Latin America
Related: About this forumAn Interview With Gustavo Castro, Sole Witness to Assassination of Berta Cáceres
An Interview With Gustavo Castro, Sole Witness to Assassination of Berta Cáceres
Danielle Marie Mackey
Apr. 18 2016, 3:01 p.m.
GUSTAVO CASTRO was the sole witness to the murder on March 3 of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres, the co-founder of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Movements of Honduras (COPINH). Castro, the director of Other Worlds, an environmental organization in Chiapas, Mexico, was also shot in the attack. After being barred from leaving Honduras, Castro was released on March 30 and has since settled in an undisclosed location. Last week he spoke by phone to The Intercept about the night of the murder and the reasons why environmental activism in Latin America is so dangerous.
Castros experience over the past month provides a remarkable glimpse into the Honduran justice system, which is notorious for its culture of impunity. In the months before her murder, Cáceres repeatedly said that she was being harassed by Desarrollos Energéticos, SA (DESA), the private energy company behind the Agua Zarca dam project, which she had vigorously opposed. After the murder, Cáceress family immediately pointed to DESA. On March 31, the Honduran public prosecutors office announced that it had seized weapons and documents from DESAs office and questioned several employees.
Contacted for comment, DESA provided the following statement: The board of directors of the company that is carrying out the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project has not given any declaration nor does it plan to do so until the authorities in charge of the investigation determine the causes and perpetrators of this regrettable incident that ended the life of the indigenous leader Berta Cáceres.
What happened during your last hours with Berta Cáceres?
I arrived on March 1 in San Pedro Sula, and that day they put me up in another home that belongs to other COPINH members in La Esperanza. It had been years since I had seen Berta in person, although we had been in touch by email. I was there to facilitate a workshop on environmentalism. That day Berta said to me, brother, come to my house, I have internet so you can get in touch with your family. We spent a while talking, even discussing the threats that she had received in the past and in recent weeks intimidation and threats to her safety by employees of DESA and people who seemed to be hit men contracted by DESA, the company behind the hydroelectric project called Agua Zarca.
More:
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/18/an-interview-with-gustavo-castro-sole-witness-of-the-murder-of-berta-caceres/
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)If the human rights claims that activists make are actually upheld contamination of water and land, violating previous and informed consent of communities or if they kick out a company for dumping toxic waste into rivers, for murdering community members, for causing cancer around mining sites like weve seen in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala if governments have to do something about these human rights claims by kicking out the extractive industry, theyll have to pay millions and millions of dollars that they dont have. Each country would have to sell itself 20 times over to pay off the debt. So this is not easy to solve. --from the OP (my emphasis)
The heart of the struggle that got Berta Caceras murdered:
This struggle must continue. I am not alone. Across Latin America there are thousands of people who are criminalized, who are being persecuted and threatened for defending human rights, who are defending the well-being of our planet. We must realize that that no one is exempt from this criminalization. Like so many friends who have been murdered for resisting. But there are many of us, and we will carry on.
The voracious capitalism we face cannot continue as is, with its accelerated and extractionist logic that is finishing off our planet. I think our great challenge is to realize that other worlds are possible. We can build something different, something dignified and just. There is enough water for everyone. There is enough land, enough food for everyone. We cannot continue feeding this predatory system of capital accumulation in the hands of so few. That system is unsustainable. So from wherever we are in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia we will all be affected by this system. Sometimes it seems that the crisis doesnt touch certain places, and sometimes we dont make the structural link to capitalism with the crises that the U.S. and Canada and France and Spain face. But I hope that we realize this soon, because it will affect us all sooner or later. And I want to say that there is still time to do something. This is urgent. --from the OP (my emphasis)