Episode Title: Justice for Berta & Victory for the Guapinol 8

Guest: Karen Spring host of the podcast Honduras Now. She is also the in-country coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network.  

Berta Caceres was a Honduran (Lenca) environmental activist, indigenous leader,[3] and co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).[4][5][6] She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque.[7][8]

Six years ago today, she was assassinated in her home by armed intruders, after years of threats against her life.[9] A former soldier with the US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military asserted that Caceres' name was on their hit-list months before her assassination. Her assassins are yet to stand trial.  

On February 24, after 914 days of arbitrary imprisonment, the defenders of the Guapinol River were released. The village of Guapinol sits downstream from the open-pit mining project in Carlos Escaleras National Park. Many locals view the mine as a threat to the regional watershed.

Newly inaugurated president Xiomara Castro has declared justice for Berta and on February 28 declared Honduras free of open-pit mining.

In partnership with Friends of Latin America, Massachusetts Peace Action and Task Force on the Americas, original broadcasts of WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean can be viewed every Wednesday at 4:30pm PT/7:30pm ET on CODEPINK YouTube Live