Who Killed Berta Cáceres?. Nina Lakhani
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imposed by the state and Church which had robbed native peoples of their language, customs, religion and collective pride. Yet, both Cáceres and Zúñiga proudly identified as Lencas, even though their parents didn’t.
Berta conducted spiritual Lenca ceremonies with her children, and encouraged them to be critical of organized religion, though she never completely rejected Christianity – meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican in October 2014.8 She admired a progressive Jesus much as she did the murdered Salvadoran prelate, Monseñor Óscar Romero, but was also inspired by the spirituality of First Nation and Native American tribes, and Garifuna and Mayan customs.
COPINH’s pioneering struggle centred on rescuing Lenca identity, customs and traditions. Pascualita, the little old woman who spoke at the march on Tegucigalpa, was a key figure in this aspiration and would become COPINH’s spiritual leader. An oral historian and Lenca legend in her own right, she is instantly recognizable by the bright red clothes that she wears to ward off evil spirits, along with an oversized woolly hat to ward off the chilly La Esperanza wind.
Born in 1952, Pascualita was brought up a Catholic Lenca – part of a churchgoing family with strong indigenous traditions. At their core is a spiritual connection with Mother Earth nurtured through the compostura – smoke ceremonies with offerings such as cacao, candles, firecrackers and the ancient maize-based liquor chicha, banned by colonial powers because they couldn’t tax it. ‘I taught Berta and the communities we visited the compostura, the river and angel blessings I learned from my grandparents, but nothing was written down,’ said Pascualita. ‘From the beginning, it was a political and a spiritual fight.’
In the early 1990s these ceremonies were still practised in many communities, but often in secrecy. Berta encouraged communities to revive ancient customs openly and with pride. Today, every COPINH event starts with a smoke ceremony. If you visit La Esperanza, Pascualita is always on call to explain Lenca traditions and COPINH’s role in their rescue.
For Berta, ancestral spirituality and how these spirits bridge the past and the present were fundamental. She helped recover the memory of Lempira as a courageous hero, a symbol of resistance, not just another vanquished native leader. Some would argue that Berta’s greatest legacy is the rehabilitation of Lenca culture. It was no coincidence that outside the courthouse, after the first arrests for Berta’s murder, people were chanting: ‘¿Quienes somos? ¡Venimos de Lempira!’ (Who are we? We come from Lempira!) Pascualita was there.
Berta and Salvador often visited remote Lenca communities at weekends with the children or cachorros, cubs, as she called them. Just like her own experience of helping Austra, her mother, deliver babies when she was a girl, these excursions on foot and horseback exposed the four children to terrible discomfort and beautiful natural wealth. And they loved it.
‘They took the four of us everywhere like suitcases, no matter how bad the conditions. We’d tuck our pyjamas into our socks so we didn’t get bitten by bed bugs and mosquitoes,’ recalls Olivia, the eldest. ‘We were brought up to feel proud of our Lenca culture, and strong enough not to care when the other children and teachers called us indios.’
Berta hadn’t intended to have children so close together, in fact she used to tell her girlfriends at school that she would never get married at all – but then she met Salvador. Four children within six years wasn’t easy. In a classic good cop, bad cop scenario, Berta was the disciplinarian, whereas Salvador was more playful. He was a homebody, and became the national figurehead of COPINH, while Berta constantly travelled, forging alliances across the world. Money was tight, and at times they relied upon food packages from Doña Austra. Behind her back, some relatives called Berta a bad mother who cared more about the indios than her own children. This hurt.
Berta wasn’t like most other mothers in La Esperanza. She hated domestic chores; she wouldn’t let the children watch Cartoon Network or spend hours on PlayStation, like some of their cousins. Instead she brought them microscopes, telescopes and dark-skinned dolls from her travels. At night she would sit the four squabbling children in a circle, to talk through their gripes, or to dance or learn about plants and nature. ‘All my fun memories are with my dad, but these nightly sessions were very intimate, she would try to open our minds by teaching us right and wrong through spirituality,’ said Bertita. ‘It was hard for her when we were little, but she definitely enjoyed us and motherhood much more as we got older.’
‘At home we were little devils,’ said Olivia, laughing as she recalled leading a sibling protest armed with homemade placards opposing some parental diktat. Physically, Olivia is the most like her mum. She too is stubborn, charming, rebellious and a persuasive public speaker. Their relationship, however, wasn’t a smooth one, perhaps because they were too similar, perhaps rooted in unresolved grievances. Their relationship was a work in progress when Berta was murdered.9
Miriam Miranda: Closer Than Sisters
Those who took part in the pilgrim marches of 1994 and 1995 say they were characterized by energy, solidarity, and genuine hopes for a more just and inclusive Honduras. It was during those heady times that an unbreakable bond was forged between Berta and the Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda. As two clever, strong, courageous women, they grew closer than sisters, becoming co-conspirators in every sense of the word. If Berta was in trouble, Miriam was the first person she called, and vice versa. Both were threatened, put on hit lists and hated by the political, economic and military elites whom they fought fiercely with words. Similarly, their organizations bonded like non-identical twins.
I interviewed Miriam in Vallecito,10 a 1,200-hectare (3,000-acre) parcel of ancestral land in the municipality of Limón on the north-east coast, that was reclaimed by OFRANEH in 2012 after illegally being given away by the government. The Garifunas have a patchwork of ancestral titles dating back to colonial times across this zone, but these days a combination of rising sea levels and relentless land grabs have made Vallecito an isolated oasis.
In these parts, palm oil magnates obtained scores of land titles thanks to a market-based modernization plan which allowed new claims for unused, untitled land from the National Agrarian Institute (INA). Ignoring the ancestral land claims by the Garifunas, the INA handed out new titles to new ‘settlers’ who promptly sold them to the palm oil magnates. In this area alone, the Garifuna communities went from owning 20,000 hectares to 400 within a decade.
Out of options, the Garifunas obtained Vallecito in the same way as the unscrupulous palm barons, forced to make a claim for land that belonged to their ancestors. That didn’t stop Miguel Facussé, the most powerful palm oil tycoon in Central America, from planting palms there anyway. But, in a rare example of justice, Facussé was forced to return the 100 hectares after a Supreme Court ruling in 1999. Not long after that ruling, a local strongman turned drug trafficker took over Vallecito by force and built himself a mansion, complete with landing strips and a small dock to unload cocaine.
Aurelia Arzú, nicknamed La Patrona for having coached a male football team, was among 150 Garifunas who took back Vallecito in 2012. Back then, the still nights were frequently interrupted by the sound of motorized lanchas (canoe-like small boats) and small planes apparently descending towards Facussé’s sprawling Farallones ranch. These days, they hear only lanchas, which makes sense, as US drug intelligence indicates that most cocaine now arrives by sea.
In Vallecito the Garifuna dream is simple: build a safe community and revive traditional gastronomy. Plant yams, yuca and acres of coconut palms, open a coconut oil processing plant, and one day buy lanchas to go out fishing in the Caribbean waters beyond the plantation. But Berta and Miriam understood that struggles never really end where there’s money to be made. The area is blessed with minerals, oil, unspoilt beaches and fertile land, which doubtless explains why Vallecito was earmarked as a potential site for a ‘model city’ – a custom-made community with its own police force, laws, government and tax system designed to attract foreign investors by offering absolute control with no risks. The model city plan is so radical a neo-liberal experiment that even Berta and Miriam were shocked.
Miriam was seven years older than Berta and raised in banana plantations where she witnessed the harsh conditions especially