By Jessi Gentile
After several years of delay, the second oral trial for the murder of Lenca indigenous leader Berta Cáceres Flores has begun in Honduras. The defendant is David Castillo, president of DESA, owner of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project of the Atala Zablah family. He is an engineer graduated from US West Point Military Academy, a second lieutenant for Military Intelligence in the Armed Forces of Honduras and coordinator of Management Control in the National Electric Power Company.
In this process, what we have been denouncing for years is becoming evident: Castillo’s participation in the persecution and attacks against Berta Cáceres, actions that ended with her murder on March 2, 2016. Castillo is an intermediary between hitmen and the Atala family, one of the richest and most powerful in Honduras. International action and solidarity is decisive to achieve justice for Berta Cáceres, a feminist, environmental and human rights defender and founder of COPINH.
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For this reason, on Tuesday the 22nd, several organizations were present at the Honduran embassy in Buenos Aires, where we read a document and intervened with posters in front of the building, demanding justice for Berta and condemning David Castillo. The Ecosocialist Network and the MST of the International Socialist League (ISL) participated in this unitary action, together with the March 2 Central American Movement, the Our Voice Movement, the 138 Collective Cultural Resistance Movement (Paraguay / Argentina), the Popular Education Team Scarves in Rebellion, Abriendo Caminos, Nuestramérica, the Feminist Collective Berta Cáceres and Marabunta.
We remain on alert and organized to continue motorizing actions until we win. Because Berta did not die: she multiplied and lives on in every anti-extractivist struggle on our continent. Justice!