¡Berta Lives! The Life and Legacy of Berta Cáceres
I began writing a eulogy for Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores years ago,
though she died only last week. Berta was assassinated by Honduran
government-backed death squads on March 3. Like many who knew and worked
with her, I was aware that this fighter for indigenous peoples’ power;
for control over their own territories; for women’s and LGBTQ rights;
for authentic democracy; for the well-being of Pachamama; for an end to
tyranny by transnational capital; and for an end to US empire was not
destined to die of old age. She spoke too much truth to too much power.
Berta cut her teeth on revolution. She was strongly marked by the
broadcasts from Cuba and Sandinista-led Nicaragua that her family
listened to clandestinely, gathered around a radio with the volume
turned very low; those stations were outlawed in Honduras. Always a
committed Leftist, Berta’s mother raised her many children to believe in
justice. Doña Bertha – the mother made her youngest child her namesake –
was mayor and governor of her town and state back when women were
neither, in addition to being a midwife. She was Berta’s life-long
inspiration. As a young adult, like so many others from the region who
shared her convictions, Berta went on to support the Salvadoran
revolution.
In 1993, Berta – a Lenca Native – cofounded the
Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras
(COPINH). At that time in the country, there was little pride and even
less power in being indigenous. Berta created COPINH to build the
political strength of Lencas, campesinos, and other grassroots sectors
to transform one of the most corrupt, anti-democratic, and unequal
societies in the hemisphere.
A Political Force: COPINH under Berta’s leadership
Berta loved to say, “They fear us because we’re fearless.” The
fearlessness paid off over the years. COPINH has successfully reclaimed
ancestral lands, winning unheard-of communal land titles. They have
stalled or stopped dams, logging operations, and mining exploration –
not to mention free-trade agreements. They have prevented many precious
and sacred places from being plundered and destroyed.
In addition to Berta’s remarkable leadership, COPINH’s victories have
come through their size, strength, unity, and fierce commitment.
Communities have participated in hundreds of protests, from their local
mayors’ office to the steps of the national congress. They have occupied
public spaces, including several of the six US military bases in their
country, and refused to leave. They have shut down the road to
Tegucigalpa, strategically blocking goods from moving to the city. They
have declared a boycott of all international financial institutions on
their lands. They have helped coordinate 150 local referendums to raise
the stakes on democracy.
Here is one of many tales that Berta told of strategies and actions.
The backstory is that Honduran farmers – which most COPINH members are –
wear thick work boots made of unventilated rubber. Over their course of
containing sweaty feet, they come to smell horrendously, so bad that
campesinos/as refer to them as
bombas,
bombs. Early in COPINH’s history, a team went from La Esperanza to
Tegucigalpa to negotiate with the government on a land titling law. The
discussions went on for days. Berta told that, during lunchtime, the
government received lavish, catered meals; the COPINH members had no
money, and so their side of the table stayed empty. Far less connected
in those days, the group had nowhere to sleep or shower, and spent the
nights in the streets. At one point, the negotiations were tense and the
members of COPINH’s team were shaky on their strategy. They asked for a
recess, but the government refused. So someone on the COPINH side gave a
discrete signal, and altogether the farmer-activists pulled off their
bombas.
The smell was so toxic that the government officials fled the room.
COPINH was able to regroup and develop a stunning strategy. The
indigenous radicals won the law.
The most recent campaign and partial victory are also the proximate causes of Berta’s death:
stopping the Agua Zarca dam project
on a sacred Lenca river. The COPINH community of Rio Blanco – everyone:
elders, toddlers, nursing mothers – formed a human barricade and
blocked construction of the dam. Meanwhile, Berta, other members of
COPINH, and national and international friends pressured the World Bank
and the largest dam company in the world, Chinese state-owned Sinohydro,
to pull out. Rio Blanco did not blockade the construction for an hour
or for a day, or for a week. They did it for more than a year. They did
it until they won. They got the most powerful financial interests in the
world to abandon the project. Tragically, because other financial
interests are always waiting in the wings to plunder for profit, the dam
is still under construction. Forty-eight more are either planned or
underway on their lands.
Berta’s belief in participatory democracy extended profoundly to her
everyday practice. As the unparalleled leader of COPINH, and with a
large gap between her level of education and political experience and
that of all but a few in the group, it would be have been easy for her
to act on her own. Yet she always made herself accountable to the
communities she worked for.
I saw the degree of this commitment in action one night when Berta
called in to Utopia, COPINH’s rural community meeting center, and asked
to speak to everyone. Fifteen or so people quickly gathered around the
cell phone on the shaky wooden table next to the only light, that of a
candle. Berta explained a fairly pro forma request that had come to her
from a government office, and proposed a response. When she was
finished, she asked the almost exclusively illiterate,
campesino/na
group, “¿Cheque sí, o cheque no?” All raised their thumbs toward the
little cell phone and called out, “Sí!” No joint decision had been
required, and yet she had sought consensus.
That’s accountability.
The Woman Behind the Myth
Berta was unflappable. She was calm in the face of chaos and strategic in the face of disaster. She got
right in the face of soldiers and goons when they aggressed her or others, and told them what was what.
Berta was indefatigable, working around the clock with no complaint.
When not traveling around Honduras or the world to raise support for the
struggle, she would wake early and go straight to her desk to receive
updates, often on the most recent attacks on COPINH members, and in
those cases to write condemnations – all even before a cup of coffee.
She would then jump into her yellow beater truck to pick up other
members of COPINH and head off to wherever action or investigation was
needed.
I was amazed that Berta drove that noteworthy truck everywhere
without protection, and that she lived in a house secured by only a
small bolt and a couple of friendly dogs. Then I realized that it made
no difference how much security she had. The government and the
companies she opposed almost always knew where she was (Berta also spent
periods in deep hiding), and how to get her when they were ready to
kill her.
Berta took two small breaks in her life. The first was a two-week
vacation with a friend in a neighboring country, the second a
three-month semi-repose at my house in Albuquerque – though even then
she spent most of her days building a continent-wide boycott of the
World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
Even as she served her community, Berta rose in the past decade to
become an international people’s diplomat. She was a heroine to many
global movements, a critical player in many struggles, a keynote speaker
at many venues. She was someone consulted by government officials, by
international networks, and even, a few months ago, by Pope Francis.
As we watched Berta’s rise as a global leader, our close friend and
colleague Gustavo Castro commented to me, “I hope she never loses her
humility.” She never did.
I once asked Berta how to say “integrity” in Spanish. She translated
it “coherencia,” coherence between one’s stated principles and actions,
coherence amongst all parts of one’s life. Berta had coherence.
She was highly critical of US Americans for our lack of that
coherence. She once led an anti-oppression training for an organization I
was running, in which she asked us to examine whether we were Caesars
or artisans. She meant whether our practice – not just our statements –
aligned us with the oppressors or with the oppressed, and whether we
were promoting the grassroots or ourselves as leaders. For a long time
after, the refrigerator that Berta and I shared held her line drawing of
a thonged Roman sandal. She also commented to me once that the problem
with US Americans is our attachment to comfort.
Berta herself eschewed comfort. She lived in the modest house in
which she was raised, where she cared for her elderly mother. She slept
in a bare cement room, more than half of which had been converted to her
office, housing her desk with its mountain range of documents and small
computer table. Her trademark style – regardless of with whom she was
meeting – was jeans, sneakers, and a cotton shirt. She did not shop, go
to fancy restaurants, take a plane when a bus was available.
Besides COPINH and the struggle for justice, Berta had another
profound commitment: to her mother and her four children. I recall
watching the deep pride on Berta’s face when one of her daughters, then
only 7 or so, recited a poem “Las Margaritas” (The Daisies) for a group
of foreign visitors; it was a very different expression than I had ever
seen. She grew prouder as her three daughters and son grew older, all of
them holding the flame for justice.
Following Berta’s murder, her children and mother issued a
statement
in which they said, “We know with complete certainty that the
motivation for her vile assassination was her struggle against the
exploitation of nature's common wealth and the defense of the Lenca
people. Her murder is an attempt to put an end to the struggle of the
Lenca people against all forms of exploitation and expulsion. It is an
attempt to halt the construction of a new world.
“Berta's struggle was not only for the environment, it was for system
change, in opposition to capitalism, racism and patriarchy.”
After the Honduran government dropped sedition charges against Berta –
one of its countless attempts to silence her - in 2013, someone asked
her mother if she were scared for her daughter. Laughing, Berta quoted
her mother’s response: “Absolutely not. She’s doing exactly what she
should be doing.”
Berta’s humor was legend. A joke from her, and her soft
up-and-down-the-scales laugh, punctuated the most tense of moments and
kept many of us going, even as she never strayed from the gravity of the
situation. One of her jokes was recirculated this week by radical
Honduran Jesuit priest Ismael “Melo” Moreno. He once accompanied her to
Rio Blanco, where someone snapped a photo of them together. As she
peered at the picture, Berta laughed and said to Melo, "Let’s see which
of the two of us goes first."
When Berta saw a performance of the Raging Grannies, a group of elder
women who dress up in outrageous skirts and joyously sing protest songs
at rallies and events in Albuquerque, she told me, “I never wanted to
live to be an old woman. Now I do.” That chance was just taken from her.
Repression in the Wake of Berta’s Death
One person witnessed the assassination: Gustavo Castro Soto, coordinator of
Otros Mundos Chiapas/Friends of the Earth Mexico, coordinator of the
Mesoamerican Movement against the Extractive Mining Model (M4), and co-founder and board member of
Other Worlds.
A close friend and ally of Berta, Gustavo slept in her house on the
last night of her life to provide accompaniment in the hope of deterring
violence, something dozens of us have had to do for her over the years.
Gustavo was shot twice and feigned death. Berta died in his arms.
Gustavo was immediately detained in physically and psychologically
inhumane conditions by the Honduran government, and held for several
days for "questioning." The subsequent days have resembled a bad spy
movie, with Gustavo finally given permission to leave the country, only
to be seized at the migration checkpoint at the airport by Honduran
authorities, then placed into protective custody in the Mexican Embassy,
only to be handed back to Hondurans, who took him back to the town of
La Esperanza again for "questioning." The Honduran government has just
said that Gustavo must stay in Honduras for 30 days. He is being
“protected” by the Tigers, vicious US-funded and -trained "special
forces.”
Chillingly, according to the State Department, the US is cooperating
with the Honduran investigators. A note from a close colleague, from
outside Gustavo's place of detention yesterday, said that a team of US
"FBI types" are actually in the interrogation room. The role of the US
government in the attempted destruction of social movements in Honduras
is vast. One can draw also draw a straight line from Washington to
Berta’s death. But that is the topic of another article.
Gustavo continues to be in terrible danger in Honduran custody, as
what he witnessed is an impediment to the government's attempts to pin
Berta's murder on COPINH itself. In a note to some friends on March 6,
Gustavo wrote, "The death squads know that they did not kill me, and I
am certain that they want to accomplish their task."
The Honduran government also imprisoned COPINH leader Aureliano
“Lito” Molina Villanueva for two days just after Berta’s murder, on
“suspicion in a crime of passion.” It is interrogating COPINH leaders
Tomas Gomez and Sotero Chaverria, while denying them lawyers. This is
part of an effort to criminalize COPINH members. Now, COPINH needs more
than ever to be protected, to be supported, and to carry on the legacy
that Berta helped to build.
¡Berta Lives!
Berta touched everyone she met, and even countless ones she didn’t.
My young daughter is one of those. The morning of Berta’s death, she
wrote this: “Bev tells me that her close friend Berta died last night. I
was shocked, because how can somebody kill someone who was only trying
to do what’s right? Then I remembered they killed Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X. If I die for doing the right thing, that would let me know
that I did my part in this world. Just like Berta.”
When Berta received the
2015 Goldman Prize,
the most prestigious environmental award in the world, she dedicated
the prize to rebellion, to her mother, to the Lenca people, to Rio
Blanco, to COPINH – and “to the martyrs who gave their lives in defense
of the riches of nature.”
Now Berta is one of these martyrs.
Berta, Gustavo, and I were co-founders in 1999, and have remained
active members of, the grassroots network Convergence of Movements of
the Peoples of the Americas (COMPA). Early on the horrific morning of
March 3, a COMPA listserv note blasted the news of Berta’s
assassination. Reading that message, I spotted the posting just prior,
dated February 24. It was from Berta. It read simply, “Aqui!” I am here!
She
is here. Long may Berta live, in the hearts, minds,
passions, and actions of all of us. May all women and men commit
themselves to realizing the vision of transformation, dignity, and
justice for which Berta lived, and for which she died.
¡Berta Cáceres, presente!
[update: the official translation of the peace accords uses the term "gender-sensitive approach"and so I have changed it here from the term gender approach which I first used]
1 a : of, relating to, or constituting a difference : distinguishing b : making a distinction between individuals or classes c : based on or resulting from a differential d : functioning or proceeding differently or at a different rate
If you are bilingual, and want to get in to interpreting for social movements (and are on the East coast or in the South of the US), there is a great training opportunity coming up Sept 30 - Oct. 2nd at Wayside. It's put on by fabulous compas and I recommend it highly. 
Years ago (2007) I blogged ableism as capacitadismo, at the time my own invention. Well it hasn't caught on, but capacitismo now has some decent googlage and a wikipedia entry:
I noticed that Adam Isaacson first rendered these as “Temporary Hamlet Zones for Normalization” - but later when he tweeted this map, they had been simplified to simply Temporary Normalization Zones". It's important to clarify that the zones will not take up the entire areas in red here, only some small part of each, since there are many veredas in a municipio. He used the false cognate here municipalities, but as you can see from their size, they are quite large, and I translate the Colombian term municipio as county. You can have townships in a county, but you wouldn't expect to have a hamlet in a municipality. Maybe that's why he dropped the term on the map? You also wouldn't expect a hamlet to be a legal entity, or for there to be thousands of them, as there are veredas in Colombia. I also imagine a hamlet to be quite small, but a vereda can actually cover a fair bit of area, with scattered homes throughout. Often these are not gathered into any kind of village as the term hamlet might make you think. I have in the past posted here my argument for translating the Colombian term vereda as township, but I have since had people tell me that there are both urban and rural townships in English. Since the Colombian vereda is rural, I have added that term here for clarity, but I think it would work without the rural if space or time is an issue. 
I had the honor of interpreting last weekend at the Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival with some great colleagues. One of my compas, Rebecca Yoder Neufeld, pointed me to an amazing online resource for biblical translations. Bible gateway has a quick search of every possible version of the bible, in both English and Spanish. You can simply enter the word ploughshares and up this comes - and then you can easily switch to other ver
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