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
Last June investigative journalist John Gibler wrote a comprehensive and disconcerting story about the assassination of my aunt Berta Cáceres, titled “Under the Gun: An Investigation Into the Murder of Berta Cáceres.” Bertita, as she was known to her friends and family, was a vibrant Honduran woman who was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in
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