Berta Isabel Caceres Flores was born in La Esperanza, Honduras in 1973. She dedicated her life to environmental activism and was a leader to the Indigenous Lenca People. Caceres help established the Council Of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) founded in 1993.
The Lenca people rely on the land, the rivers, and corn crops as their main source of survival. Caceres battled the government continuously to make sure hydroelectric dam projects were not built for the benefit of private sectors. In 2015 Caceres won the Goldman Prize and was recognized for all her activist work in protecting the environment. Until her last day Caceres wanted the world to know that Honduras was and still is battling human rights violations, repression, kidnappings, and murder.
In 2016 Berta Caceres was murdered early in the hours of March 3rdin her home in Western Honduras in the city of La Esperanza. According to Kevin Clarke in Who killed Berta Caceres, “she was criminalized by Honduran authorities because of her activism, so now it is too difficult for her family to think the same system is going to make an independent and true investigation.”
During Caceres’ death she was in the middle of protesting the Agua Zarca Dam which is a hydroelectric project. This project has been pushed through without the permission of the indigenous Lenca people, violating international treaties dismissing indigenous people’s rights. One way that the Honduran environmental members were seeking justice was by reaching international press to pressure the Honduran authorities into an independent investigation of the killing of Berta Caceres and pushing the international agencies not to support projects that destroy sacred land from indigenous communities as well as steal from them for self profit.
Sadly no one has been found responsible for her murder. Global witness announced: “Following a two-year investigation into who’s behind these murders [in Honduras] we can reveal how projects at the heart of conflicts are linked to the country’s rich and powerful elites, among them members of the political class.” (Leny Rojas)
Going back to 2009 tension was thick, when a U.S. Coup led by graduates from the well known School of the Americasunder former President Obama and then secretary Hilary Clinton who is suspected to have a central role as emails were released. It is also important to remember that the U.S. has history of intervention in Honduras for more than a century. (Adam Johnson)
Fact: According to research by Global Witness, Honduras in the most dangerous country in the world, relative to its size, for activist protecting forest and rivers.
Honduran Women Activists 