bertha caceres is, without a doubt, one of the most recognized faces of the environmental fight. This woman of strong convictions did not allow herself to be overwhelmed by the large multinationals that wanted to destroy the environment in her country, Honduras, and she paid a very high price: her life. Such has been her role in the history of the defense of the environment in the world that his name resonates since then, especially every March 8. And also that of 2023, the year in which Berta Cáceres is one of the names mentioned by the 8M Commission in its manifesto for Women’s Day, which will be read at the end of the Demonstration for 8M in Madrid.

As a result of this mention, and when the seven years after his murder, we remember the history of this indigenous leader who has been an example of struggle. Born in Honduras in 1971, she was the daughter of María Austra Berta Flores, a midwife, mayor and nurse who welcomed numerous refugees from El Salvador when the civil war broke out in her country. During her childhood she was able to see how one of her brothers was kidnapped and tortured and her mother was also kidnapped, situations that led her to become what she later became.

bertha caceres co-founded in March 1993 the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), an organization that, after his death, his daughter Berta Zúñiga leads and that “it fights in defense of the environment, the rescue of the Lenca culture and [por] raise the living conditions of the region’s population”.

The bullet dies when detonated, the word lives when replicated

bertha caceres

The struggles of Berta Cáceres in favor of women’s rights and the environment became well known, above all, because of the risk that the activist was running. And it is that Cáceres opposed, among many other projects, the privatization of rivers and the creation of hydroelectric dams by international investors; some projects that moved a lot of money and power and that they would put their lives at riskwho ended up being murdered.

How Berta Cáceres fought to the death

Firm defender of her country and its values, Berta Cáceres fought against everything and everyone those who endangered them. From politicians, he came to call President Juan Orlando Hernández a “seller” and “dictator”, companies such as Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), against which Cáceres mobilized the Inca people to paralyze the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project, which wanted to build on the Gualcarque River. This project was one of those that the activist insistently denounced for damaging the environment and its peoples.

This fight against the hydroelectric plants would give awards as distinguished as the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, but it would also end up taking his life. Or rather, they would end up taking it away.

On March 3, 2016, they broke into the house of Berta Cáceres and murdered her. For this murder, seven men were convicted on November 30, 2018 by the National Criminal Court of Honduras. But the investigation also pointed to the company Desarrollo Energéticos SA (DESA), in charge of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, and sentenced David Gallego, a Honduran military man who at the time was the executive presidentas the intellectual author of the facts.

Although they wanted to silence her, as she herself said in life, “the bullet dies when detonated, the word lives when replicated” and her fight will last forever, remembering her as one of the most courageous and important environmental activists in history.