On the eighth anniversary of her seed, this 2 March marks the eighth anniversary of the brutal assassination of Berta Cáceres, indigenous leader, social fighter, defender, and much more. Today we remember her struggle, her life, her commitment, her ability to articulate, her tireless spirit, her sowing, her return to the world in millions, her presence in thousands of struggles of the peoples of the world. Eight years without full justice. Eight years of “Justice for Berta”. Eight years without forgetting.
Not forgetting Berta means not forgetting that every year hundreds of defenders of the land, territories, and common goods are murdered in the world; and that thousands of others suffer harassment, persecution, stigmatization, threats, criminalization, and imprisonment.
Not forgetting Berta means not forgetting that Latin America continues to lead the list of continents where being an environmental defender is the most dangerous activity; where Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico, and Honduras are the countries where they are murdered the most.
Not forgetting Berta means remembering that most of the defenders who are persecuted and murdered are indigenous people, peasants.
Not forgetting Berta means not forgetting that the struggle for land, territories, and common goods is a struggle that goes beyond “being an environmentalist”, but that it is a struggle against a neoliberal extractive, predatory, and murderous model; that it is an anti-racist and anti-patriarchal struggle, an emancipatory struggle of the peoples.
Remembering Berta, not forgetting her, and demanding truth and justice for her, means not forgetting that the vast majority of murders of defenders remain with absolute impunity.
Achieving truth and justice for Berta means breaking this impunity, prosecuting and convicting all members of the criminal chain that planned, organized, financed, and carried out the murder.
Achieving truth and justice for Berta also means bringing to justice all the political and economic actors, national and international, who directly or indirectly participated in her murder, in the acts of corruption related to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project and its financing.
Achieving justice for Berta means breaking the veil of silence and impunity that covers hundreds of cases of assassination of defenders in Honduras.
Not forgetting Berta means not only remembering her but also acting and supporting all the struggles that the indigenous peoples, peasant communities, social and popular movements, and organizations of Abya Yala and the world continue to carry out in defense of their lands, territories, and commons.
On this 2nd of March, 8 years after the sowing of our compatriot and friend, the tireless fighter, the militant, let us turn our gaze to her family, to her daughters Bertita and Laura, to her son Salvador, to her mother Austraberta, to Copinh, to the Lenca people, with the commitment not to forget, not to give up, to continue to demand another possible world, truth and justice.
Berta lives, and the struggle continues.
FOUNTAIN Source: LINyM
