{"id":11227,"date":"2017-12-08T16:39:07","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T21:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=11227"},"modified":"2017-12-13T20:22:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T01:22:21","slug":"16-days-of-activism-meet-bertha-zuniga-caceres-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=11227","title":{"rendered":"16 Days of Activism: Meet Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, Honduras"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

. . WOMEN’S EQUALITY . . <\/p>\n

An article from the Nobel Women\u2019s Initiative<\/a><\/p>\n

Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, general coordinator of the\u00a0Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras [COPINH]<\/a>. COPINH fights for the environmental, cultural, social, health, economic and educational rights of Honduras\u2019s largest\u00a0indigenous group, the Lenca people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPhoto by Mel Mencos<\/center><\/p>\n

Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres was born to what she\u2019s described as \u201ca people of great dignity and strength.\u201d She also was born into struggle. She was just a toddler when her mother, Berta C\u00e1ceres, one of Honduras\u2019s most high-profile activists, founded\u00a0COPINH\u00a0to defend the land rights of the country\u2019s Indigenous Lenca from exploitation by mining, dam-building and logging interests. (She also advocated against racism, sexual discrimination and the victimization of women.) Her mother, Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres recalled, \u201cinstilled in us from a very early age that we must continue forward defending the rights of our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight was intense. Extractive industry companies hold concessions on more than 30 percent of Honduras\u2019s land. With her siblings, Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres went to marches and protests \u2013 she learned young how to best avoid breathing in tear gas \u2013 read about racism, and spent time in the Indigenous communities that were her mother\u2019s focus. The experience forever shaped her. As she put it, \u201cTo make the ancestral struggles of the communities yours, is to assume a way of seeing and being in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres also learned early that in Honduras speaking truth to power is a dangerous act. Her mother fought the construction of a hydroelectric project with a series of dams that would dry up the Gualcarque River, which is both sacred to Lenca communities and vital to their survival. \u00a0Death threats were constant. Later Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres acknowledged that the danger in which her family lived \u201cwas so frequent that it became normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The danger also was real. At least 124 environmental and land activists have been murdered in Honduras since 2009; Global Witness calls the country the most dangerous in the world in which to defend natural resources. On March 2, 2016, one year after Berta C\u00e1ceres won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize\u2014sometimes called the Green Nobel\u2014and one day before her 45th birthday, gunmen pushed into her home and shot her to death. <\/p>\n

(Article continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question for this article<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\n

Do women have a special role to play in the peace movement? <\/a><\/p>\n

Indigenous peoples, Are they the true guardians of nature?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(Article continued from left column)<\/p>\n

Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, who is sometimes called Bertita, or Little Bertha, suspended her graduate studies and went to work on two fronts: to find and bring her mother\u2019s killers to justice, and to continue her mother\u2019s fight against the dam and for a more general social justice\u2014a struggle, she\u2019s said, that \u201cgoes beyond one person or one single individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither has been easy.\u00a0 Eight people are in custody in relation to the killing of Berta C\u00e1ceres, two with links to the company trying to build the dam, three with military ties. A recent independent investigation by five international human rights experts revealed evidence that both state agents and the hydroelectric company\u2019s executives and employees had taken part in planning, executing and cover up the murder. But in Honduras almost no one gets punished for\u00a0any\u00a0murder, and the Honduran government has made it clear that going after who planned or ordered that Berta be killed is not likely.<\/p>\n

Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, who assumed leadership of\u00a0COPINH\u00a0last summer, has called for a full and independent investigation into the assassination of her mother \u2013 or as she put it in 2016, \u201cWe want to set a precedent of justice in a country where there is none.\u201d She also began to campaign in support of pending U.S. legislation that would suspend all military aid to Honduras until the country demonstrates that it has taken action on the unlawful killing of human rights activists.<\/p>\n

She soon discovered the danger in her own outspokenness. Just weeks after Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres assumed leadership of COPINH, she and two colleagues survived an attack by four men who followed them home from a visit to a community in central Honduras, attacked with rocks and machetes, then tried to force their vehicle off a cliff.<\/p>\n

Death did not silence the mother, Berta C\u00e1ceres: during her funeral procession, a crowd of thousands followed chanting \u201cBerta vive, la lucha sigue!\u201d COPINH\u2019s fight, Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres has said has become \u201ca universal struggle\u2026a struggle that is modestly and humbly taken over by a community.\u201d Her mother, she says, did not die, \u201cbut entered the earth, like a seed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like her mother, Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres will not be silenced either. As she wrote in a column published last March, in Spain\u2019s El Pa\u00eds, \u201cIf I could tell my mother anything now, it would be \u2018don\u2019t worry: your fight lives on in me, in my brothers and sisters, and in our community.\u2019”<\/p>\n

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . WOMEN’S EQUALITY . . An article from the Nobel Women\u2019s Initiative Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, general coordinator of the\u00a0Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras [COPINH]. COPINH fights for the environmental, cultural, social, health, economic and educational rights of Honduras\u2019s largest\u00a0indigenous group, the Lenca people.\u00a0 Photo by Mel Mencos Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres … Continue reading 16 Days of Activism: Meet Bertha Z\u00fa\u00f1iga C\u00e1ceres, Honduras<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,12],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-11227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america","category-women","tag-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}