Killing Berta: Honduras Rising

Slain Activist Berta Cáceres' Daughter: US Military Aid Has Fueled Repression & Violence in Honduras

by DemocracyNow!

March 18, 2016

Another indigenous environmentalist has been murdered in Honduras, less than two weeks after the assassination of renowned activist Berta Cáceres. Nelson García was shot to death Tuesday after returning home from helping indigenous people who had been displaced in a mass eviction by Honduran security forces.

Bertha Isabel Zúniga Cáceres one of the daughters of Berta Cáceres, the Honduran environmentalist assassinated on March 3.

Lilian Esperanza López Benítez the financial coordinator of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, which Berta Cáceres co-founded.

García was a member of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, co-founded by Berta Cáceres, who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize last year for her decade-long fight against the Agua Zarca Dam, a project planned along a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca people.

She was shot to death at her home on March 3. On Thursday, thousands converged in Tegucigalpa for the start of a mobilization to demand justice for Berta Cáceres and an end to what they say is a culture of repression and impunity linked to the Honduran government’s support for corporate interests. At the same time, hundreds of people, most of them women, gathered outside the Honduran Mission to the United Nations chanting "Berta no se murió; se multiplicó – Berta didn’t die; she multiplied." We speak with Cáceres’s daughter, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, and with Lilian Esperanza López Benítez, the financial coordinator of COPINH.