What the murder of an environmentalist leader reveals about democracy, feminism and Hillary Clinton 
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Berta Cáceres was a woman who stood up for feminism, indigenous rights and the environment. When she won the prestigious <a href="http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/">Goldman Environmental Prize</a> last year for her work fighting the Agua Zarca dam, she said, “We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction.” 
On March 3rd, Berta was assassinated in her home in Honduras. She and other members of the group she founded, the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras, had been in conflict with the dam operators, local government, police and military. In her speech, she appeared to foreshadow her death, saying, “Giving our lives in various ways for the protection of rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet.” Foreign Policy in Focus even wrote a profile several years ago called <a href="http://fpif.org/berta-caceres-still-alive/">“Berta Cáceres is Still Alive”</a>. 
It was another woman, Hillary Clinton, who as U.S. Secretary of State in 2009 backed a coup in Honduras that ousted the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. 
Journalist <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/the-clinton-backed-honduran-regime-is-picking-off-indigenous-leaders/">Greg Grandin</a> has described Zelaya as a president who was “remarkably supportive of ‘intersectionality’ (that is, a left politics not reducible to class or political economy)”. For example, he tried to legalise the morning-after pill. But after the coup, Honduras’s coup congress – as Grandin points out, the one legitimated by Hillary Clinton – passed an “absolute ban on emergency contraception,” criminalising “the sale, distribution, and use of the ‘morning-after pill’” and punishing women who used it in the same way as if they had obtained or performed an abortion, which in Honduras is completely illegal. 
Clinton’s emails, Grandin writes, have “revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.” He adds: “Such is the nature of the ‘unity government’ Clinton helped institutionalise. In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton holds up her Honduran settlement as a proud example of her trademark clear-eyed, “pragmatic” foreign policy approach. 
Since the coup, femicides – murders of women – have skyrocketed, as have torture and murder by military and paramilitary security forces. The end goal, as Grandin describes it, is “the wholesale deliverance of the country’s land and resources to transnational pillagers” – like the Canadian company building the dam. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/04/berta-caceres-murder-protests-honduras-environmental-indigenous-activism?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco">The Guardian</a> reported that environmental activists are more likely to be killed in Honduras than anywhere else, and more than 80 per cent of murders go unpunished: “Part of the problem, according to the IACHR, is that the military has taken on roles that should be left to a civilian police. They tend to work in conjunction with powerful interests, while human rights activists are criminalised.” 
Today, the United States continues to fund the Honduran military. Meanwhile, the Honduran government has apparently asked the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to help it with its investigation into the death of Berta Cáceres. Here’s one clue that might help them out. The London Review of Books <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/03/07/john-perry/the-murder-of-berta-caceres/">reported</a> that &#8220;the official government statement lamenting the murder and promising to find those responsible was at first dated 1 March, two days before Cáceres’s death.&#8221; 
Like Hillary, Berta was a woman. She was a wife. She was a mother. But Berta is dead and Hillary is alive. And Hillary’s “pragmatic” foreign policy, modelled on that of her hero (and war criminal) Henry Kissinger, is to blame. 
Berta said in the same afore-mentioned speech, “Let us wake up! We’re out of time… Our Mother Earth – militarised, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated – demands that we take action.” 
Not only do I challenge Hillary Clinton’s credentials as a feminist: I challenge her to answer for the death of Berta Cáceres. 
In memory of Berta Cáceres, the NGO Cultural Survival is collecting donations for the organisation she led, Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH), whose members have been detained and threatened because of their opposition to the dam. You can donate here: <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/donate/berta">https://www.culturalsurvival.org/donate/berta</a>. 
UPDATE
<div>On March 15th, two weeks after Berta Cáceres&#8217; murder, another member of COPINH was <a href="http://time.com/4262328/honduras-activist-nelson-garcia-berta-caceres-shot-dead">killed</a>. Yesterday, on March 16th, the Dutch development bank, FMO, announced it was withdrawing from the Agua Zarca Dam project, in which it had invested $15 million. FinnFund also announced it would be suspending its funding for the project. As a Foreign Policy <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/16/fmo-murder-caceres-finnfund-suspend-agua-zarca/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">headline</a> put it: &#8220;It takes two dead activists for banks to suspend funding.&#8221;</div>
Image from: http://goo.gl/s7XlTI

Berta Cáceres: How Hillary Clinton Set the Scene for the Death of a Hero in Honduras

25th anniversary of Constitution sees massive mobilisation across country and around the world 
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Night is falling in Brazil’s Xingu Indigenous Territory. In the centre of a thatch-roof hut stands Raoni Metuktire, cacique (chief) of the Kayapó people. All day long, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the territory, other indigenous leaders have been speaking on everything from the need for better education to the dangers of the Belo Monte mega-dam being built in the Amazon. 
The third largest dam in the world, Belo Monte will flood 500 square km and dry up 100 km of river. The particular section of the river most affected is home to communities of the Kayapó, Juruna and Arara tribes, among others, and a total of <a href="http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/attached-files/Belo_Monte_FactSheet_May2012.pdf">20,000 people will be displaced</a>. Belo Monte, one of dozens of giant dam projects planned for the Amazon region, typifies the Brazilian government’s preference for development over conservation. 
Raoni begins a war dance and a low chant that builds to a crescendo. He speaks forcefully, in the Kayapó language. 
His nephew Megaron Txucarramãe, himself a highly esteemed Kayapó leader, translates: “I want you to feel strong, you are great! I want to see you fighting!” 
The wooden disk in Raoni’s lip punctuates his exhortation. The gathered tribes, from the Arara to the Xavante, painted in ink made from the genipapo fruit, loudly cheer their assent.
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Chief-Raoni-Village-2-River.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-9588" style="border-style: solid; border-color: black; border-width: 1px;" alt="Chief Raoni Village 2 - River" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Chief-Raoni-Village-2-River.jpg" width="360" height="239" /></a>
***
A famous <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200157984045046&amp;set=a.1252132056135.2039068.1014534962&amp;type=1&amp;theater">picture of Raoni</a> has lately made the rounds on the internet. In it he sits, head in his hands, overcome by emotion. The photo is usually captioned something like: “Chief Raoni cries for his forest.” 
The photo points to an essential truth &#8211; Brazil’s tropical forest is being destroyed at an accelerating rate, and Raoni is a legendary and outspoken defender of indigenous rights. But the picture is not what it seems. According to the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/29/1021393/-Chief-Raoni-Cries-for-his-people-no-but-you-can-still-stop-the-Belo-Monte-Dam">Daily Kos</a>, the actual explanation for Raoni’s display of emotion is that he has just been reunited with a member of his family. 
The danger of facile Facebook memes like this one is that they distort reality. In this case, the picture could be considered to rob Raoni of his agency. It harkens back to the “crying Indian” ads of the 1970s in the U.S. (The actor in which, incidentally, was an Italian-American in makeup and a wig, and which may have <a href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3642/">contributed to more pollution</a> than it prevented.) Such images depict natives as passive victims, taking it lying &#8211; in Raoni’s case, sitting &#8211; down, while the bad white guys take their land and pollute their water. 
The story is, of course, based on five centuries of truth. And in countries with any surviving indigenous populations, it goes on today. According to the NGO Survival International, a proposed Brazilian constitutional amendment would give Congress the power to participate in the demarcation of indigenous lands. A bill currently under discussion would open up indigenous land <a href="http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9413">for army bases, mining, dams and other industrial projects</a>, and another would open up indigenous reserves to large-scale mining for the first time. 
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Chief-Raoni.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-9589 alignright" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" alt="Chief Raoni" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Chief-Raoni.jpg" width="211" height="266" /></a>Yet here, in upside-down America, the easy narrative &#8211; “White man takes powerless Indian’s land” &#8211; is being stood on its head. Far from being passive victims as they’re so often portrayed, Brazil’s indigenous peoples held widespread demonstrations last week in protest of such attempts to chip away at their constitutional rights. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/02/us-brazil-indians-protest-idUSBRE9911DQ20131002?utm_content=buffer64060&amp;utm_source=buffer&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=Buffer">Reuters</a> reported that Pataxó and Tupinambá Indians blocked roads in the state of Bahia. One thousand indigenous people were camped out in front of the Congress in the capital of Brasilia. 
In the south of Brazil, the Guarani are reasserting their rights as well, stopping traffic in the state of Paraná and occupying the government land reform office in Porto Alegre. Though many have been murdered outright by ranchers, they are retaking their land. (See multimedia presentation by British photographer Phil Clarke-Hill: <a href="http://www.philclarkehill.co.uk/features/retomada/">http://www.philclarkehill.co.uk/features/retomada/</a>.) 
Maira Irigaray Castro of Amazon Watch reported that one indigenous leader <a href="http://amazonwatch.org/news/2013/1003-notes-from-brasilia-pepper-spray-turned-away-and-513-years-of-fighting-for-indigenous-rights">quoted</a> Martin Luther King, Jr.: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” 
Raoni’s granddaughter Mayalú Txucarramãe told a Reuters reporter, “We have lost lots of land, and they want to take away what we have left.” 
This week, new pictures are being taken: Ones that show leaders like Raoni and Mayalú not crying or sitting down, but speaking out, and standing up.
<pre>Photo Credits: Karen Hoffmann (featured and top centre images) / Picture taken on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Xingu Indigenous Territory in Ipavu, a Kamaiurá village in Mato Grosso.</pre>