Speaker 1: Date on time of autopsy March third, two sixteen. The
Speaker 1: calabric corresponds to one adult female. Three bullets, all fired
Speaker 1: from a Smith and Wesson thirty eight special. It ripped
Speaker 1: through her body complexion average body condition, intact height one
Speaker 1: and sixty three cimes, rigidity complete. One bullet entered her
Speaker 1: left arm and continued into her side. It pierced her
Speaker 1: left lung before lodging in her right one alterations observed
Speaker 1: de curtive tattoo on left upper third of back. Another
Speaker 1: bullet entered her left shoulder at an upward angle. It
Speaker 1: continued toward her neck, bursting the jugular vein and an artery.
Speaker 1: A third bullet entered her her upper back. It tore
Speaker 1: through her left lung, then her diaphragm, then her stomach,
Speaker 1: her adrenal gland, and finally fractured one of her vertebrae.
Speaker 1: Singer Print examination revealed that the corps registered as autopsy
Speaker 1: three two thousand and sixteen belongs to perte Ses. The
Speaker 1: medical cause of death was obvious to the coroner, but
Speaker 1: you'd never find the real cause by tracing those bullets.
Speaker 1: To do that, you have to follow the path of
Speaker 1: Berta's life as an activist. It starts in her childhood home.
Speaker 1: I'm monte Reel, an investigative journalist for Bloomberg Green. This
Speaker 1: is Blood Rivermento. Barretta's mother's name is Austra Flores. She's
Speaker 1: showing me around the family home in La Speranza, a
Speaker 1: small city in western Honduras. The rooms where bear To
Speaker 1: slept and worked for years remained pretty much as she
Speaker 1: left them. Her mother shows me Berta's old work files,
Speaker 1: her high school awards, and some of the rag dolls
Speaker 1: she liked to collect, including a little brown one Barretta's favorite.
Speaker 1: Austro wears her gray hair long, pulled back in a
Speaker 1: loose ponytail. Her eighty seven years have been full of challenges.
Speaker 1: She mothered twelve children. More recently, she suffered three strokes
Speaker 1: and a brain hemorrhage. But she's still sharp, and her
Speaker 1: memories of Berta are especially vivid. She was the youngest
Speaker 1: of the twelve, and Austra calls her Bertita an endearing
Speaker 1: way of saying, little Berta was a tireless fighter, and
Speaker 1: I think that yes, she learned a lot from me.
Speaker 1: Austro was born in nine three. That same year, the
Speaker 1: National Party of Honduras took control of the presidency. That
Speaker 1: party still exists. It's one of the two most powerful
Speaker 1: political coalitions in the country, the more conservative one. The
Speaker 1: National Party has evolved over the decades, of course, but
Speaker 1: some of its early leaders were classic authority arians. They
Speaker 1: cracked down on labor unions and the press. They jailed
Speaker 1: political enemies and even outlawed opposition parties. They denied citizenship
Speaker 1: and the right to vote to women, and they routinely
Speaker 1: exploited indigenous communities for cheap labor. These events in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties would shape the destiny of the
Speaker 1: Cassias family for generations. Austra's father was a critic of
Speaker 1: the National Party. He spent nearly five years in jail
Speaker 1: as a dissident. Austra would grow up to work as
Speaker 1: a midwife. She guesses she delivered something like five thousand
Speaker 1: babies over sixty years. Most of them were born in
Speaker 1: the countryside in small indigenous communities in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties. Her youngest daughter often could be found at
Speaker 1: her side, the depicting am Anna from when she was
Speaker 1: little would come with me, sometimes attending their births she'd
Speaker 1: hold a little candle to give me light because there
Speaker 1: was no electricity, and she'd bring me water she boiled it,
Speaker 1: and that's how she became aware that working on behalf
Speaker 1: of women was a necessity. Women, indigenous communities, the poor.
Speaker 1: These had been the underdogs in Honduras, the people that
Speaker 1: history hadn't been kind to. They inspired Austra to get
Speaker 1: involved in politics, and this was at a time when
Speaker 1: women in Honduras almost never did this. Austra became the
Speaker 1: first female mayor of La Speranza, then a provincial governor,
Speaker 1: later a member of the Honduran National Congress. Erta watched
Speaker 1: and learned, and as she got older, her own personality emerged.
Speaker 1: Her mother had raised her Catholic, but as Berta grew up,
Speaker 1: she began embracing Lenka traditions. The Lenka are the largest
Speaker 1: indigenous group in Honduras, but their language and traditions were
Speaker 1: largely lost obliterated by modern mainstream culture. This happened well
Speaker 1: before Berta was born, but an effort to reclaim and
Speaker 1: protect those traditions really started taking off in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: When Berta was a teenager. She embraced that movement and
Speaker 1: it helps shape her identity as a student activist. Her
Speaker 1: older brother says, by the time they were in high
Speaker 1: school together, he knew his sister was a leader and
Speaker 1: a rebel too. Yeah, it was ACiE. She was the
Speaker 1: president of her class and later of an entire school system,
Speaker 1: and if ever they expelled from it unfairly, she was
Speaker 1: always fighting for them. She even let us strike that
Speaker 1: we called against the school directors, who were in a
Speaker 1: way dictatorial. Dictatorial back then, in the eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 1: neighboring El Salvador was torn by civil war. The Cassari's
Speaker 1: family sympathized with the leftist rebels there, the ones fighting
Speaker 1: against the Salvadoran government. The family sheltered refugees in their home.
Speaker 1: After bear To graduated high school, she traveled to El
Speaker 1: Salvador to join the cause. She didn't take up arms,
Speaker 1: but she supported fighting units as a sort of field
Speaker 1: medic and radio operator. Bearts a return to Lasperanza in
Speaker 1: after less than a year in El Salvador. At home,
Speaker 1: she continued to embrace leftist causes. Members of the local
Speaker 1: police and the military now considered her a political agitator,
Speaker 1: and their suspicions extended to the whole Castra's family. Berta's
Speaker 1: brother remembers how encounters that seemed innocent at first could
Speaker 1: take unexpected turns Ama someone knocked on the door here
Speaker 1: and asked Mama if she would come and assist with
Speaker 1: a birth because Austra agreed to go with them in
Speaker 1: a taxi, but it was a trap. Police and soldiers
Speaker 1: surrounded the car and hauled her into the station. Barta
Speaker 1: was just nineteen or twenty years old when she heard
Speaker 1: her mother had been arrested. She snapped into action. Bertita
Speaker 1: started calling around town and the people started to mobilize.
Speaker 1: It was Betta who went to the police station arguing
Speaker 1: for Mama. Fighting for Mama. There was a protest with
Speaker 1: a about three thousand people there. They took over the
Speaker 1: entire police station to the Amanda release of Mama, and
Speaker 1: it was organized by Bertita and my other siblings did.
Speaker 1: By her early twenties, Marita was on her way to
Speaker 1: becoming the loudest voice for indigenous and women's rights in
Speaker 1: western Honduras, and by her thirties she'd become a national figure.
Speaker 1: She often traveled to the capital to goose Galpa to
Speaker 1: lobby for her causes. After President manuel's Eliah was elected
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, her influence grew. She wasn't a
Speaker 1: member of his party, but he sometimes supported her opposition
Speaker 1: to mining and hydro electric projects on indigenous lands, and
Speaker 1: she supported his proposal to rewrite the country constitution, a
Speaker 1: move that caused the Honduran establishment to rebel against Zaliah's administration.
Speaker 1: The Honduran military in particular, considered it a threat to
Speaker 1: the country's traditional order. Then, on June two thousand nine
Speaker 1: on during politics and the trajectory of Berta's life took
Speaker 1: a very sharp turn. It all began at dawn on Sunday,
Speaker 1: when some two hundred soldiers surrounded the president's private home.
Speaker 1: They took him at gunpoint and flew him out of
Speaker 1: the country to neighbor in Costa Rica, soldiers kidnapped President Zeliah.
Speaker 1: They smuggled him out of the country in his pajamas.
Speaker 1: The National Party, the same one that had imprisoned Berta's grandfather,
Speaker 1: took power instantly. Berta became a national leader of a
Speaker 1: new resistance movement. When the military oversaw a new round
Speaker 1: of elections, Barton and others urged the public to boycott
Speaker 1: the vote. She said, the same people who launched a
Speaker 1: coup couldn't be trusted to make the process fair. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of local and national candidates dropped out, but the election
Speaker 1: went ahead anyway. The National Party consolidated its power and
Speaker 1: now fully in control of the presidency and the National Congress.
Speaker 1: The party's leaders wanted to send a message to the world.
Speaker 1: They wanted other countries to know that things would be
Speaker 1: different here from now on. The government adopted a new catchphrase,
Speaker 1: and it was in English, as if composed especially for
Speaker 1: a foreign audience. The slogan was h O B. Honduras
Speaker 1: is open for business. For business in the new Honduran
Speaker 1: government held an international business conference to sell the idea
Speaker 1: to investors. The new leader of Congress, Juan Orlando Hernandez,
Speaker 1: told the audience that Honduras was prepared to cash in
Speaker 1: on one of its most valuable natural resources. We have
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the enormous potential of our rivers
Speaker 1: to build large dams and medium sized dams, and we've
Speaker 1: awarded around fifty contracts for clean energy with a clear
Speaker 1: message that this is the route we want to take
Speaker 1: moving forward. For moments, I had Clara the Honduran business
Speaker 1: elite rallied together to create companies that would build these
Speaker 1: new hydro electric projects. One of these companies was called Dessa.
Speaker 1: The government gave it the go ahead to build a
Speaker 1: dam on the Gualcrate River, a few hours drive from
Speaker 1: Las Bonanza. The project was called I was Zarca, and
Speaker 1: as soon as that project was set, Dessa was on
Speaker 1: a collision course with Berta. The Awa Zarka project was
Speaker 1: considered a small dam by industry standards. The original plans
Speaker 1: called for a damn wall that was about forty six
Speaker 1: ft tall. At its highest point, there was to be
Speaker 1: a mile long tunnel, a reservoir, and a power station.
Speaker 1: Berta and the Rio Blanco residents who opposed the project
Speaker 1: argued that the impacts would be devastating. The dam would
Speaker 1: disrupt the flow of the river and degrade the land
Speaker 1: they depended on for crops. But beyond those environmental impacts,
Speaker 1: they argued that the Rio Gualcrate is sacred to the
Speaker 1: link of people. They say the river is their life blood.
Speaker 1: But almost everything about the project violated Berta's worldview. The
Speaker 1: government was saying that this private company DSA would finally
Speaker 1: bring critical infrastructure to the tiny communities by the river,
Speaker 1: paved roads, electricity, schools. But in a radio interview in
Speaker 1: less than a year before she died, bear to explain
Speaker 1: that she hated that idea. She didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: those sorts of things to a company that was not
Speaker 1: subject to public oversight. This is the obligation of the state,
Speaker 1: of the government. We pay taxes for that. But if
Speaker 1: communities have a school, it's usually only because they fought
Speaker 1: and worked for it. So this is the duty of
Speaker 1: the state. It's not that you have to go to
Speaker 1: a private company for the right to have a road
Speaker 1: the indicated Helona company. So many of Berta's preoccupations as
Speaker 1: an activist came together in this project. Her environmentalism, her
Speaker 1: skepticism that a for profit business could reliably serve the
Speaker 1: public interest, and then there was the politics of it all.
Speaker 1: All of this was backed by the National Party, a
Speaker 1: group her family had been fighting for generations. It seemed
Speaker 1: like Berta's whole life had led her straight toward a reckoning.
Speaker 1: On that river. You can run for it. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: in a van and it's January. More than three years
Speaker 1: after Berta was killed, a member of Copeine, Berta's activist
Speaker 1: organization is with me, as well as a guide who's
Speaker 1: a friend of the casserous Emily. We're heading towards Rio Blanco,
Speaker 1: a town near the Gualcrate River. The plan for today
Speaker 1: is to meet people who worked alongside Bertha. I was
Speaker 1: warned that this trip could be risky. There's only one
Speaker 1: road that leads to Rio Blanco, the activists say. Locals
Speaker 1: who supported the Agua Zarka project have been known to
Speaker 1: attack people they believe are connected to Copeine. While we're driving,
Speaker 1: it starts to rain, and soon, just a couple of
Speaker 1: miles before we reach our destination, our van gets stuck
Speaker 1: on a muddy road in precisely the worst place to
Speaker 1: get stuck. We're directly in front of a group of houses.
Speaker 1: The activists tell me most of the attacks have happened
Speaker 1: Right here. Inside the van is Raoul, my copine friendly guide,
Speaker 1: and an activist named Dunia. They huddled together trying to
Speaker 1: brainstorm away out of this jam. Okay, so I'm saying,
Speaker 1: what options do we have? Um? She said, and I said,
Speaker 1: what about if we get beasts? And then she says
Speaker 1: the problem will be leaving the car here, because they
Speaker 1: have even attempted to set coping cars on fire, and
Speaker 1: there were only reason they couldn't set it on fire
Speaker 1: was because there was a crowd here like looking at
Speaker 1: the car. That would not be good. One option we
Speaker 1: don't have is calling someone. Our cell phones are not
Speaker 1: getting reception. And as we sit stuck in the mud,
Speaker 1: several people begin coming out of their homes. I see
Speaker 1: someone pacing at the top of the hill. Our van
Speaker 1: wasn't able to climb dune. You grew up around here,
Speaker 1: and she recognizes his face. So here's a guy on
Speaker 1: the hill top kind of walking around here with a machete.
Speaker 1: And she said that that guy his family has been
Speaker 1: harassing her family. It's not looking good. She's a little
Speaker 1: bit concerned about being attacked. It's really hard to stop
Speaker 1: looking at that machete, and pretty soon we noticed that
Speaker 1: he's not the only person carrying one. In rural Honduras,
Speaker 1: machetes are a pretty common sight for farmers here. It's
Speaker 1: just a tool of the trade. But in the conflict
Speaker 1: over the Awazarka Damn, machetes have been a weapon of choice.
Speaker 1: Our driver, Rony, sits still for a moment behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: letting everything sink in. Then he slams his palm onto
Speaker 1: the side of his head three times, almost tass Ronnie,
Speaker 1: almost bass see how he was, and he said stressed.
Speaker 1: So here we are trapped. The vans, we ehels are
Speaker 1: spinning and spraying mud everywhere, but we're not budging. And
Speaker 1: all the while more people keep coming out of the
Speaker 1: houses and they just stand there staring at us. This
Speaker 1: goes on for about forty five minutes. The standoff is
Speaker 1: an appropriate introduction to Rio Blanco. The threat of violence
Speaker 1: has become this community's defining feature. Eventually, some people approach
Speaker 1: the van from behind. DOONI recognizes them, their friends. They
Speaker 1: offer us a ride in a truck that's a lot
Speaker 1: more agile in the mud than our vehicle. We hopped
Speaker 1: in and make it up the little hill, pass the
Speaker 1: staring onlookers and pass their machetes. Safe. Before the damn
Speaker 1: came into our community, this was a community that was
Speaker 1: nice and clean. We were able to go out onto
Speaker 1: the road in the dark. And now we can't, or
Speaker 1: we can't, but we're torn to pieces. So that's why,
Speaker 1: and even now it's still the case. This damn came
Speaker 1: in and tore our community apart. There's this was one
Speaker 1: of the people we'd come to see. Maria Santo Dominguez,
Speaker 1: like everyone else in this tiny village. She lives in
Speaker 1: a cramped cinder block house. Pigs and chickens root in
Speaker 1: the yard by the outhouse. Sometimes they try to wander
Speaker 1: in the front door. When officials from Deessa, the hydro
Speaker 1: Electric company, came here in they promised electricity, new roads,
Speaker 1: and new schools. Some of the locals welcomed that attention,
Speaker 1: but Maria was skeptical. Her family got water from the
Speaker 1: Gualcaque River they grew corn along its banks. When Bert
Speaker 1: Casseres began organizing local opposition to the project, Maria became
Speaker 1: one of her most loyal companions. If we weren't organized,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't still be here, because the damn, it's a
Speaker 1: dam of death. Dessa had hired Sino Hydro, a Chinese contractor,
Speaker 1: to handle construction. In early Sino Hydro established a work
Speaker 1: site a couple of miles from Maria's house. She worked
Speaker 1: with Copeine to help erect roadblocks to prevent construction equipment
Speaker 1: from moving in and out, but some of Maria's neighbors,
Speaker 1: the ones who supported the project took offense. Things come
Speaker 1: to a head that summer. One morning, Maria is walking
Speaker 1: beside a dirt road when several neighbors surround her, three men,
Speaker 1: two women. The men are holding machetes, the women carry
Speaker 1: heavy sticks. They tell her she's strangling the local economy.
Speaker 1: What else, That's why we live in poverty, they told me,
Speaker 1: because I don't allow projects to come in that would
Speaker 1: help everyone. And I told them, no, you're so wrong,
Speaker 1: because what they're doing will only contaminate the water, the land.
Speaker 1: They told me, okay, woman, what we're going to do
Speaker 1: is kill you. And when they told me they were
Speaker 1: going to kill me, that's when I felt the first blow.
Speaker 1: The first strike of the machete hit me in the head,
Speaker 1: and after that another machete hit me here in the chest,
Speaker 1: and then there was another that got my finger. That
Speaker 1: finger falls away, severed. She's bleeding from wounds in her
Speaker 1: chest and her head. As Maria is being attacked, her
Speaker 1: husband arrives on the scene. The attackers turn on him.
Speaker 1: They slash him with a machete, heading into his hand,
Speaker 1: his forehead, and the skin around his left eye. When
Speaker 1: the carnage is over, the two of them are rushed
Speaker 1: to a hospital. They spend eight days they're recovering. Maria
Speaker 1: says they were still healing when a fellow coping activist
Speaker 1: named Thomas Garcia helps organize an impromptu protest at the
Speaker 1: Sino Hydro construction site. Maria refers to Thomas as her
Speaker 1: ermano or brother in the sense that they were fighting
Speaker 1: for the same cause. And yeah, so the day before that,
Speaker 1: the police came and they offered my brother twenty lympidas
Speaker 1: twenty thousand lympires at the time was worth about four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars. That's a lot of money in
Speaker 1: a place like this, more than a month's worth of
Speaker 1: income for a lot of people, Maria says. Tomas Garcia
Speaker 1: refused the offer. She says he considered it a bribe,
Speaker 1: something to make sure he wouldn't stir up trouble for Deessa.
Speaker 1: She says, the company and the local police seemed to
Speaker 1: be working together. Company officials vehemently deny these allegations, and
Speaker 1: we will fully explore their version of these events later
Speaker 1: in this series. But Maria insists the offer was a bribe,
Speaker 1: and so my brother said that there was no way
Speaker 1: he was ever going to negotiate that he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to go against his partners in this struggle. He said,
Speaker 1: if he dies, it's better to die clean. He could
Speaker 1: never get involved in that kind of negotiating. The next
Speaker 1: day is July, the of the protest, and it will
Speaker 1: define the conflict on the river up until the moment
Speaker 1: where it gets killed. That morning, Thomas and the other
Speaker 1: protesters gathered near the village to make the track to
Speaker 1: the construction site. Thomas's seventeen year old son Alan tagged along. Today,
Speaker 1: Alan is twenty four years old. From there, we started
Speaker 1: to leave at exactly eight o'clock in the morning, and
Speaker 1: we arrived at the site around ten o'clock. There we
Speaker 1: found soldiers and police and some of the officials from
Speaker 1: the company. Just then when we entered the site, they
Speaker 1: shot my father, well, they assassinated him and they shot
Speaker 1: me too. It was a soldier from see what the pick?
Speaker 1: So that easy what the pick. The security force that
Speaker 1: protected the work site was a mix of civilian and
Speaker 1: military guards. Alan disputes the story that the soldier who
Speaker 1: fired the shots later told the guards said he fired
Speaker 1: in self defense because Alan's father was threatening him with
Speaker 1: a machete. Alan survived three gunshot wounds to the chest
Speaker 1: and back. His father was killed instantly. So even now,
Speaker 1: nearly seven years after those incidents, the wounds still feel
Speaker 1: fresh for those who lived through them. After my first
Speaker 1: trip to Rio Blanco with Copaine members, I returned about
Speaker 1: a week later. This time I wanted a different perspective.
Speaker 1: I was with community members who had supported the Damn
Speaker 1: project and Desa. The roads had dried out by now,
Speaker 1: but I was shocked when they drove me to the
Speaker 1: exact spot where the van had been stuck the week before.
Speaker 1: They led me on foot towards the very house that
Speaker 1: Copeine had described as the most dangerous one in Rio Blanco.
Speaker 1: They told me this was the home of the Madrid family.
Speaker 1: I recognized the name. Reports by various nonprofit groups outlining
Speaker 1: the tensions here had mentioned the Madrids. One report I
Speaker 1: had read from said the family had tried to intimidate
Speaker 1: opponents of the Damn through quote constant harassment. It was
Speaker 1: the Madrid's who had sold Dessa the land that would
Speaker 1: become its work site. This was a family that clearly
Speaker 1: and emphatically sided with the company. As I approached the
Speaker 1: Madrid house, coffee beans were drying in the sun. We
Speaker 1: walked around the back of the house. There we found
Speaker 1: the family matriarch, sixty four year old Erinea Madrid. She
Speaker 1: was washing her hair in a cistern she'd held off,
Speaker 1: combed her hair and we sat down to talk a
Speaker 1: Milion Massa Lanco. The family that has been the most
Speaker 1: affected in Rio Blanco has been the Madrid family, all
Speaker 1: because the institution of Copine, that lady Berta Cases came
Speaker 1: here and poisoned the people. These ignorant people, ignorant of
Speaker 1: a project that was going to move this community forward,
Speaker 1: because she was only looking for benefits for herself. Solo
Speaker 1: Aarona was inside this house the day of the tragic
Speaker 1: protest in when the conflict carved permanent riffs in this community.
Speaker 1: The fifteenth of July was a Monday. I can never
Speaker 1: forget it. It was Monday, and they marched by here, yelling, yelling, yelling,
Speaker 1: until they got to the work site Ritundo. No more
Speaker 1: than an hour later, just after Thomas and Alan Garcia
Speaker 1: had been shot, she heard more commotion. It was coming
Speaker 1: from the field directly behind the house. Her grandson Christiane
Speaker 1: had just headed down there and so the boy walks
Speaker 1: down there. We have a pasture and there are cows
Speaker 1: down there that the boy takes care of. Every day.
Speaker 1: Christiane would milk the cows and give some to the
Speaker 1: workers at the Sino Hydro site. They're in that pasture
Speaker 1: with the cows. A group of men returning from the
Speaker 1: deadly protest encountered the boy. Joey. I heard the shots,
Speaker 1: but never did I imagine, Never did it cross my
Speaker 1: mind that these people were going to repay me in
Speaker 1: this way, because I before the eyes of my God,
Speaker 1: I feel that I had freely eaten and drank them freely,
Speaker 1: as with all my friends. Never could I have imagined
Speaker 1: they'd pay me like this by killing that boy who
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with this Copeene denies involvement in
Speaker 1: that killing, but Aarona is convinced that the protesters took
Speaker 1: the boy's life in exchange for Thomas Garcias Christian was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, his mother had died giving birth to him.
Speaker 1: Erna was technically his grandmother, but she'd raised him as
Speaker 1: her son. As aaron Ea tells me the story, I
Speaker 1: noticed there's a picture of a boy on the wall
Speaker 1: behind her. As she talks He's wearing a blue suit
Speaker 1: and tie. A caption printed above the image reads, Christiane,
Speaker 1: you live in the heart of our family and the Belos.
Speaker 1: I took hold of him eight hours after he was born,
Speaker 1: and so that's why this has cost me so many tears.
Speaker 1: I said to God, leave him for me, because I
Speaker 1: need him in my life, you know, I mean, my boy,
Speaker 1: how can it be? And it hurts me? These things
Speaker 1: they've done are unfair. Yo. I have not been able
Speaker 1: to overcome this, the death of my son. It's already
Speaker 1: six years ago, but for me, it's like it was yesterday. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Number Sergio Roriez. My name is Sergio Rodriguez. I'm a biologist.
Speaker 1: I've been a consultant studying environmental impacts all of my
Speaker 1: life twenty years, and I started working Fordessa in June
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. Then don't mean if the Awa Zarca
Speaker 1: Damn project had a face in the communities beside the
Speaker 1: Rio gual cart it was Sergio Rodriguez. Several development banks
Speaker 1: in Europe and the America's were funding the project. To
Speaker 1: get that money, the company had to meet certain environmental standards.
Speaker 1: It was Sergio's job to make sure that happened, and
Speaker 1: when Deessa contracted with Sino Hydro, the Chinese company to
Speaker 1: start construction in early Sergio also was tasked with maintaining
Speaker 1: good nations with the people living nearby. He pitched the
Speaker 1: promised up sides, the new roads, new schools, new jobs.
Speaker 1: Sergius says that at the time construction was set to
Speaker 1: begin in the atmosphere in Rio Blanco was calm. In Shemo,
Speaker 1: at first the project had good relations with the different
Speaker 1: communities on both sides of the river and Inibuca and
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara. Then when dro started, we ran into a
Speaker 1: few problems with its workers going on to properties without
Speaker 1: asking permission, or when they were doing topographical work, they
Speaker 1: cut down some of the corn fields and the machines
Speaker 1: plowed up land and some of the neighbor's property. So
Speaker 1: these little problems started day by day, and we were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have to fix this. We will fix this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: With Sergio's promises didn't satisfy the damn's opponents. Sergio puts
Speaker 1: part of the blame on Berta. He says she tried
Speaker 1: to convince residents that the roads and schools would never
Speaker 1: be built in July, Sergio says he wanted to work
Speaker 1: things out with Berta. She agreed and they met for
Speaker 1: the first time at a Copine run community center called
Speaker 1: Utopia in La Speranza Das. We were there talking with
Speaker 1: them and we proposed a way to solve the conflict
Speaker 1: and to guarantee the communities that the social projects would
Speaker 1: be completed and Copine could be in charge of them
Speaker 1: or they could supervise our construction of them, and their
Speaker 1: position was no. Three days later, in Rio Blanco, Tomask
Speaker 1: Garcia and his son Alan were shot at the demonstration.
Speaker 1: Young Christiane Madrid was killed in the family cow pasture went.
Speaker 1: I went the next day and well, it was devastating
Speaker 1: to see everything that had happened, painful because of the
Speaker 1: deaths that had occurred, both of Tomas Garcia and Christian Madrid.
Speaker 1: Christian I knew him, and so we evacuated some things
Speaker 1: from the site and the project was suspended. As such.
Speaker 1: In PRIs, project of Sergio filed criminal complaints against Berta
Speaker 1: and Copeine. Cino Hydro abandoned the work site and never
Speaker 1: came back. Dessa severed its relationship with the company soon thereafter.
Speaker 1: Sergio says Dessa wasn't happy with the way Sino Hydro
Speaker 1: had been operating anyway, and they hired a new contractor.
Speaker 1: Dessa executives came up with a plan to salvage the project.
Speaker 1: They tweaked the design of the dam. Now it would
Speaker 1: be what's called a run of the river hydro electric project.
Speaker 1: Instead of featuring a large dam wall, run of the
Speaker 1: river project directs water into tunnels built beside the river
Speaker 1: and into the power station. Then the water is rerouted
Speaker 1: back to the river downstream, so there's usually much less
Speaker 1: environmental impact. Additionally, Dessa moved the project to a new
Speaker 1: location to avoid conflict. Then we moved the side of
Speaker 1: the dam, relocating a two kilometers upstream where we had
Speaker 1: one support and there was no problem. The move didn't
Speaker 1: end the protests from Copeine. Even if the environmental impacts
Speaker 1: were reduced, they didn't completely disappear. The protesters argued that
Speaker 1: it was still a disruptive construction site. The river's aquatic
Speaker 1: life and the strength of its flows could be altered.
Speaker 1: Copaine planned one of its protests for February, just a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks before Berta was killed. Sergio says most
Speaker 1: of the protesters were bust In from Latahea, a neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Rio Blanco that's on the other side of the river,
Speaker 1: near the previous side of the project. We had information
Speaker 1: that Berta Casseres was going to come and that she
Speaker 1: had as the residence of La Teja to cross the
Speaker 1: river again and they were to occupy the project's property
Speaker 1: for something like eight days. Because we knew this demonstration
Speaker 1: was going to happen, obviously, we called the police again
Speaker 1: and the police arrived before the protests started, until they
Speaker 1: When Sergio got to the scene, he spotted a familiar
Speaker 1: face among the demonstrators. I approached Berta Cassis and greeted her.
Speaker 1: How are you doing, Berta, I asked her. I congratulated
Speaker 1: her on the golden prize that they had given her
Speaker 1: in and she told me, you're invited to come visit
Speaker 1: the Utopia Center so you can see what we've done
Speaker 1: with the price premier that he says was the extent
Speaker 1: of their conversation. Sergio says it was the last time
Speaker 1: he'd ever see her. About two weeks after that meeting,
Speaker 1: Sergio's phone rang Sinco on the third of March at
Speaker 1: five thirty in the morning, approximately I received a call
Speaker 1: from Claudia Dasso, my colleague. She told me Sergio they Kilberta.
Speaker 1: I said, what what happened? The como Sergey has searched
Speaker 1: for news on TV. He made a few calls and
Speaker 1: he began exchanging text messages with others At Tessa, everyone
Speaker 1: is like, what happened here? What's the latest, what's the
Speaker 1: impact of this? And also, this is a crisis for
Speaker 1: us because we're going to point the finger at us.
Speaker 1: AGAs Arka was Copin's banner, so it was logical that
Speaker 1: they're going to point to us. So Geo says he
Speaker 1: expected investigators to come knocking on his door, and so
Speaker 1: he waited. Days passed than a week, then another week.
Speaker 1: No one came in those days after the murder, Gustavo
Speaker 1: Castro had emerged as a prime suspect for police. He's
Speaker 1: the Mexican activist who was in the house with Bertha
Speaker 1: on the night of the murder, and he'd been shot
Speaker 1: in the hand in the year. You might remember that
Speaker 1: when we last heard from him, he was detained at
Speaker 1: an airport in Honduras. Authorities wouldn't let him leave the country,
Speaker 1: so a couple more weeks past, Gustavo was now hold
Speaker 1: up in the Mexican embassy in Honduras, the only place
Speaker 1: he says he felt safe. The Honduran investigators were still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how he might be connected to
Speaker 1: the crime. Gustavo's brother flew in from Mexico to try
Speaker 1: to help bring him home, but had no luck. They
Speaker 1: took us to a room, and there they tell us
Speaker 1: Gustavo Castro is now prohibited from leaving the country for
Speaker 1: thirty days a little career. His lawyers asked to see
Speaker 1: the court order declaring that he beheld in the country,
Speaker 1: but Gustavo says there was no court order. So his
Speaker 1: lawyers tried to fight back. They went to the courthouse
Speaker 1: in Las Branza and filed two petitions. One was a
Speaker 1: complaint about not being shown a court order. The other
Speaker 1: asked that he be allowed to go home. And so
Speaker 1: my lawyer comes back the next day and the judge
Speaker 1: tells her he is suspending her from professional practice. In
Speaker 1: other words, he said to my lawyer, it's ruled that
Speaker 1: you cannot practice law for the next month, a suspension
Speaker 1: that can only be done by a bar association there's
Speaker 1: a whole process for that. So with complete impunity, they
Speaker 1: wanted to leave me without legal representation and leave me
Speaker 1: on my own. But I so Gustavo was stuck in limbo.
Speaker 1: Authorities wouldn't tell him or bear to his family how
Speaker 1: he fit into their investigation. Two weeks after the murder,
Speaker 1: the Honduran prosecutors issued a declaration. They said that no
Speaker 1: details of the probe were to be shared with the
Speaker 1: Cassarus family or their lawyers. The decree said that the
Speaker 1: family would only be given quote information that doesn't jeopardize
Speaker 1: the investigation. The Cassarras family and Gustavo we're in the dark.
Speaker 1: So they turned to an international network of activists. Environmentalists
Speaker 1: and human rights campaigners have been following the story from abroad.
Speaker 1: Those activists went on a media blitz, hoping to pressure
Speaker 1: the Honduran investigation from the outside. This is a clip
Speaker 1: from Democracy Now, an internationally distributed radio and TV program.
Speaker 1: The host Amy Goodman is interviewing Beverly Bell, an American
Speaker 1: activist who had been a friend to both Berta and Gustavo.
Speaker 1: What is happening right now in the wake and the
Speaker 1: horror of the Ertaksa's assassination. What's happening to Gustavo Castro Sota.
Speaker 1: It reads like the worst horror movie you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: It's just been crazy where Gustavo was locked up in
Speaker 1: horrible conditions. Horrible. What are you calling for now? We
Speaker 1: are calling for his safe passage out of Honduras back
Speaker 1: to Mexico. We are also calling for an independent investigation
Speaker 1: of the assassination of Berta Casades because so far it's
Speaker 1: been grossly manipulated by the Honduran government, which is seeking
Speaker 1: to target and blame other members of Berta's group, who
Speaker 1: themselves have been detained and are now being investigated. They
Speaker 1: had ripped a page out of Berta's own playbook. If
Speaker 1: the Honduran government wasn't listening to them, maybe the noise
Speaker 1: of an international pressure campaign would attract some attention. They
Speaker 1: argued that instead of focusing on Gustavo or on Berta's colleagues,
Speaker 1: they should look at Dessa. Berta herself had repeatedly said
Speaker 1: that the company had been the source of threats against
Speaker 1: her life. Berta's daughter, er Tita Isabelle, continued to press
Speaker 1: investigators to shift the focus of the probe. The public
Speaker 1: ministry had no idea what to do with themselves, so
Speaker 1: we were saying, look at the company. But thirteen or
Speaker 1: fourteen days past before the company for the first time
Speaker 1: was targeted in On March sixteenth, the prosecutor Ingredi Figured
Speaker 1: called me and told me that I should go to
Speaker 1: testify in the case of the death of Beta in
Speaker 1: the city of Li Speranza and Prancer. Sergio says he
Speaker 1: told the investigator the same version of events he described
Speaker 1: to me. He said he'd barely known Berta, and that's
Speaker 1: when the investigator dropped a bomb on him. Calida Investigato.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor ingrid Figured told me, you're giving a statement
Speaker 1: as someone who's being investigated. That's because there's testimony that
Speaker 1: you threatened Berta cass with death. I was surprised. I
Speaker 1: had seen Berta cas Is three times in my whole life.
Speaker 1: Several of Berta's colleagues with Copaine told investigators that Sergio
Speaker 1: had been harassing Berta since two thousand twelve. He threatened
Speaker 1: her with repeated telephone calls, and that conversation that happened
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks before the murder, the one that
Speaker 1: Sergio says was friendly when he congratulated her on the
Speaker 1: Goldman Prize. Copine witnesses say Sergio was angry with Berita
Speaker 1: that he threatened her again. After his interview with a
Speaker 1: prosecuting investigator, Sergio returned to his home into Goose Galpa.
Speaker 1: Later that same day that Sergio was questioned, another copine activist,
Speaker 1: a man named Nelson Garcia, was shot and killed about
Speaker 1: a hundred miles south of La Speranza, and during police
Speaker 1: considered it an isolated case. He'd been involved in other
Speaker 1: protests which weren't connected to Dessa or a Wazarca. Even so,
Speaker 1: that killing got the attention of two European development banks
Speaker 1: that had backed the project. Both said they'd suspend financing
Speaker 1: until the investigation was resolved. So now Sergio's job had
Speaker 1: become much more difficult, but he hadn't given up on
Speaker 1: the project. As far as he knew. The accusations against
Speaker 1: him were going nowhere. He continued working for Dessa, waiting
Speaker 1: for the smoke to clear, but there were signs the
Speaker 1: investigation was evolving. In April, Gustavo Castro was finally allowed
Speaker 1: to leave the country. He had been held by authorities
Speaker 1: for more than a month, but now he was no
Speaker 1: longer considered a suspect. The investigator's interests seemed to be
Speaker 1: shifting towards other people. Sergio was one of them. And
Speaker 1: then on May two, my lawyer called me and said
Speaker 1: there's a warrant to search your house that day. May
Speaker 1: second would begin at dawn with a series of raids
Speaker 1: and so prize arrests. By late morning, secret developments inside
Speaker 1: the investigation began to emerge. A new cast of characters
Speaker 1: would assume center stage. By evening, more blood would be
Speaker 1: spilled the story of that day from dawn to dusk
Speaker 1: on the next episode of Blood River. Blood River is
Speaker 1: reported and written by me Mons. Reel topor Foreheads is
Speaker 1: our senior producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Our
Speaker 1: theme was composed and performed by Senia Rubinos. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Patricia Eliah, Carlos Rodriguez and Jose Roscoe. Francesca Levy
Speaker 1: is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, and if you like what you hear,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review. It helps others find out
Speaker 1: about the show. Thanks for listening.