Author: earthfirst

21 June 2013, On Fri­day, May 24, Berta Cac­eres, the Gen­er­al Coor­di­na­tor of the Indige­nous Lenca orga­ni­za­tion COPINH, and Tomas Gomez of COPINH’s com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion, were trav­el­ing on rur­al dirt roads to reach the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co when they were stopped by 15–20 sol­diers. The whole area had been mil­i­ta­rized just two weeks before in response to the area-wide mobi­liza­tion against a hydro­elec­tric dam being ille­gal­ly built in the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co. The First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers, com­mand­ed by an SOA grad­u­ate, occu­pied the area to pro­tect the inter­ests of the com­pa­ny and enable dam con­struc­tion to con­tin­ue in direct vio­la­tion of ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the will of the com­mu­ni­ties in the area.

Despite the military’s pres­ence, evic­tions, sab­o­tage to COPINH’s vehi­cle, death threats against com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and intim­i­da­tion, the resis­tance to the dam con­tin­ued to grow as the Rio Blan­co com­mu­ni­ty neared 2 months of block­ing the dam entrance. When Berta and Tomas drove the wind­ing dirt roads to Rio Blan­co on May 24, as they had many times before in COPINH’s now well-rec­og­nized vehi­cle, the mil­i­tary was wait­ing for them. They were on an iso­lat­ed dirt road, where any­thing that occurred would be the word of at least 15 sol­diers against that of Berta and Tomas. The COPINH lead­ers were ordered to stop and get out of the car. The sol­diers pro­ceed­ed to search their vehi­cle in detail, even pok­ing their fin­gers in the engine, and found noth­ing. How­ev­er, that did not mat­ter in their pre-planned oper­a­tion to crim­i­nal­ize Berta and weak­en the strug­gle against the Agua Zarca dam: they sim­ply claimed to have found a gun and then called the police, who took Berta and Tomas to jail. Berta was arrest­ed and kept in jail overnight, final­ly being con­di­tion­al­ly released after dozens of inter­na­tion­al phone calls inquir­ing for her safe­ty. But first, she was charged with “ille­gal­ly car­ry­ing weapons,” a charge that can result in time in prison. Sub­se­quent­ly, she was also charged with attempt­ing against the inter­nal secu­ri­ty of the state of Hon­duras.

Two-time SOA grad­u­ate Col. Mil­ton Amaya, the Com­man­der of the First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers, made accu­sa­tions about Berta Cac­eres to the press, result­ing in sev­er­al news arti­cles that claim the well-known social move­ment leader was ille­gal­ly armed. This is part of a broad­er strat­e­gy by the mil­i­tary and Hon­duran oli­garchy to crim­i­nal­ize and defame social move­ments by paint­ing them as armed or oper­at­ing out­side the law.

In the case of COPINH, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion and defama­tion of Berta Cac­eres by the mil­i­tary was aimed at break­ing the community’s resis­tance to the hydro­elec­tric dam – thus enabling pow­er­ful multi­na­tion­al inter­ests to prof­it from the Rio Blan­co community’s care­ful­ly stew­ard­ed nat­ur­al resources.  Con­fi­den­tial sources report­ed that the com­pa­ny felt that by “tak­ing her (Berta) down, the oth­ers will break.” In a telling indi­ca­tion of the true motives behind Berta’s arrest, the Hon­duran dai­ly news­pa­per El Tiem­po report­ed that Col. Amaya “accused Cac­eres of ral­ly­ing the Indige­nous pop­u­la­tion of the area known as Rio Blan­co… to reject the con­struc­tion of the Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric dam.”

The pow­er­ful inter­ests behind the project and their influ­ence in the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment was evi­dent when the pros­e­cu­tor against Berta was changed from the local office in San­ta Bar­bara to the Nation­al Procu­raduria Gen­er­al de la Repub­li­ca, which request­ed that Berta be impris­oned while await­ing tri­al. How­ev­er, what the pow­ers at be did­n’t count on was the wide­spread sup­port for Berta Cac­eres by Hon­duran social move­ments and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions. On June 13, out­side the cour­t­house where a hear­ing against Berta held, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from over 40 orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered to demand an end to the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Berta and COPINH. Nobel Peace Prize win­ner Adol­fo Pérez Esquiv­el held a press con­fer­ence in Argenti­na and orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als from across the Amer­i­c­as con­tact­ed the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment and released state­ments call­ing for Berta’s free­dom.

On June 13, the hear­ing dragged on, with two recess­es, the sec­ond post­pon­ing the res­o­lu­tion to the end of the day. How­ev­er, those gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house to demand Berta’s free­dom refused to leave. It was report­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­pa­nies build­ing the hydro­elec­tric dam had gone drink­ing with the judge in the days pri­or to the hear­ing, but this time their efforts to sway the eas­i­ly cor­rupt­ible Hon­duran jus­tice sys­tem were not enough. There was no evi­dence against Berta, numer­ous irreg­u­lar­i­ties in her arrest, and the two sol­diers who tes­ti­fied about sup­pos­ed­ly find­ing a weapon con­tra­dict­ed each oth­er sev­er­al times in their tes­ti­mo­ny.

In the Hon­duran judi­cial sys­tem, lack of evi­dence isn’t a prob­lem when there is a polit­i­cal motive for a con­vic­tion, but this time it seems the polit­i­cal cost of lock­ing up a wide­ly known and respect­ed leader with sup­port from across the con­ti­nent was too much. After tak­ing recess­es to sure­ly con­sult with the pow­ers at be, instead of order­ing a tri­al and send­ing Berta to prison in the mean­time, the judge “pro­vi­sion­al­ly dis­missed” the charges. Those stand­ing vig­il out­side the cour­t­house cel­e­brat­ed the news of Berta’s free­dom and the fail­ure of the mil­i­tary’s efforts to jail her. The pro­vi­sion­al part means that the pros­e­cu­tor has 5 years to present new evi­dence but is clear to all involved there will be nation­al and inter­na­tion­al push­back to any attempt to fab­ri­cate charges.

How­ev­er, the pow­er­ful inter­ests behind the project are not giv­ing up. Fol­low­ing the court’s deci­sion not to jail Berta, there were new death threats against her and oth­er COPINH and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. It is report­ed that some­one was paid to mur­der Berta this week and there are indi­ca­tions they may try to crim­i­nal­ize oth­er lead­ers. The First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers con­tin­ues to occu­py the zone, lit­er­al­ly pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests rather than the pop­u­la­tion. COPINH has denounced that sol­diers have even dri­ven com­pa­ny machin­ery to try to cus­to­di­an the machin­ery past the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty’s block­ade. On June 11, when many in the com­mu­ni­ty were away for a mobi­liza­tion, sol­diers and police phys­i­cal­ly destroyed the road­block. They then attempt­ed to accom­pa­ny employ­ees of DESA and SINOHYDRO past the block­ade but the small group of women and chil­dren present refused to let the com­pa­ny in. On June 16, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers report that 150 sol­diers and police arrived at the Rio Blan­co block­ade, sev­er­al trav­el­ing in com­pa­ny vehi­cles as they often do. Again the com­mu­ni­ty refused to move, refus­ing to let the com­pa­ny advance in ille­gal­ly build­ing a dam in their ter­ri­to­ry.

The Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ties are up against very pow­er­ful inter­ests who want their ter­ri­to­ry – in vio­la­tion of their right to the land that has belonged to their com­mu­ni­ty for cen­turies, which they have care­ful­ly stew­ard­ed and plan to pass onto their chil­dren. One of the prin­ci­pal investors in the dam is the Hon­duran Bank FICOHSA, whose pres­i­dent is Cami­lo Ata­la, is an extreme­ly pow­er­ful busi­ness­man iden­ti­fied as one of the “intel­lec­tu­al authors and financers of the coup d’etat.” FICOHSA also exer­cis­es sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal pow­er because they pur­chased Hon­duras’ inter­nal debt after the 2009 mil­i­tary coup. The World Bank and Cen­tral Amer­i­can Bank for Eco­nom­ic Inte­gra­tion are also key investors. A Chi­nese state com­pa­ny, SINOHYDRO, which is the largest hydropow­er com­pa­ny in the world is work­ing on the project. As Berta Cac­eres explains, “we are con­fronting an oli­garchic, bank­ing, finan­cial, and transna­tion­al pow­er, as well as the State of Hon­duras itself and its repres­sive forces, which have his­tor­i­cal­ly aligned them­selves with the inter­ests of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.”

The crim­i­nal­iza­tion and mil­i­ta­riza­tion faced by COPINH and the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties of Rio Blan­co takes place in the con­text of increas­ing crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Hon­duran social move­ments, espe­cial­ly those who are defend­ing their nat­ur­al resources as the right-wing gov­ern­ment ush­ered in by the mil­i­tary coup lit­er­al­ly sells off the coun­try to multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the Hon­duran oli­garchy.

Take action: Click here to e‑mail the World Bank, the US Embassy in Hon­duras, and the Hon­duran author­i­ties, urg­ing them to end the mil­i­ta­riza­tion and crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the Rio Blan­co strug­gle and respect for ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the right of the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ties of Rio Blan­co to decide whether or not they want a hydro­elec­tric dam built on their ter­ri­to­ry.