In 2016, armed men broke into my aunt Berta Cáceres’s home in Honduras and murdered her. She was a human rights and environmental activist who had spent her life defending indigenous land rights. What followed for my family — and for thousands of people who knew her work — was a decade-long fight for justice
“He may be an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.” That quip — of uncertain origin, but often traced to Franklin D. Roosevelt about Nicaragua’s ruthless dictator Anastasio Somoza — became a shorthand excuse for dubious American foreign policies during the 1930s and the Cold War. It touched policy in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and
LA ESPERANZA, Honduras — Precisely a year ago, I awoke to a garbled text message from my mother. She was too distraught to write clearly, but I understood her immediately, and my heart dropped. Murderers had finally gotten to my aunt Berta Cáceres, who, as a child, had been young enough to be my playmate
Oakland, Calif. — It was always a relief to see my aunt Berta, whom we affectionately called Bertita. Not just because of the constant threats to her life, but because she was a “rayo de luna” — a ray of moonlight — in any situation. On March 3, shortly after midnight, unidentified gunmen stormed into
A few months after I began at the South China Morning Post I went to Beijing to train a photographer and a reporter on the fine art of video and editing. I didn’t end up doing much training due to the reporter deciding she didn’t need me to train her and the photographer being sent