#berta caceres

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 6 Other Latinx Trailblazers You Should Know

Versión en español aquí.

Latinx and Hispanic trailblazers, history makers and pioneers have circled the Earth, fought for endangered waters, revolutionized music and paved the way for others. These seven women and men are worth celebrating all year long ― but if you haven’t learned about them yet, Hispanic Heritage Month is a great time to start. 

Berta Cáceres: Leading Environmental Activist

Berta Cáceres spent her life fighting for the rights and land of the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras. She was killed after trying to block a dam that would have threatened her community’s way of life.

Cáceres fiercely opposed the construction of enormous dams in Central America, which displaced indigenous communities and destroyed many countries’ natural environments. Her native Honduras is rife with human rights violations and threats to the ecosystem.

The Agua Zarca Dam, built by the world’s largest dam developer, threatened the Lenca community’s way of life and would have cut off many resources for the indigenous group if not for Cáceres. The activist organized a road blockade that lasted for more than a year and forced dam builders out of the region. Cáceres was murdered in 2016 at age 44, allegedly as part of a plot by ex-military officers and executives from the company building the dam, Desarrollos Energéticos SA.

“I cannot freely walk on my territory or swim in the sacred river and I am separated from my children because of the threats,” Cáceres once told The Guardian. “I cannot live in peace, I am always thinking about being killed or kidnapped. But I refuse to go into exile. I am a human rights fighter and I will not give up this fight.”

Sylvia Rivera: LGBTQ Shero

Sylvia Rivera, an American of Venezuelan and Puerto Rican descent, is often credited with the inclusion of “T” for “transgender” in the acronym LGBTQ.

Rivera was one of the major leaders of the Stonewall riots of 1969, when police raided a gay bar and activists violently fought against them, a pivotal moment in the movement for LGBTQ rights in the United States. But Rivera’s decadeslong fight for equality and the inclusion of trans people extends far beyond these demonstrations.

After transgender folks were excluded from the then-proposed Gay Rights Bill by gay and lesbian activists in the 1960s, Rivera gave a powerful speech denouncing their treatment.

“I will not put up with this shit,” Rivera yelled into the microphone in her 1973 speech. “I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way?”

Rivera, who died in 2002, went on to co-found the Gay Liberation Front and established the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries organization, both of which fought for the rights of LGBTQ people. Rivera is the only transgender person featured in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Rising Political Star

The New York congresswoman is the youngest person in Congress. She beat out Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the 2018 primary, and later that year she overwhelmingly won the congressional seat.

Ocasio-Cortez, also known as “AOC,” is a groundbreaking figure in modern politics — a viral sensation whose unapologetic debate tactics have made her popular with millennials and fellow progressives.

The young Puerto Rican American is outspoken about her background and her stance on social justice issues.

“My mom cleaned homes and drove school buses to make sure we could make ends meet and I spent time during the financial crisis waiting tables,” she told NBC News last November. “So I understand what it means to be a real, working-class person in America and that is so important to have that perspective in our leadership.”

Ocasio-Cortez has already pushed back against death threats, President Donald Trump and the GOP during her time in Congress, even as she fights for universal health care, environmental policy reform and the abolishment of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Berta Caceres

Berta Caceres (1973-2016) was a Honduran environmental activist. She was an indigenous woman from the Lenca nation, and learned from an early age to stand up for others: her mother was an activist as well. In 1993, she co-founded the National Council for Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH, in order to fight for the Lenca people against illegal logging and infringement on their territory rights. 

When a community of Lenca people from Rio Blanco came to her organization for help in 2006, she answered the call. Dam construction had begun on a river that was important to the community’s economic and spiritual livelihood, and they had been given no say in the matter. Caceres first filed unsuccessful complaints and appeals, and then turned to peaceful protests in 2013. She and others formed a blockade in the road to the construction site for over a year, drawing worldwide attention.

Despite the odds, they were successful in their attempt to stop dam construction, but their troubles were not over. In 2016, Caceres was assassinated in her own home, along with a fellow COPINH member just 12 days later. This came just a year after she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Inktober 2018 - Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres was an activist, mother, and daughter from Honduras. She was an activist because she looked out for the rights of indigenous people (The Lenca) in Honduras, the land that indigenous people were born to, the environment, and queer peoples. Berta was an organizer and co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations which protected indigenous folks and the land in Honduras against corporations who sought to dam it, mine it, and cut it down for profit. Along with many activists and regular people she fought the Honduran military, Chinese and US based corporations/govt involvement in building dams and destabilizing the Honduran government. She received many death threats, then she was assassinated in 2016 in her home even though she appealed for protection. Before she was killed she received an award called the Goldman Prize, a prestigious award for environmental justice.

I draw her to keep her memory alive as so many other artists have. Salute to her and the activists from the Dakota Access Pipeline to Honduras fighting to protect indigenous peoples and the earth. After all the oil, water, trees, minerals, and land has been used up-will we be able to eat money?

Poster of Berta Caceres flash/regular lighting

Los Angeles Women’s Month Forum: Berta Didn’t Die, She Multiplied

Saturday, March 31 - 4:00 to 7:00 pm

Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, 5278 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles

Hosted by Workers World Party - Los Angeles

Join us for a documentary screening on the legacy of Berta Caceres, world-renowned Indigenous leader whose defense of her people’s lands successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder and the World Bank to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam at the sacred Rio Gualcarque. After winning the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, she was assassinated on March 2, 2016.

Report: Coordinated plot to murder Honduran activist Caceres

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An international team of lawyers said Tuesday that the 2016 killing of Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres was the product of a coordinated plot that began four months earlier and suggested that leadership of a dam development company may have ordered her assassination.

A report by the International Advisory Group of Experts, or GAIPE for its initials in Spanish, said the group had identified “possible intellectual authors” of the murder beyond the eight individuals already charged and concluded the killing was “not an isolated incident.” But it warned that the investigation has been clouded and the full truth may never be brought into the light.

“There is evidence to link high-level state and non-state officials to the murder,” the group said at a news conference to formally present the report in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Caceres, who was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for leading her Lenca indigenous people in opposing a hydroelectric project, was slain March 2, 2016, by gunmen who forced their way into her home in the middle of the night. Gustavo Castro Soto, a Mexican activist, was wounded.

GAIPE, made up of five lawyers from the United States, Colombia and Guatemala, formed last year to conduct an outside review at the request of Caceres’ family and her activist group, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, who feared authorities would not bring to justice those behind her killing. Its findings do not carry the weight of law.

The report was based on dozens of interviews, criminal case files, independent reports and what the group described as partial access to evidence provided by government investigators, including “a fraction of” the phone records that are at the core of the case.

“Despite the secrecy of the Public Prosecutor’s investigation, GAIPE has been able to establish the participation of executives, managers and employees of (dam developer) DESA, of private security personnel hired by the company, of state agents and parallel structures to State security forces in crimes committed before, during and after ... the day of the assassination,” the report said. “Those crimes remain unpunished.”

Read more here.

Written by Peter Orsi