Berta Caceres Part 2

0:11 Hi everyone. This is Carmen and Christina and this is Estudia's Unknown, a podcast where we talk about Latin American history. Sometimes it's horrible and just the type of topics like racism, corruption and genocide. But more than that, it's also about resistance, power and community. This is part two of Roberta Cassids series, because yes it is now a series. I am guessing part three next part will be the last part. So we left off part one with Berta and her husband san Ralo, returning from Ensi Blor after the Civil War and how the reviews changed when it came to revolution. They felt that violence was not the way and whatever they did in Nondudas would not be armed because of everything they saw. This belief led to the formation of COPY in nineteen ninety three. Yeah. So after the peace ac Cords and all that, Sara Alonaberta returned to La Esperanza where she grew up. They lived in a small house and the outskirts of the town, where soon it would be full of members of COPIN. When they moved back to La Speranza, they saw Intibuka become flooded with sawmills.

1:24 These saw mills were devastating the forest, and like I said in the last episode, these are Linka lands, so they were seeing this devastation of their ancestral lands. On top of that, they also witnessed how during the Salvadoran Civil War, the Salvadoran army, with the help of the Hunting government, persecuted indigenous people in these areas who showed any solidarity with the Salvadoran people, and they themselves were at risk. Well obviously them because they were fighting in the war, but like you know, her family and all that, so indigenous people, the persecution and the land off station made Bertha and sal Voda feel that they needed to organize to defend themselves. And they also they also sought to force the Honduran state to recognize the Lenca people because in this time, in the nineteen nineties, and even like today, you'll hear the majority group, which is Mestizo.

2:25 In any Latin American country, it's the Mestizols who are the now biggest group. It was made to be this way, that's what colonization did. And so you'll hear people say, oh, and I want to say it still happens today less today, but people in the nineteen nineties were like, oh, there's no the Lanca people or I think of the past. They don't live anymore. Yeah. It's the way people talked about the quote unquote Aztecs, like oh, the prehistoric Act, that's right, that's not a thing, right, But they would say pre pre colonial acid they would say stuff like that. Yeah, right, I just want to be exaggerated and say prehistoric, but yeah, pre colonial, when in reality these groups are still here. Yeah.

3:10 And so they wanted to be recognized because when they had first established copein they were not recognized as an indigenous people. And this is something common even in like the borders here in the US or like California, there's indigenous groups that are not because you know, the recognition, the recognition of tribal groups is different in the US than it is in say Latin America. And so in the US they're like federally recognized tribes. And there's tribes that are not recognized in California, but they know who they are. They're still here and they know who they are. Yeah, and there's yeah, tribes still fighting out to be like recognized by to be federally recognized, because that comes with protections that comes with a lot. And so in the nineteen nineties, when Copein was barely founded, the Lenca people were not recognized as as an indigenous group in Honduras, and so Berta and Taldor believed that this was the right moment for them to advocate for human rights, indigenous rights, and the demilitarization of their lands. Everything, everything, and Coppine has done amazing things since its inception, but it has come with such a high cost, including Berta's own life.

4:28 Their organization was only a few months old on January first, nineteen ninety four, and this date, this date is everything for so many reasons. You do you know the significance of January first, nineteen ninety four. I assume NAFTA the day NAFTA came into effect, God Nafta and more importantly, though, the day of the Stapatista uprising. Yeah, Berta's five kids were all up super early as she sat on the couch and she was watching the events of the uprising unfold in her little tiny TV that she had in the living room, and she watched as super comman Nante Marco said, quote, we the Sapatistas say that neoliberal globalization is a world war, a war being waged by capitalism for global domination. That is why we're joining together to build a resistance struggle against neoliberalism and for humanity. End quote.

5:26 And oh he just had a way with the words. Oh that's why he had his job. Yeah, he was curing a kid. That's who Superman was. Yes, literally, yes, and so yeah, like I said, it was super early as all this was being reported on TV. And now she watched Bertha yelled for Salvador because he was still sleeping, of course, and so seeing the Sapatistas and their uprising made her realize that they had to mobilize the indigenous people of Hoduras. They couldn't do this on their own. They needed to mobilize everyone. And Bertan Sabot always knew this is what they wanted to do, but seeing the Sapatista uprising gave them the confidence. Luprint as well, Yes, yes, it really did. So. After this moment in history that was so vital to them seeing this happen, they began organizing roadblocks, sit ins protests to stop illegal logging in yam Anguilla, a Lenka community a few miles away from them in Las Peranza. Then in June nineteen eighty four, one of their biggest actions ever took place. Thousands of indigenous people marched from their lands in western Honduras to te Go Sia, the capital. They had a list of demands including schools, clinics, better roads and land back, Okay,

6:56 the recuperation and protection of their ancestral territory. And this included thousands of Maya Chorti to Lupin Tawaka Bitch communities as well as the Lenca and then from the north coast of Honduras, hundreds upon hundreds of Garifunas joined the march to the capitol. It's like literally every indigenous group in the country mobilized, and the country had never seen mobilization like this. This was big. It was in the news when it was being reported, they were like, we don't even know there was that many thing. They said indios, but that they didn't know there was that many indigenous people still alive, because that was the common narrative. And it was a sixth day, two hundred kilometer long march. Damn.

7:49 As they marched, Berta and the Lencas held a banner that read quote Lempira vienne coros de los confines de la storia. Lampida comes with us from the confines of history. And do you know who Lempida is? It sounds so familiar, and I feel like I came up in the when I did the topic about the environmental activists in Latin America. Maybe I don't know. It just sounds so familiar hmmm in my but no, he he's on the one of the dollar dollar bills of he's on that. But when the Spanish invaded in fifteen twenty four, the Lencas were the largest indigenous group in the country. There were two hundred different communities of Lencas. They were all led by Lempira, who, you know, was like a you could say chieftain if you're using like terms from here, or like aske if you're using like terms from Boodinken. Oh, okay, And of course there was fierce resistance to Spanish colonization. It's just city.

8:58 Also like a region, Yes, a department. Oh, that's that's where I recognize it from. Then, yes, that would make sense. Yeah. I was going to say that too when I forgot Okay, that's what you should start it with, because I'm like, I know I talked about it. Yeah, I should have been like, well, it's a department, so he is on the bill also, okay anyway, Yes, there was fear resistance to Spanish colonization led by Lempira. He commanded over thirty thousand soldiers, and after a battle in fifteen thirty seven, Lempira retreated to the mountains, where he continued to resist the Spanish. Four months after some months, the Spanish lured Lampida out to talk and a Spanish soldier who was hiding some distance away, fired a gun and I was like, they had guns back then. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's why it was so easy for them to kill a bunch of people. Yeah, it was a gun called the arquebus. Yeah, I look kind of like those old like rifle or old That is matter. I could see your disinterest increasing. No, I was hearing you out. I'm just tired. Okay, my bad anyway, but really it doesn't matter what what the gun looks like. And killed him. When the rest of the soldiers saw this, they surrendered. That's what school children ANDAs are taught about Limpida how he was killed. There is a different account that Lampidra was captured by the

10:30 Spanish soldier by a Spanish soldier named Rodrigo Ruiz. In this account, Rodrigo Ruiz beheaded Lampira, and after that the Linka retreated and then eventually surrendered, and then they easily took over some city and named it something else. And that second version is from a document in the Archivo General the Indias in Saviga, Spain. Oh, so that's probably the right one. Either way. Lempira became a symbol of resistance in whatever way you look at it. He resisted the Spanish for a long time before they finally got him, and thus the Lenka copin Berta, they carried the sign their banner that read Benimoiselle Lampira. Okay, that is a lot I knew had some meaning, but it's a lot more meaningful knowing the history behind it. Yeah, yeah, that's why I included it. Yeah, I could not include it.

11:32 You know. During the two hundred kilometer long march, Berta would pause the march to paint anti imperial murals on US military basis. Away, I love that. Right. As she painted, she explained to everyone, how everyone present, everyone listening, how militarization and oppression worked together with neoliberalism, and as long as this system is in place, then as people could not thrive. I need to go back in time and be there to listen to her. Could you just picture that, like, yeah, that's why I want to be there. I agree you just said that. Yeah exactly, but like exactly, when you have school assignments that are like, nay, three people you could from history that you could say, God, I can't even like begin to I can't pick three people. They're all women first of all, and me start there exactly Ruin, Berta, Comandanta.

12:39 So now you're lord for me for sure? Oh yes, oh yeah, okay again too many, too many to name, but we already have four. They would always be women, I mean, but I would after all the women I would add to Yeah, I mean no, I mean men are allowed. I just feel like the first people that came to mind those well first twenty yeah yeah, but yeah no. So she would sit there and tell them about these things and like she was so early in catching how it wasn't just her people, it was the world. And she was so quick to connect the geopolitical outside of Onduras, and she was like people recognize that, and like, she only finished the three year teacher college that she went to when she was fifteen, and that's the schooling she had. And people were like people that she worked on worked with later on in life who were like presidents of nonprofits in the US who were super educated, they were like, no, she we like, you knew her the education she had, and she could sit in a room and just like go on and on with people who were way more educated about these things because she lived it and she knew it. Yeah, and it was just like amazing to see, is what people said. And I bet it was. I'm sure, yeah. Yeah. Following the March, Ondunas ratified the nineteen eighty nine Indigenous and Tribal People's

14:09 Convention of the International Labor Organization. This is also known as the ILO one and sixty nine and the most basic explanation of what the IL one sixty nine is is that it asserts the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to choose to integrate or maintain their cultural and political independence. Okay, but it has to be ratified or made into law by nation states. They have to accept it, because this is like the ILO is a separate organization, kind of like the Inter American Court of Human Rights where they make these rulings and then it's like suggestible and certain countries don't recognize them. Yes, that's kind of similar.

14:52 And so after a bunch of intense advocacy by not only Copine but other indigenous areizations in Honduras, and with the help of Donya Austra Berta's mom who was a congress person, they pushed and pushed for the ratification of the ILO one sixt nine, And it was after that that it was done in nineteen ninety five and on Duras. And after the ILO was ratified, Coppin helped over two hundred Lanka communities acquire land titles across five different departments in Hoduras. Okay, that's cool. Yes, So like the ILO didn't fix everything overnight for Lenka communities, but it was vital.

15:39 It set the legal stage for what would become one of Coppin's biggest fights, the Awa Sarka Dam. But because of the ILO, they now had like legal backing to say to fight back, to say these are our lands, they're protected. Look at this. This was ratified in nineteen ninety five. So that's what it did. And there's supposed to be a little segue here, and I didn't write one, so we're just gonna roll into it, okay. So called green energy projects were being proposed all over ancestral lands, indigenous lands. These green energy projects were usually backed by international financiers like the IMF. For there's a bunch but about this, the passing of Ilo and their new fight against these green quote unquote green projects. Marvin Barajona, a historian at the National School of Fine Arts in Tegusa, in the book that is my main source that you will see in the show notes, he stated that neoliberal policies in Dudas made the environment a double edged sword, and so he said, quote Forberta, the environment became an instrument of struggle, while for the government and international investors it represented a development policy with profit potential end quote so like basically for her, for the indigenous, for the Lenka, it was their lands and they were fighting for their

17:11 lands for the rest. For everyone else, it was the profit. That's what it came down to. And for Copine it wasn't just this political fight for their land against these big green energy projects backed by big corporations. It was also a spiritual fight because they were also fighting to keep their culture alive. For Berta, she is Lenka right, but she was raised Catholic like so many others, and her mom never like really was in the Lenka culture. It was like a thing that had to be kind of hidden or not something to be proud of. But she and Saladod were proud to identify as Linka. Their parents never did that. Berta, on the other hand, was like, no, my kids are gonna know, you know where they're from, who they are, And so she taught her children Lenka spiritual ceremonies from the time they were babies like she was.

18:15 She was so adamant to do that, and she ensured that part of Copine's work was to preserve Lenka identity, customs, and traditions. When Copin was founded in nineteen ninety three, many Lencas practice ceremonies and secret still and Berta worked to change this, and to this day, Coppin still started to every single event with the smoke ceremony wow. And Berta was the one who was like, well, you need to sorry every every event with the ceremony. It was important to her and because of all of her work in this field. Many credit Bertha with the revival of Lenka culture and ondudas Wow. And in all protests following her murder, people always carried science banner and banners reading quenes somos benmos de Lempira? Who are we? We come from Lempira? And through all this work that they did to all these different going to all these different Linca communities, Bertha and Sarrador always carried their kids along. In the book, Olivia, her oldest daughter, said, quote, they took the four of us everywhere like suitcases, no matter how bad the conditions.

19:31 We were brought up to feel proud of our linka culture and strong enough not to care when the other children and teachers called us indios end quote and like Erta, obviously she's like doing such important work. But others behind her back, like her relatives, even called her a bad mother. Really mm hmmm. They were saying things like quote, she cares more about the indios than her own children, wow, and like of course comments like these hurt and Bertha yea, and she was the more like the more strict parent the kids felt that said a little was a fun parent, while other mothers in her family let their kids have like a PlayStation or watch TV. She didn't. When she went on like trips and came back, she brought them microscopes to use. Bertita, her second oldest daughter, said in the book quote, all of my fun memories are with my dad, but these nightly sessions with my mom were very intimate. She would try to open our minds by teaching us right and wrong through spirituality. It was hard for her when we were little, but she definitely enjoyed us and motherhood much more when we were older. Actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, a lot of parents are like that that they don't enjoy the little before nine stages or like especially like the baby face or

21:03 five and under, and when they're older, they're different, you know, in each phase of parenthood is different. So I get that. But every night when she was home, once they were not so little, she would sit the four kids down in a circle and they would just talk through their problems or really about anything. Or they were down so they would learned about plants and nature. And this makes sense too because she's a trained teacher. Yeah, and yeah, kids in a circle when they're older, they are more enjoyable to talk to about things, but like she's still like, yes, she was for the cause, for the struggle, but she was still a parent. They took the kids everywhere with them when they could, and once the kids were older, they even took them like the ones that were born already to the war, right the first two, so like they carried them everywhere. Yeah, medium mediam A Garifuna activists and the leader of O and this is the Organizacion so the Black Fraternity Organization of Honduras. She became very close to Bertha during that nineteen ninety four march that I mentioned, And so about all this, she would she would say, quote, as women, it's much harder for us to take on leadership and political roles. We're not allowed to show any weakness in such a patriarchal system. Berta was criticized for neglecting her children, for choosing Lalucha the

22:35 struggle over her motherhood. Berta loved her children, but she loved this country too. She refused to accept that there must be poor people so that there can be rich people now when Ondas has so much potential and enough resources for all of us to live well. And the quote and she's right, m h. And just a little more about their relationship and medium her lie. If Berta wasn't any sort of trouble ever, Mediam was the first person she called, and the same was true for a medium. Mediam was seven years older than Berta and Garifuna, like I mentioned, and just like Berta, she also ended up on a hit list at some point. Damn, because that's what happened when you were at the environmental activists. Yeah.

23:23 Mediam grew up in the banana plantations of Honduras, where she witnessed harsh conditions and she said, quote, this woke me up, and she started speaking up against Yankee invasion and militarization. And she did a lot in Vayacito, her town where she's from, at one point winning a legal fight against a palm oil tycoon. This oil tycoon, I didn't write down his name, but he lost the court ruling and was not allowed to plant palms palm trees in Vaysito, where the palm oil came from, but he did it anyway, and then the Supreme Court forced him to return one hundred hectares to the Garifuna in nineteen ninety nine. Good and then a few years passed by, and you know drug jaffrigin is worse now and so at local Drugs Africa took over by Yesito by fours she and one hundred and fifty Garifunas took it back. Damn.

24:20 At one point Medium had to flee into the hills for some time to after trying to stop some articles from building a landing strip in Vajesito and Berta was the first to arrive to support Medium and the others. That's a lot of what Copine was doing, you know, important work. But in two thousand and one, during the third summit of the FTAA, do you know what the FTAA is. No, it's a Free Trade of the Americas. Oh yeah, so yeah, it's a yearly summit that still happens. So in two thousand and one it was the third summit. During this third summit, a plan called the Puebla Barama Plan was proposed. Guests who championed this PPP plan, Clinton be sent the Fox. Oh about the United States, But that sounds surprising either, No, it's not this PPP plan.

25:20 Puebla Banama Plan would eventually be ultimately, if you like, had to draw a line back to what caused her death, It would be the PPP plan. Really, yes. Back in two thousand and one, hundreds of groups got together at the FTA summit to protest the Puebla Plan. Back then, on the day they were protesting, Berta said that the PPP would be a death sentence for the Linka people. Later, any Bird, the director of Rights and Ecology, who worked closely with Berta cassides. Over the years, any Bird would say, quote, she was right, it was the PPP that killed her, and a quote damn, the PPP is what brought the Awa Saraka dam to Lenga lands. And so I can explain the peb plant better like I said it was.

26:17 It was championed Bibies and the fox According to him, the way he was presenting it to the world, he said it was the only way to lift rural communities out of extreme property. Don't ever believe anything with in the foxes. First of all, no. And so the PPP had two main parts. A transport infrastructure. This was a network of highways, dry canals and ports to speed up the movement of freely traded products. And then it also had an energy component to it, and this was to increase energy generation through dozens of dams, gas and oil pipelines, and it would connect energy grids from North America all theough it's Colombia. Wow. It was presented as something that would boost the economy of these rural lands where the dam's gas and oil pipelines would be placed, to get these regions from small scale farming to industrial powerful farming, but also to expand private control over natural resources, and also involve the patenting of genetic codes of plants and animals and then depositing them into the world's second largest biogenetic bank. Yeah, there was like a region I didn't write down the name, but in Panama that was like basically like unexplored, and they wanted to put this part of this PPPE thing through that area so they could take these genetic codes, patent them, and then this would

27:51 be used to provide raw material for biotechnologies for medicine and food production. But those who the land belonged to, those who live off that land, who need that land to live, who lived to protect it, they would never see the oh yeah, economic benefits of this PPP plan, because that's how neoliberalism works. And so the minute it was like announced that it was going to be a thing. It was being be sent to folks, was making the rounds to present it. The Sapatistas were immediately against it. The COMBA group, the convergence of movements of the People's copin Offrane, hundreds and hundreds of other indigenous groups. They all knew this for what it was, the I don't know, like taking of their lands and privatizing everything and destroying everything.

28:48 So they met. The FTAA summit was in Quebec, and so these groups all went to organize and protests in Quebec, and they were met with state resistance. There was a three meter high wall surrounding the parliament hall. There was hundreds of ryokops who of course were violent towards the protesters. They used so much tear gas that even the delegates inside the summit hall were like couldn't breathe down. Berta along with Gustabo Gastro, the Mexican activist who was with her when she was shot. This is where they met. I'm pretty sure. Oh, they were in the front lines at this protest, and during their protests, she felt that they were too far away, they were too far back and she told Gustabo at Man, no, let's get closer, and they each grabbed one side of their giant undurant flag and they rushed together towards the front where they were met with the water cannon and they were blasted fell back from the force of the water cannon. Berta immediately got up and said, let's go again, and he followed down and then this time they were met with tear gas. Same thing. She was like, let's go again, and she kept getting back up and he in the book is like, I don't know how many times we fell and got back up again to try and like get closer. And in the book Gustava said quote that was Berta, always tenacious and always willing to put herself

30:19 in the middle of every act of resistance. She never lost that energy. Copin founded as a grassroots organization, managed to say true to its roots because Berta was never power hungry. Everywhere she went, buzzloads of Copeen members went with her. They evolved together as an organization. At one anti FAA meeting in Cuba, we were invited to stay at a nice Havana hotel, but she chose to stay with the others in a not so nice place, because that's who she was, end quote. And so yeah, she was always where the resistance was. She was in the front lines, and I remained true until her death. And this is where we're ending part three. This kind of gets us up to how the Awa Sara goad Damn came to being on dudahs and how her and coping her with goping began to resist the Agua Sara god damn.

31:18 And so that's gonna be part three, the fight against the dam and leading up to her murder, and then you know after and all that. So that's that'll be part three. All right. Oh, we do have an announcement after this episode we will go to in every other week's schedule. So next week there's not gonna be an episode, but the next week after that there will be because and your girl moment's going back to school. Yes, I am going back to school. And if we tried to maintain a weekly schedule, it's too much. It's too difficult. It was already difficult, and then trying to do it with school work on top of that too much, too much, too much. So yes, every other week. However, I think we can keep yappy in every week. I think we can yap every week because it's not as research heavy, Like, yeah, already in the know about a lot of these things, then we talk about it. So yeah, yes, exactly. So if you want to keep hearing us everything, you can get enough of us, and you need to listen to us every week, then get on Patreon. Baby, Yes, we are over on Patreon. It is linked in the show notes, but over there, we yep. That's it. We yap about either like current depressing events like news and stuff, or fun drama ish events like the Chapel Roone smear campaign is what we just yapped about, and Chili being caught reposting yeah stuff stuff, unfavorable stuff. That's one way to

32:53 put it. Yeah, and there's a whole backlog of episodes already you can listen to, so yeah, I like that. Go ahead and goward to Patreon. We also donate part of the funds to different things, so yeah. Other than that, we'll catch you next time, and we hope this is one list is Studia unknown for you. Bye bye. Astoria's ANNWN is produced by Carmen and Christina, Researched by Carmen and Christina, edited by Christina, You can find sources for every episode attias unknown dot com and in our show notes. Creating the podcast has a lot of work, so if you want to help us out financially, you can do so by supporting us on Patreon at patreon dot com.

33:37 Slash She studied as an own podcast