Bertha Zúñiga is no stranger to threats. She remembers the day years in the past when she and her colleagues have been chased by machete-wielding attackers in western Honduras.
A automobile blocked their automotive, and its passengers stepped out with their weapons, attempting to assault the group. They managed to flee, however the incident was not the first – nor wouldn’t it be the final time Zúñiga would face a violent risk.
That encounter got here simply over a 12 months after Zúñiga’s mom, Berta Cáceres, a outstanding indigenous rights activist in Honduras, was killed in her house in March 2016, resulting in Zúñiga taking the management of her group, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).
Zúñiga was a toddler when her mom began the group to defend indigenous Lenca land from business pursuits that native communities say hurt and exploit it.
Zúñiga’s group has been combating in opposition to controversial initiatives resembling the since-paused Agua Zarca dam in northwest Honduras that activists say would value the Lenca individuals their livelihood. The local people fears the hydropower station on the Gualcarque River would destroy its distinctive ecosystems and the neighborhood’s agricultural manufacturing areas and sources of meals and pure drugs. But Cáceres’ strikes in opposition to the venture confronted highly effective pushback.
Environmental and human rights investigative group Global Witness mentioned that in 2023 Honduras ranked the third deadliest – tying with Mexico, behind Colombia and Brazil – for environmental defenders and had the world’s highest variety of killings of surroundings defenders per capita.
In April 2013 Cáceres organized a highway blockade in the Río Blanco area to cease the energy firm that owned and operated the Agua Zarca venture, Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA), from accessing the dam web site. The blockade lasted over a 12 months regardless of eviction makes an attempt and violent attacks.
“I began to see that it was a much more aggressive fight than we ever had in COPINH’s history,” Zúñiga instructed NCS. “My mom always took me to the communities, made me see what was happening and learn there in person, but she held back a lot. She didn’t want me to go to Río Blanco.”
When Zúñiga insisted on going to the area, her mom instructed her to make use of her center title and never reveal whose daughter she was.
Cáceres knew her work was harmful and, from a younger age, Zúñiga realized to take her security critically amid fears of kidnapping. Someone at all times needed to accompany her to high school and decide her up, even after she bought older. She didn’t have the freedom most different kids did.
The 12 months earlier than her murder, Cáceres sat her grownup kids down for a chat. “She told us that anything could happen in this country and that we should not be afraid,” Zúñiga mentioned.
A workforce of worldwide authorized specialists who investigated Cáceres’ murder discovered it was not an isolated incident, however the consequence of a bigger plot. To date, eight individuals have been sentenced in reference to her dying, together with former senior employees of DESA. The firm couldn’t be reached for remark however had beforehand maintained its workers’ innocence and has lengthy denied any connection to the killing. The high-profile convictions included former govt Roberto David Castillo Mejía, who was sentenced to over 22 years, and DESA’s former environmental supervisor Sergio Rodríguez, who was sentenced to 30 years. Both claimed they have been harmless.
A big portion of water sources in Honduras are on indigenous territory, and the authorities typically grants entry to these sources to enterprise teams with out adequately consulting native indigenous communities. Corporate pursuits in the area typically intention to shortly extract pure sources in a means that maximizes financial advantages with out contemplating the results on the surroundings and native populations, says Laura Furones, a senior adviser at Global Witness.
“These local populations normally benefit little or nothing,” she instructed NCS.
Over the years, authorities insurance policies favoring the personal sector and corporations aiming to revenue from the nation’s pure sources have been put in place to spice up the financial system after it was devastated by occasions like Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the 2009 coup that ousted then-president José Manuel Zelaya.
Just days after Cáceres’ dying, COPINH member Nelson García was fatally shot. In January 2023, Aly Magdaleno Domínguez Ramos and Jairo Bonilla Ayala, outspoken activists in opposition to an iron ore mine, have been discovered useless in northern Honduras. And final 12 months, Juan López, who protested mining and hydro-electric initiatives, was shot useless on his means house from church.
Prior to her dying, Cáceres herself had her automotive pelted with stones, and confronted pictures fired into the air as a warning, Zúñiga recollects.
Earlier this 12 months, delicate details about the safety element the Honduran authorities granted Zúñiga’s household after her mom’s dying was leaked, signaling that just about a decade after her mom’s high-profile killing, her household was nonetheless in danger.
Screenshots of a doc unfold on social media, with particulars resembling the make, mannequin, plate quantity, and automobile identification variety of the automotive her grandmother traveled in and the place it was registered.
The Honduran Special Prosecutor’s Office acknowledged the leak was an “extremely serious” breach of confidentiality, telling NCS an investigation into the leak was underway, and that the safety measures for Zúñiga and her household wanted to be tailored and strengthened.
“Feeling like the target of an attack isn’t easy,” Zúñiga says. “It’s not that I haven’t lived through it before, but of course I’m a bit concerned about what it might mean,” she says of the leak.
Just days earlier than the info leak, doctored photographs of Zúñiga’s face with bruises and bloodstains circulated on social media – recalling the time when Zúñiga says touched-up photographs of her mom with satan horns unfold on social media in what COPINH known as a smear marketing campaign aimed toward discrediting the group’s work.
Yet Zúñiga isn’t deterred. She sees her struggle for indigenous individuals’s proper to their land as a trigger greater than herself or her household, and one which she feels her mom is nonetheless serving to her with.
“Her spirit accompanies and protects me,” Zúñiga says. “I know she’s with me.”