3: be next, and it's a well founded fear. She has
Speaker 3: received so many different strates she has really sort of
Speaker 3: caused her to retreat a lot from the public work
Speaker 3: that she was doing, or she remained sort of an
Speaker 3: incredible leader.
Speaker 2: I expect to her the other.
Speaker 3: Day, and she was very clear that two events mark
Speaker 3: for indigenous and land struggles in Honduras in the last decade.
Speaker 3: One is the murder of her friend, and the other
Speaker 3: was this inter American court landmark sentence at the end
Speaker 3: of twenty fifteen, which found that the State of Honduras
Speaker 3: had violated the human rights and the ancestral territorial rights
Speaker 3: of the Goris and Garth and I put people on
Speaker 3: the north coast of Honduras in a community called in
Speaker 3: For de la Cruz and later in Punda Gooda as well,
Speaker 3: and that the State of Honduras was ordered to return
Speaker 3: the land, pay whatever compensation be necessary to the people
Speaker 3: who are going to list land, to apologize and to
Speaker 3: make sure these things never happened again.
Speaker 2: Right ten years on, that land has not been returned.
Speaker 3: More land, more ancestral land has been taken, has been
Speaker 3: sold to private investors.
Speaker 2: Some of the people who have bought.
Speaker 3: This land illegally include government officials from every single party
Speaker 3: that exists in the country.
Speaker 2: There has been.
Speaker 3: Ongoing development and encroachment, and those Gathon are leaders who
Speaker 3: have been trying to get the state to comply with
Speaker 3: this sentence have been disappeared, They've been killed, they've been
Speaker 3: forced into exile, They've been for to my great to
Speaker 3: the US or elsewhere. And it is perpetual state of
Speaker 3: violence and land grabs that have continued. I actually spoke
Speaker 3: to a local leader and zoom For de la Cruz yesterday,
Speaker 3: a woman called Francis and on the tenth anniversary of the.
Speaker 2: Court sentence that was the end of last year.
Speaker 3: They're so sick fed up of non compliance with the
Speaker 3: state that they've decided to take matters into their own
Speaker 3: hand and have started to reoccupy peacefully the land that
Speaker 3: is theirs that the highest court in the continent has
Speaker 3: ruled to be their ancestral land. And the result has
Speaker 3: been that they have been criminalized. They are now facing
Speaker 3: criminal charges that if found guilty, they could face up
Speaker 3: to nine years in prison. Right But she said to
Speaker 3: me that this is our land. We are not going
Speaker 3: to give up on our land, and we're going to
Speaker 3: keep occupying it. But this is constant state of fear
Speaker 3: and struggle. And I think the galley for on our
Speaker 3: community and the Lenca community because of who Miriam and
Speaker 3: both the words ah, you know, always work so closely together,
Speaker 3: and there's struggles. There's a lot of parallels between the two.
Speaker 1: It was so interesting to me that you described what's
Speaker 1: happening there and that people can because so many of
Speaker 1: the indigenous people don't have like hard copy land titles,
Speaker 1: that it's that these people can come in and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is my land, and then if you can't prove
Speaker 1: that you own it, with this title, then you don't
Speaker 1: have a leg to stand on and I get to
Speaker 1: just take this land. It's wild, absolutely wild.
Speaker 3: The onus is on communities who have lived on the
Speaker 3: land for decades, if not centuries.
Speaker 2: The onus is on them then to prove that they
Speaker 2: are not invaders.
Speaker 3: And because of this absolutely outrageous reform to the Penal
Speaker 3: Code in twenty twenty, which was condemned by every single
Speaker 3: international law expert, that you can imagine a business person,
Speaker 3: someone who wants a piece of land can register a
Speaker 3: peace of land in their name or the name of
Speaker 3: anyone at the land registry, take it to a court
Speaker 3: and say, hey, this is my land and its invaders
Speaker 3: on it, and the community there can be evicted within
Speaker 3: forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: They're called express evictions.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: So you have communities across the country just live in
Speaker 3: on in shacks on the side of the road because
Speaker 3: they have been taffed off their land, where they have cops,
Speaker 3: where they have you know, ancestral rights, and yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a completely outrageous and illegal.
Speaker 1: We kind of touched on this a little bit, but
Speaker 1: you know, you had the coup and postcup, you had
Speaker 1: this very pro business narco government, and then you had
Speaker 1: this brief period of the Libre Party that seemed like
Speaker 1: they were going in the right direction, but didn't make
Speaker 1: any changes to sort of the major structural foundations of
Speaker 1: this stuff. So they didn't enforce this ruling from the
Speaker 1: regional core either. Right. So I want to play a
Speaker 1: little bit of tape from this woman Karen Spring, that
Speaker 1: you spoke with about this, because I thought she had
Speaker 1: this great line about how it doesn't matter who's in charge.
Speaker 1: The problem is, you know, is endemic, and it's also
Speaker 1: connected to neoliberal capitalism globally. And then I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what the Leabti Party was
Speaker 1: and why it didn't sort of work to change things.
Speaker 2: It's systemic.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter who's in power in Honduras, or who's
Speaker 6: in the presidential palace or the Supreme Court or the
Speaker 6: public prosecutor's office.
Speaker 2: It's systemic.
Speaker 6: It's part of how the system functions, the neoliberal economics system.
Speaker 6: It needs impunity, it needs corruption, it needs political actors
Speaker 6: to be involved in organized crime in order to advance
Speaker 6: in countries like Honduras and many others around the world.
Speaker 6: This is how the system is supposed to work, and
Speaker 6: it's very unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Karen Spring is co coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Project.
Speaker 1: She mobilized help on the night of Bertha's murder. Okay, so, Nina,
Speaker 1: what was and is the Liberal Party and what did
Speaker 1: they try to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Until the coup Pondurus in its sort of very brief
Speaker 3: democratic sort of period of twenty five years, it was
Speaker 3: a two party system, right, the National Party and the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party, which honestly resembled a lot the Democrats and
Speaker 3: the Republicans. Right, there was very little between them in
Speaker 3: many things. There were powerful elite to running two parties.
Speaker 3: The Liberal Party was ostensibly better than the National Party
Speaker 3: when it came to human rights and sort of some
Speaker 3: social issues, but there wasn't that much between them. The
Speaker 3: coup happened, which is orchestrated mostly by the National Party
Speaker 3: and their economic sort of military religious allies, but with
Speaker 3: some Liberal Party members around the fringes too, and then
Speaker 3: you know, in the wake of that, in the coming years,
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party is worn really out of the resistance
Speaker 3: to the coup. Right, so it includes academic mix unionists,
Speaker 3: social movements, all of those things, but also has veteran
Speaker 3: politicians from the Liberal Party right, including Manuel Zelaya who
Speaker 3: was the Liberal Party president who was deposed in the
Speaker 3: coup right and among many others, and a lot of
Speaker 3: these Liberal Party politicians have their own connections to land violations,
Speaker 3: alleged connections to organized crime and other types of wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: Right, But it does rise out of the.
Speaker 3: Social movement, and Manil Zelaya would have liked to have
Speaker 3: been president again, but he was a man that the
Speaker 3: US could not do business with, right, and there was
Speaker 3: no way they were ever going to allow him to
Speaker 3: run for president again. So his wife, former US Lady
Speaker 3: Zielma Castro, runs for president and wins at the end
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty one and comes into power in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. It definitely hope, right, being completely cynical, I
Speaker 3: don't know how much to day Marcostra wanted to be president,
Speaker 3: and I think lots of evidence that I saw her
Speaker 3: husband was running a lot of things in the background.
Speaker 2: But it did bring hope.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I think people were
Speaker 3: really sort of energized about it at the beginning was
Speaker 3: that she announced these sort of priorities investigations, these commissions,
Speaker 3: which included a commission into the Gaddi Funna land issues,
Speaker 3: into the implementation of the Inter American Court the Human
Speaker 3: Right sentence, into Aguan land conflicts, into Batera's case, for example.
Speaker 2: We learned some really important things.
Speaker 3: There was good steps taken, but at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, it's about action, right, and they failed to
Speaker 3: deliver transformative action, structural changes. The people I spoke to,
Speaker 3: the analysts I spoke to and would say that all
Speaker 3: of the commissions in quiries they set up have to
Speaker 3: be thought of as failures because they did not achieve
Speaker 3: structural changes. But interestingly, like Honduras, like Latin America in general,
Speaker 3: social movements are very active despite the huge risks that
Speaker 3: they face. People go out into the streets, they protest,
Speaker 3: they demand better, and that really didn't happen.
Speaker 2: During a liberal government, right.
Speaker 3: And I think partly people say it's because everyone was
Speaker 3: exhausted after thirteen years of National Party abuses. I think
Speaker 3: people also didn't want to close the door to dialogue
Speaker 3: with the government. I think people felt we should reassured
Speaker 3: because so many people from their resistance ended up in government,
Speaker 3: and so they didn't have that pressure on the streets,
Speaker 3: which I think is really important. And so I think,
Speaker 3: you know, there was some positive changes. There was definitely
Speaker 3: fewer land grads. There were fewer land environmental activists murdered,
Speaker 3: but you know, nowhere near enough, and certainly they cannot
Speaker 3: claim that they delivered on their promises.
Speaker 1: It's a good lesson for American politics. I feel like
Speaker 1: this happens all the time where I mean, we saw
Speaker 1: it in the like Trump to bide into Trump cycle
Speaker 1: in the US too, where people really got galvanized around
Speaker 1: just getting rid of this one administration and not the
Speaker 1: structural things underneath that we're going to continue to be bad.
Speaker 1: And I mean there's so much lecturing. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this was happening in Honduras too, but in the
Speaker 1: US there was so much like lecturing of the center
Speaker 1: left to the left. You know, it's like, don't criticize
Speaker 1: the IRA and don't criticize whatever. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: then you end up with no structural change and policies
Speaker 1: that can easily be chucked out as soon as the
Speaker 1: next conservative government comes in, which the Conservatives seemed to
Speaker 1: know really well. And it sounds like the National Party
Speaker 1: has learned that left as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we have the National Party president that
Speaker 3: governed for two terms. Juan or Lando Hernandez was running
Speaker 3: a criminal enterprise through the party. Him and his brother
Speaker 3: Tony had and As, who was a member of Congress,
Speaker 3: were both convicted in the Southern District of New York
Speaker 3: of being major drug traffickers and arm traffickers.
Speaker 2: To the US.
Speaker 3: Juan Lando Hernandez was sentenced to forty five years in
Speaker 3: jail in twenty twenty four, and at the end of
Speaker 3: last year it pardoned by Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Right and now.
Speaker 3: Trump supported National Party Canada has been re elected into
Speaker 3: government a construction magnet, and really the brief respite that
Speaker 3: the Liblo Party sort of provided despite not making any
Speaker 3: real major changes is over. And I think the parallels
Speaker 3: between what you've just described in the US and Honduras
Speaker 3: are really important to make.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: It's that actually being on the streets, the public protests.
Speaker 2: Are essential to delivering long term transformational changes. Right. Are
Speaker 2: they enough on their own?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: But without them it's not possible. Right.
Speaker 3: So, now, I remember when Biden one, I was living
Speaker 3: in the US then, and even in the newsroom I
Speaker 3: was working in the relief among some people was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, we can just we can breathe again.
Speaker 2: We can just you know, we can returned exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know what, rights are very hard to fight for,
Speaker 2: but it's even.
Speaker 3: Harder to keep them right. And I think both these
Speaker 3: countries can show us that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to talk about one Lopez and his
Speaker 1: assassination in twenty twenty four. That was when the Liberal
Speaker 1: Party was still in power, right, so you know, a
Speaker 1: very similar situation to Bertha happened under this party. Another
Speaker 1: example of how this is happening regardless of who's in power.
Speaker 1: But tell me a little bit about who he was
Speaker 1: and what happened in that situation.
Speaker 3: Juan Lopez was a community leader from the Baho Guan area.
Speaker 3: He was an evangelical pasta. He was one of the
Speaker 3: key people who helped organize a position to this huge
Speaker 3: polluting iron ore mine that had been sanctioned within a
Speaker 3: nationally protected forest area where there are sort of really
Speaker 3: important water sources serving thousands of people in the area.
Speaker 3: And this mine was owned by a very very powerful,
Speaker 3: wealthy couple linked to the National Party. The community is
Speaker 3: called Wapinol, and he was one of the key leaders
Speaker 3: in organizing that and the repression against that community that
Speaker 3: happened during the previous administration but also during the Liberal
Speaker 3: administration was really just like outrageous. Seven people, I think,
Speaker 3: not Juan, but seven other leaders were jailed for two
Speaker 3: years without bail from bogus charges. Juan and many others
Speaker 3: based criminal charges as well community as militarizers.
Speaker 2: I had threats all of the time.
Speaker 3: But the interesting thing about Juan was that at the
Speaker 3: time of his murder, he was actually in an elected
Speaker 3: Liberal Party official in the city of Takoa, which is
Speaker 3: the main city in naguan So he was like a
Speaker 3: local sort of counselor. And he had been calling out
Speaker 3: alleged corruption between the mayor, a Liberal Party mayor, and
Speaker 3: organized crime. And he had been calling this out, and
Speaker 3: he had been investigating any sort of alleged links to
Speaker 3: the mind but also linked to other sort of organized crime.
Speaker 3: And he was shot dead coming out outside a church
Speaker 3: in September twenty twenty four. I mean, it was really
Speaker 3: the most impactful murder of a environmental land defender since Berther.
Speaker 3: You know, one was much loved, incredible communicator, very well known,
Speaker 3: and a Liberal Party elected official right he liked Berther
Speaker 3: was meant to be the recipient of protective measures that
Speaker 3: had been ordered by the Inter American Commission of Human
Speaker 3: Rights because of the threats that he was facing, and
Speaker 3: he was killed anyway, like we've but the case of
Speaker 3: the Guapino defenders was well known by and had been
Speaker 3: taken up by many different UN experts, who after his
Speaker 3: death specifically called out for an independent investigation that looked
Speaker 3: at the ties between the mining company and the local
Speaker 3: and the mayor's office in the crime.
Speaker 2: None of that has happened so far.
Speaker 3: Three alleged assassins have been charged and their trial is
Speaker 3: due to start later this year, but none of those
Speaker 3: who conspired or ordered paid for this murder have been
Speaker 3: There's no evidence I have even been investigated, and I've
Speaker 3: spoken to people who have contacts in the prosecutor's office,
Speaker 3: the investigation has not proceeded at all, and so really
Speaker 3: to this day, if we think about since the coup,
Speaker 3: I'd say I don't know.
Speaker 2: At least two.
Speaker 3: Hundred landing environmental defenders have either been killed or disappeared
Speaker 3: in Hondura, and is by far the case where there
Speaker 3: has been most accountability. Accountability remains almost impossible, Impunity remains
Speaker 3: the norm. And I think with One's case, what we're
Speaker 3: seeing is another example of that.
Speaker 1: You just started to talk about this connection between what
Speaker 1: happened with Ernandez and then being convicted and then pardoned
Speaker 1: by Trump, and then I don't know, a year later
Speaker 1: he is going after Maruro for drug trafficking charges and
Speaker 1: using it as an excuse to take over Venezuela. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you must have been going like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's so many parallels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean the Venezuela piece of this goes
Speaker 3: back to the coup actually, right, And so Manuel Selaijah,
Speaker 3: the liberal president who was deposed in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: When he came into office, he was just like another landowner, right,
Speaker 3: he'd been involved in logging. It comes from one of
Speaker 3: the oldest trace Spanish sort of settler families, I mean,
Speaker 3: but slowly over his mandate as he became closer to
Speaker 3: the social movement right, and he actually became quite close
Speaker 3: to Chavez. He go Chaves at the time and was
Speaker 3: buying oil from Venezuela, and the US government at the time,
Speaker 3: specifically Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, absolutely hated this right,
Speaker 3: loathed loathed as a liar who decided to buy Venezuelan
Speaker 3: oil because energy prices are so disgustingly high, like outrageously
Speaker 3: high in Honduras because of this sort of mafia monopoly
Speaker 3: of the energy sector. When Hilary was standing for president
Speaker 3: against Trump, I went back and investigated her role in that,
Speaker 3: and I didn't find any smoking gun of the US
Speaker 3: involvement in the coup.
Speaker 2: But I absolutely can.
Speaker 3: Say that the US and hy Clinton inarticular allowed the
Speaker 3: coup to proceed, and they allowed the post CU regime
Speaker 3: to do what it wanted to do because the liar
Speaker 3: was a persononym Gwaetaf as well as the US was concerned. Right,
Speaker 3: So the Venezuela and goes back to then now fast
Speaker 3: forward land Orlando Hernandez was pardoned at the end of
Speaker 3: last year, literally as plans were already underway by the
Speaker 3: US to illegally depose Madua. Literally at the same time,
Speaker 3: Trump was claiming that Maduro and his wife and the
Speaker 3: Venezuelan regime were part of cartel, which doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: I know that one kills me because you could see it.
Speaker 1: They're like talking about it as that exists. And then
Speaker 1: they kind of get a couple of leaders that are
Speaker 1: friendly to them to repeat this name, that this exists,
Speaker 1: and then yeah.
Speaker 3: Well they claimed they were leading the is like this
Speaker 3: nickname that Venezuelan journalists gave two first Venezuelan military office,
Speaker 3: but then anyone from the state who were engaged in
Speaker 3: allegedly corrupt actions.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't exist as a group.
Speaker 3: It's like a loose term to describe corrupt officials. So yeah,
Speaker 3: so I mean literally, they pardoned this major drug trafficker.
Speaker 3: I mean, Hernandez unleashed scale of violence not before seen
Speaker 3: in Honduras. He deployed the army and the police created
Speaker 3: a whole new militarized police force in order to run
Speaker 3: this criminal enterprise, which, by the way, led to huge
Speaker 3: amounts of targeted killings of journalists, of defenders, of lawyers,
Speaker 3: of political opponents, of children, of women, and two hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of Honduans fleeing the country to immigrate to
Speaker 3: the US. Right, the man responsible for that, I've been
Speaker 3: transporting tons and tons and tons of cocaine to the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the US described it as him making a cocaine
Speaker 1: highway from Latin America to the US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Honduras before the coup was not a major player
Speaker 3: in the cocaine trade, but a couple of years after
Speaker 3: the coup, around eighty percent of the cocaine coming from
Speaker 3: the South was transiting through Honduras. Eighty purl right, I mean,
Speaker 3: the coup as well as unleashing this sort of pro
Speaker 3: business extractive nightmare on the country, it turned Honduras into
Speaker 3: a major player in the international drug trafficking trade. And
Speaker 3: the person found guilty by a US jewry and sentenced
Speaker 3: to forty five years was pardoned by Trump weeks before
Speaker 3: Nicholas Madua and his wife were illegally producted from Venezuela
Speaker 3: and transported to a gel. I mean, the joke here
Speaker 3: was the bed was still and I just left. The
Speaker 3: bed was still warm when Madua LANDI did in it.
Speaker 1: So wow, Okay, So all of this can be very
Speaker 1: depressing and disheartening for activists, right that It's like, man,
Speaker 1: the more so it's it's always hard, you're never winning,
Speaker 1: and then when you do, when you know, you up
Speaker 1: your chances of being assassinated. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the lasting impact that Bertha had on the movement.
Speaker 1: Other than I mean, there was this unintentional negative impact
Speaker 1: of like there was all this time that was that
Speaker 1: was spent on trying to get justice for Bertha, and
Speaker 1: like that took away from other things. But what are
Speaker 1: some of the things that she helped to put in
Speaker 1: place that are still there now and maybe coming back
Speaker 1: to life a little bit now too.
Speaker 3: Her family and Copine always sayle but the die she multiplied,
Speaker 3: and I think that's really true. I mean, honestly, I've
Speaker 3: been the last decade, the amount of places that I've been,
Speaker 3: where I've seen murals or slogans like commemorating birthday, friends
Speaker 3: traveling in places in different continents send me photos of
Speaker 3: of sort of these you know, yeah, these braffiti or
Speaker 3: pictures or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that you.
Speaker 3: Know her because of who she was, and because she
Speaker 3: was so well known internationally, right in indigenous movements, in
Speaker 3: local struggles in every continent that she she left. Anyone
Speaker 3: who ever met her has never forgotten her. But now,
Speaker 3: what I find really like incredible, and Gustava talked a
Speaker 3: lot about this is that people who were too young
Speaker 3: to remember but when she was alive, or who never
Speaker 3: met her are inspired by her. I as just one example,
Speaker 3: I was contacted by a young Mexican woman a couple
Speaker 3: of months ago, who has liber She studying literature in Montreal,
Speaker 3: and she'd come across my book which is which is
Speaker 3: available in French, right, and she'd read it and Bertha's
Speaker 3: story inspired her to write a short story which has
Speaker 3: now been published in the book. So it's sort of
Speaker 3: inspired art, it's inspired documentaries, it's inspired social movements, it's
Speaker 3: inspired sort of grants and educational opportunities, and I think
Speaker 3: that is Yes, her loss has been huge, and I
Speaker 3: don't leaders like Berta do not come along very often,
Speaker 3: and I think we really feel her absence. I mean
Speaker 3: every time there's a scandal in Honduras, so before every election,
Speaker 3: Like I think it's a gut puncher everyone because you
Speaker 3: miss her voice, you miss her analysis, you miss her clarity.
Speaker 3: But who she was and why she has missed so
Speaker 3: much means that she continues to inspire a social movements,
Speaker 3: activist leaders around the world, and I think that is real.
Speaker 3: And I think over the last few years, I think
Speaker 3: her organization copy In which is now led by her
Speaker 3: second eldest daughter, Berthida, has has moved from being in
Speaker 3: this potectual crisis mode to looking forward to taking actions
Speaker 3: proactive back and organizing around community land struggles and energy again.
Speaker 3: And I think some of these sort of regional bodies
Speaker 3: and confidences and so forth, that people just didn't have
Speaker 3: the time or energy your heart for a backup and running.
Speaker 2: So I think it's been a really slow process.
Speaker 3: I think her absence is really it still felt really
Speaker 3: sort of starkly, but I think who she was and
Speaker 3: her leadership and her clarity and her courage. She said
Speaker 3: this to me when I interviewed her that one time.
Speaker 3: She's like, please, don't think that I'm not afraid. I
Speaker 3: am afraid, but this is what I'm meant to be doing.
Speaker 3: And to me, courage is being afraid and keeping going anyway.
Speaker 3: And I think her courage is inspiring and it continues
Speaker 3: to sort of motivate people and movements around the world today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it's the kind of inspiration we all need
Speaker 1: more of these days. I just want to play some
Speaker 1: short clips here from the commemoration of Bertha's life that
Speaker 1: happened this week. Asperanza Mina gathered these from various friends
Speaker 1: that were there. First, we're going to hear from Bertha's
Speaker 1: daughter Laura Zunjega Casseres.
Speaker 7: Yo a viesanos the l No acceptamos lamerte comusi stemma
Speaker 7: k domin al mundo, no acesia, no acept lagera. Keremos
Speaker 7: construir associas the past, the terna, the revel dia, care alternativas.
Speaker 6: The vidra.
Speaker 1: She says, today, ten years after the assassination of my mom,
Speaker 1: we say again that we do not accept death as
Speaker 1: a system that dominates the world. We do not accept violence,
Speaker 1: We do not accept war. We want to build peaceful
Speaker 1: societies of tenderness, of rebellion that can create alternative ways
Speaker 1: of life. Bertha's friend, LINKA leader Rosselina Domingez, also spoke
Speaker 1: at the ceremony, telling the crowd Bertha empowered us women
Speaker 1: to fight for our rights as indigenous people. We are
Speaker 1: no longer afraid of the army, or police or judges.
Speaker 1: Bertha planted this rebellion and we continue to advance in
Speaker 1: her honor. After the ceremony, she talked about her role
Speaker 1: as women's coordinator for Bertha's organization, Copine.
Speaker 8: Para important moer is sorely and case well, look, you
Speaker 8: know the hoperela demas compagners is a verbatnos.
Speaker 1: Amir says for me, that role is very important as
Speaker 1: a woman, following in the footsteps of our colleague Bertha Caserres,
Speaker 1: who left us with the legacy that we can lead
Speaker 1: our fellow women and know that we also have the
Speaker 1: voice to defend and protect ourselves. And that's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Again, check out Nina's book if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Berta Casertas. Also go and read
Speaker 1: the story that she wrote for the website on Bertha
Speaker 1: and the ten year anniversary. There's a ton more background
Speaker 1: information and really interesting details about Bertha and her life
Speaker 1: and all the things going on and Ondoa since her
Speaker 1: death in that story that's at drilled dot Media. You
Speaker 1: can also sign up for our newsletter there. You can
Speaker 1: also donate to support our reporting there and find all
Speaker 1: kinds of other stories and resources as well. Check it out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 6: Po