Four months after the June 2009 right-wing coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, I interviewed coup general Romeo Vásquez at his office in the Honduran capital. An alumnus of the notorious U.S.-run School of the Americas—traditionally the go-to institution for Latin American dictators, death squad leaders, and torturers—Vásquez was your typical jovial military lecher, informing me with a wink that he would not at all mind taking a second wife.
On the subject of the coup, he had high praise for his “very democratic soldiers”—since you can’t get much more democratic than overthrowing the democratically elected president of a country and then proceeding to beat up peaceful anti-coup protesters and to shoot them in the head. In the general’s view, it was the protesters who were guilty of unspeakable crimes, such as “insulting people, dirtying walls” with graffiti, and “setting buildings on fire.”
Indeed, following a month and a half of brutal repression by security forces, flames had briefly engulfed one of the Tegucigalpa branches of the Popeye’s fast food establishment—an event that, unlike the killing of anti-coup Hondurans, was swiftly elevated to the rank of national tragedy. After all, in a country designed to serve as a vehicle for elite enrichment and corporate profit, life is cheap.
his reality is made painfully clear in a new book by journalist Nina Lakhani, focusing on one extraordinary life cut short by the powers that be in Honduras: Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet. Murdered in her bedroom in March 2016 at the age of 44, Berta was the cofounder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and had spent much of her existence stepping on the toes of power—or, more appropriately, stomping them into the ground. The very act of asserting indigenous humanity and rights was practically seen as a criminal affront to a prevailing system of predatory capitalism predicated on the subjugation of the masses and the usurpation of land and resources.
The last straw, apparently, was Berta’s leading role in opposing the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on indigenous Lenca territory—a project undertaken in a context of massive institutionalized corruption and sketchiness and without the required consultation of the local community. As Lakhani details, this community stood to lose the Gualcarque River, which it depended on not only for its critical water and plant and animal life, but for its spiritual importance. The project was backed by the Atala Zablah family, an integral component of Honduras’ ruling class, and evidence uncovered during the murder inquiry suggests it was indirectly “partially funded by the World Bank Group, which has a mandate to give socially responsible development loans to alleviate poverty.” Rarely do U.S.-backed international financial institutions miss a chance to outdo themselves in the realm of irony.
The coup against Zelaya—who despite possessing no real leftist credentials had pledged a smattering of reforms benefiting the environment and the poor—paved the way for wanton extractivism. In the aftermath of the coup, Lakhani writes, the Gualcarque River was “sold off as part of a package of dam concessions involving dozens of waterways across the country,” in a sinister auction that also saw “mines, tourist developments, biofuel projects and logging concessions… rushed through Congress with no consultation, environmental impact studies or oversight, many destined for indigenous lands.” It was not an accident that Porfirio Lobo, who assumed the presidency of Honduras via illegitimate postcoup elections, declared the country “open for business.” READ MORE AT EL FARO.