Statement on the Assassination of Berta Cáceres and Call to Action

Yesterday, Thursday, March 3, at 1 am CST, Berta Cáceres, a Lenca Indigenous woman and an internationally recognized leader, was assassinated in her home. Berta was supposed to be under special protection by the local authorities because of the innumerable death threats that she received. As General Coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Berta Cáceres was an organizer working at the frontlines in the struggle against the expropriation of land and water from her community by the construction of the Agua Zarca hydropower dam project in the Gualcarque River basin, promoted by the company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) and financed by foreign investors.

She was a courageous voice in defense of Lenca communities and the struggle for the rights of people and of Mother Earth.

She was a courageous voice in defense of Lenca communities and the struggle for the rights of people and of Mother Earth.  During her 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize Award ceremony, Berta shared these words:

“In our worldview, we are beings who come from the Earth, from the water, and from corn. The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet… Let us wake up! We’re out of time. WE must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction.

“Our Mother Earth – militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated – demands that we take action.”

The atrocious crime happened just three months shy of the seventh anniversary of the coup d’état that devastated Honduras and had rippling effects across the American continent. In the first year of the coup, 43 people were killed – half of them were trade union members. Since 2009, there have been over 100 organizers killed, many of them Indigenous Peoples and small scale farmers engaged in nonviolent struggles for land and territory, including Tomás Garcia of COPINH and Margarita Murillo of La Vía Campesina Honduras. Thousands of people left the country, a place considered one of the most unsafe places on Earth. Unaccompanied children travelled alone to find safety in the US, only to be held in makeshift warehouses and deported back to the very place they had fled. At the same, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization for the American States reports that children from 5 to 23 years are receiving military training in Honduras.

The murder of Berta Cáceres is a direct result of the ill-advised US policies for Latin America.

The murder of Berta Cáceres is a direct result of the ill-advised US policies for Latin America. It is past time for the US government to recognize that the financial and political support it has provided to the 2009 military coup and to the current Honduran government only fuels abuses by military personnel and the role of death squads against journalists, students and organizers, especially those at the forefront of defending land, territory, and natural resources.   Berta had warned that DESA was once again invading Lenca territories, this time accompanied by private and public armed forces, including the military police called “Tigres” – trained and financed by the United States.  Furthermore, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is directly supporting the Agua Zarca project through the USAID MERCADO program.

Besides Berta, other leaders from trade unions and peasant, Indigenous and Afro-descendent organizations are frequent targets of death threats. We ask friends and allies to participate in local actions to demand a prompt and full investigation into the killing of Berta Cáceres. We call on everyone determined to uphold human rights to immediately contact their congressional representatives, advise them that the US support to Honduras and to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project is destroying democratic rule in Honduras and killing innocent people, and demand an immediate end to such support.

Finally, we support the rightful demands of COPINH and of all Indigenous communities to protect and defend their lands and to prevent unwanted megaprojects in their territory, starting with the Agua Zarca dam project on the sacred Gualcarque River.

In solidarity,

US Food Sovereignty Alliance, United States
Climate Justice Alliance, United States
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, United States
World Forum of Fisher People, Global
Agricultural Missions, United States
American Federation of Government Employees (AFL-CIO), Local 3354, United States
American Jewish World Service, United States
Campaign for Food Justice, United States
Centro de Estudios en Ecología Política, Colombia
CIP – Americas Program, United States
Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations, United States
Community Alliance for Global Justice, United States
Community to Community, United States
Family Farm Defenders, United States
Farmworker Association of Florida, United States
Food Chain Workers Alliance, United States
Food First, United States
Global Greengrants Fund, United States
Grassroots International, United States
Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit, United States
Groundswell International, United States
Growing Food and Justice Initiative, United States
Indigenous Environmental Network, United States
Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, United States
Institute for Social Ecology, United States
International Development Exchange, United States
Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, United States
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, United States
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, United States
Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, United States
National Family Farm Coalition, United States
Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala, United States
New Roots, United States
Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, United States
Oakland Institute, United States
Other Worlds, United States
Partners for the Land & Agricultural Needs of Traditional Peoples, United States
People’s Climate Movement-NY, United States
Pesticide Action Network – North America, United States
Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos, Brazil
Rural Coalition, United States
Small Planet Institute, United States
Soil Generation, United States
Southwest Workers Union, United States
St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America, United States
Surplus People’s Project, South Africa
Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville, United States
WhyHunger, United States

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