But they set the legal battleground for Agua Zarca and hundreds of other projects sanctioned for indigenous territories with blatant disregard for ILO 169.
Old Tactics Die Hard
The new indigenous movement injected energy and optimism into the country’s flagging social movement, sociologist Eugenio Sosa told me over coffee in Tegucigalpa. In the mid-1990s, banana workers’ and campesino unions were in crisis, having grown rather too cosy with the government and the United States after the 1954 strike. Meanwhile, new exploitative industries such as the maquilas or assembly factories strongly discouraged unionization;7 student and socialist groups had been decimated in the dirty war, leaving only the teachers and fledgling human rights groups battling to find the disappeared, demilitarize the country and promote women’s rights. The indigenous movement with its dynamic leadership worried the ruling elites – and Uncle Sam. Despite no sniff of armed insurgency, rumours spread that Honduras could become the next Chiapas, and the response was predictable. More counterinsurgency – but this time with a softer face, the so-called battle for hearts and minds.
World Vision, the American evangelical aid charity with an anti-communist vocation, appeared in neglected Lenca communities alongside USAID, offering maize, medicines and housing. US soldiers helped construct schools and hospitals. ‘It was a clear reaction to the uprising by indigenous people in a strategically important zone for the US,’ said Salvador Zúñiga. ‘There was constant scaremongering about armed insurgency, but the real fear was that people were starting to understand and demand their rights, and COPINH was achieving victories through unarmed mobilizations.’
Global to Local
The hard-won government pledges on ancestral land rights were at odds with aggressive development programmes being pushed across Latin America by international financiers like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and US Treasury. Honduras, like many other countries, was pressured to introduce market-based land reforms, which included allowing the sale and mortgage of ejido (collectively owned) land for the first time. This, it was claimed, would unlock the wealth of the poor as the capital raised could be invested to make the land more productive. This economic thinking was part of the Washington Consensus – a set of free-market policies including free trade, floating exchange rates, deregulation and privatization of state enterprises like roads, health and education.
President Rafael Callejas promoted programmes to break up collective land rights of indigenous and campesino communities in favour of multinational conglomerates. This is what ignited the modern-day land conflicts in Honduras, by pitting rural communities opposed to environmentally destructive projects (like the Agua Zarca and Los Encinos dams in Lenca territory, the Jilamito and Pajuiles dams in the northern region of Atlántida, and African palm plantations in the Bajo Aguán) against the country’s elites and international financiers invested in so-called green energy projects. Although Berta would be mostly remembered as an environmentalist who defended rivers, she was much more than that, because she always understood local struggles in political and geopolitical terms. Marvin Barahona, a modern historian at the National School of Fine Arts in Tegucigalpa, said that the introduction of neo-liberal policies in Honduras made the environment a double-edged sword. ‘For Berta, the environment became an instrument of struggle, while for the government and international investors it represented a development policy with profit potential.’
Spiritual Awakening
Berta was raised in a staunch Catholic churchgoing family, her husband Salvador as an Evangelical Christian. Back in the 1960s and 70s most people were either ignorant or ashamed of any indigenous heritage, after centuries of ‘civilization’ policies 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
