A Dam, an Activist and a Killing That Rocked a Nation
“Calling the police in Honduras is like calling the mafia to a crime scene.”
Members of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) hold posters with an image of slain indigenous leader and environmental activist Berta Cáceres at a demonstration in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Oct. 10, 2019.
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It’s the night of March 2, 2016, and Berta Cáceres is chatting with a friend at her home in La Esperanza, a town in western Honduras. Several months before, she had won the Goldman Prize—an international award given to environmental activists—for her fight against a proposed hydroelectric dam. She used some of the $175,000 in prize money to buy this place: a frame house in a subdivision on the edge of town.