Blood River Bloomberg

This was fascinating though so much time was given to the DESA investors and executives without appropriate scrutiny. I feel sorry for any listeners exposed to David Castillo before getting to the follow-up episode 7.

This is not a two sides story of equivalence in power, a “dance” of a conflict between activists and a corporation, but one involving more than 100 people dead and disappeared among the environmentalists, LGBTQ, and labor leaders in the context of a U.S. supported coup in a narco state with US powerful investors pushing for private development opportunities. This story is so much bigger than Berta Cáceres. Ongoing disappearances also include the Guarafina Afro Hondurans fishing association members in Cayo Cochinos who are the targets of “green” capital investors backed by the Honduran Coast Guard and Navy. Just scratch the surface, in this case and elsewhere along the coast you’ll find a perverse upside down version of eco tourism or renewable energy private projects. While the many recent murders and threats of Guarafinas fisherman goes unpunished and continue, refuse this tourism backed by death squads. There are so many other paths to preserve ecology. State sponsored displacement and murder of the Guarafinas and all people asking questions, claiming voice and participation in their futures, must end.

We don’t learn until episode 7 that US military-trained David Castillo rigged the establishment of the “green” capital firm DESA to exorbitantly and illegally profit off both the state of Honduras and the hydroelectric company through inflated rates and by creating a shell before becoming its president to carry out this illegal set up. As this podcast reports all too briefly, Castillo was trained and worked in counterintelligence. Castillo is a master manipulator of media and intelligence (information) by profession and should have been handled with greater scrutiny when introduced in the second half of the series. His treatment of his ex-wife is just one indication of gross abuser behavior.

Recall that the Honduran people without means (or even subsistence work) are the ones being murdered - not the other way around.

The people of the world who aim for democracy and climate resilience and basic human dignity see right through David Castillo & co.‘s phony story. Hopefully listeners will continue to the end of this series. And when they do they should investigate further the US role in the right-wing coup that made Honduras “open for business” at any cost to its democracy, safety, ecology and people.

This is very engaging and well done and I’m recommending it but here’s one mistake made. You talked about the assassination in mid March 2016 of Nelson Garcia. He was gunned down By a member of MS 13 in front of his wife and two of his children in Peña Blanca Cortez which is in Northern Honduras near Lago Yokosuka. You say he was someplace hundred miles south of La Esperanza repeating a mistake in Nina Lakhani’s book. The Garcia family was involved in a land struggle against a corrupt mayor. Once the MS 13 assassin was arrested the police abandoned the investigation of who hired him and also failed to protect the family which had to flee because of threats from the gang. They were told by police that the investigation was ended on orders from Tegucigalpa.

Horrible Persecution by International NGOs. Watching Bertha’s interviews she is clearly an avowed communist (No justification for anyone killing her) but the fact she is being raised as a “hero” for opposing a dam which would help a third word country be self sustainable looks shady. I wonder who is funding all this chaos? Driving out investments and jobs? Could it be that Bloomberg or others like him have an agenda or an interest against these types of projects? Just hearing then ambassador Nealon speaking how he made this possible makes it even more shady. Did the U.S plot this and tried to frame others?