“From Honduras to America-The Beginning of the Story”, 13^th March 2020

…For more than 150 years, whole nations in Central and South America have served as control experiments for neocolonial and neoliberal economic policies, ruled over by foreign multinational corporations. These corporations include extractive companies such as the Rosario Mining Co., Bonanza Group of Mines, the Eden Mining Co. and the United Fruit Co. — companies chartered in the United States. These extractive industries have transformed entire mountains and clear cut entire forests. These industries also expanded and solidified wealth inequality while restricting social mobility. In many countries, joining the military is one of the means for people to lift themselves out of poverty. Arguably, joining the military was no guarantee of a better life in Honduras.

These circumstances led to the rise of organizers like Berta Cáceres, a Honduran environmental activist, indigenous leader and co-founder and coordinator of Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas Honduras, or COPINH. Cáceres was assassinated in 2016 following years of threats against her life. A former soldier with the U.S.-trained special forces units of the Honduran military asserted that Caceres’ name was on their hit list months before her assassination…

Twelve environmental activists were killed in Honduras in 2014, according to research by Global Witness, making it the most dangerous country in the world, relative to its size, for activists protecting forests and rivers…