How a Murdered Environmental Activist Sparked a Global Movement

(Bloomberg) -- Ever since David Castillo was arrested in 2018 and accused of plotting the murder of environmental activist Berta Cáceres, a clock has been ticking.

Under Honduran law, a person can be held in custody for no more than two-and-a-half years without being put on trial. Castillo’s time in custody expires this week, on Sept. 2. As that deadline approached, the family of Cáceres began pleading with Honduran authorities to finally take action after years of delays and postponements.

And on Aug. 19—exactly two weeks before Castillo, chief executive of the Honduran hydroelectric company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA), would be eligible for release, the Honduran courts began to stir. That afternoon, the country’s Supreme Court made a startling announcement: the judge who’d overseen Castillo’s case from the beginning would be replaced.

Cáceres’s supporters were shocked, struggling to interpret the move. They feared it could be a last-minute attempt to sabotage the case. They suspected that Castillo’s wealthy defenders might have been behind it.

“Today, the court has to demonstrate that no longer will people be set free because of their connections, or because of the influence of powerful people in this country,” said Gustavo Cáceres, Berta’s older brother.

The idea that well-connected people might be intervening on behalf of Castillo and DESA, which was behind the Agua Zarca dam Berta was fighting before she was murdered, has been a theme throughout the case. In recent months, researchers and lawyers with numerous nonprofit organizations—as well as those from an international anti-corruption panel—have launched multiple investigations and lawsuits.

They’ve dug into the business operations of DESA, saying they’ve found a history of corruption: a rotten system sustained by the richest people in Honduras, they contend. A system, they argue, that was responsible for Berta’s killing.

“This group of economic powers was able to be a part of this whole criminal dynamic,” said Victor Fernandez, a lawyer representing the Cáceres family and the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, the human rights organization Berta co-founded. “And it started with the creation of the Agua Zarca project, and extended all the way through Berta’s assassination and the other crimes committed along the way.”

In addition to the murder charges, Castillo and several government officials now face a corruption lawsuit. The complaint alleges abuse of authority, falsification of documents and fraud in the development of the Agua Zarca project, which Berta opposed because it would wreak havoc on local lands and rivers critical to indigenous people.

The Cáceres family’s lawyers are also pursuing DESA shareholders and the international development banks which loaned millions of dollars to fund the project. One lawsuit pending in the Netherlands accuses FMO, a Dutch development bank, of negligence.

With those efforts simmering in the background, the Honduran court last week finally made its decision: David Castillo would face trial for murder.

His defense blasted the ruling. Castillo’s lawyer suggested that international groups aligning themselves with the Cáceres family had bullied the courts.

But for the family, that international support was something to celebrate.

“The struggle our sister undertook crossed the borders of Honduras, to Europe, the U.S.,” said Gustavo Cáceres. Her message, he said, didn’t die with her; it was amplified, and it took on a much broader meaning. “It can’t be the case that you can get away with killing people for defending natural resources and nature,” he said.

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