Part 2: A Dangerous Woman

In her final years, Berta Cáceres led a protest movement against a proposed hydroelectric dam in Honduras. Was her murder connected to the company behind the project?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Date on time of autopsy March third, two sixteen. The
calabric corresponds to one adult female. Three bullets, all fired
from a Smith and Wesson thirty eight special. It ripped
through her body complexion average body condition, intact height one

(00:27):
and sixty three cimes, rigidity complete. One bullet entered her
left arm and continued into her side. It pierced her
left lung before lodging in her right one alterations observed
de curtive tattoo on left upper third of back. Another

(00:49):
bullet entered her left shoulder at an upward angle. It
continued toward her neck, bursting the jugular vein and an artery.
A third bullet entered her her upper back. It tore
through her left lung, then her diaphragm, then her stomach,
her adrenal gland, and finally fractured one of her vertebrae.

(01:13):
Singer Print examination revealed that the corps registered as autopsy
three two thousand and sixteen belongs to perte Ses. The
medical cause of death was obvious to the coroner, but
you'd never find the real cause by tracing those bullets.

(01:34):
To do that, you have to follow the path of
Berta's life as an activist. It starts in her childhood home.
I'm monte Reel, an investigative journalist for Bloomberg Green. This
is Blood Rivermento. Barretta's mother's name is Austra Flores. She's

(02:27):
showing me around the family home in La Speranza, a
small city in western Honduras. The rooms where bear To
slept and worked for years remained pretty much as she
left them. Her mother shows me Berta's old work files,
her high school awards, and some of the rag dolls
she liked to collect, including a little brown one Barretta's favorite.

(02:55):
Austro wears her gray hair long, pulled back in a
loose ponytail. Her eighty seven years have been full of challenges.
She mothered twelve children. More recently, she suffered three strokes
and a brain hemorrhage. But she's still sharp, and her
memories of Berta are especially vivid. She was the youngest

(03:17):
of the twelve, and Austra calls her Bertita an endearing
way of saying, little Berta was a tireless fighter, and
I think that yes, she learned a lot from me.
Austro was born in nine three. That same year, the

(03:40):
National Party of Honduras took control of the presidency. That
party still exists. It's one of the two most powerful
political coalitions in the country, the more conservative one. The
National Party has evolved over the decades, of course, but
some of its early leaders were classic authority arians. They

(04:01):
cracked down on labor unions and the press. They jailed
political enemies and even outlawed opposition parties. They denied citizenship
and the right to vote to women, and they routinely
exploited indigenous communities for cheap labor. These events in the
nineteen thirties and forties would shape the destiny of the

(04:23):
Cassias family for generations. Austra's father was a critic of
the National Party. He spent nearly five years in jail
as a dissident. Austra would grow up to work as
a midwife. She guesses she delivered something like five thousand
babies over sixty years. Most of them were born in

(04:46):
the countryside in small indigenous communities in the nineteen seventies
and eighties. Her youngest daughter often could be found at
her side, the depicting am Anna from when she was
little would come with me, sometimes attending their births she'd

(05:08):
hold a little candle to give me light because there
was no electricity, and she'd bring me water she boiled it,
and that's how she became aware that working on behalf
of women was a necessity. Women, indigenous communities, the poor.
These had been the underdogs in Honduras, the people that

(05:31):
history hadn't been kind to. They inspired Austra to get
involved in politics, and this was at a time when
women in Honduras almost never did this. Austra became the
first female mayor of La Speranza, then a provincial governor,
later a member of the Honduran National Congress. Erta watched

(05:56):
and learned, and as she got older, her own personality emerged.
Her mother had raised her Catholic, but as Berta grew up,
she began embracing Lenka traditions. The Lenka are the largest
indigenous group in Honduras, but their language and traditions were
largely lost obliterated by modern mainstream culture. This happened well

(06:22):
before Berta was born, but an effort to reclaim and
protect those traditions really started taking off in the nineteen eighties.
When Berta was a teenager. She embraced that movement and
it helps shape her identity as a student activist. Her
older brother says, by the time they were in high

(06:42):
school together, he knew his sister was a leader and
a rebel too. Yeah, it was ACiE. She was the
president of her class and later of an entire school system,
and if ever they expelled from it unfairly, she was
always fighting for them. She even let us strike that

(07:04):
we called against the school directors, who were in a
way dictatorial. Dictatorial back then, in the eighties and early nineties,
neighboring El Salvador was torn by civil war. The Cassari's
family sympathized with the leftist rebels there, the ones fighting

(07:24):
against the Salvadoran government. The family sheltered refugees in their home.
After bear To graduated high school, she traveled to El
Salvador to join the cause. She didn't take up arms,
but she supported fighting units as a sort of field
medic and radio operator. Bearts a return to Lasperanza in

(07:48):
after less than a year in El Salvador. At home,
she continued to embrace leftist causes. Members of the local
police and the military now considered her a political agitator,
and their suspicions extended to the whole Castra's family. Berta's
brother remembers how encounters that seemed innocent at first could

(08:12):
take unexpected turns Ama someone knocked on the door here
and asked Mama if she would come and assist with
a birth because Austra agreed to go with them in
a taxi, but it was a trap. Police and soldiers

(08:34):
surrounded the car and hauled her into the station. Barta
was just nineteen or twenty years old when she heard
her mother had been arrested. She snapped into action. Bertita
started calling around town and the people started to mobilize.

(08:54):
It was Betta who went to the police station arguing
for Mama. Fighting for Mama. There was a protest with
a about three thousand people there. They took over the
entire police station to the Amanda release of Mama, and
it was organized by Bertita and my other siblings did.

(09:18):
By her early twenties, Marita was on her way to
becoming the loudest voice for indigenous and women's rights in
western Honduras, and by her thirties she'd become a national figure.
She often traveled to the capital to goose Galpa to
lobby for her causes. After President manuel's Eliah was elected

(09:42):
in two thousand six, her influence grew. She wasn't a
member of his party, but he sometimes supported her opposition
to mining and hydro electric projects on indigenous lands, and
she supported his proposal to rewrite the country constitution, a
move that caused the Honduran establishment to rebel against Zaliah's administration.

(10:08):
The Honduran military in particular, considered it a threat to
the country's traditional order. Then, on June two thousand nine
on during politics and the trajectory of Berta's life took
a very sharp turn. It all began at dawn on Sunday,

(10:30):
when some two hundred soldiers surrounded the president's private home.
They took him at gunpoint and flew him out of
the country to neighbor in Costa Rica, soldiers kidnapped President Zeliah.
They smuggled him out of the country in his pajamas.
The National Party, the same one that had imprisoned Berta's grandfather,

(10:52):
took power instantly. Berta became a national leader of a
new resistance movement. When the military oversaw a new round
of elections, Barton and others urged the public to boycott

(11:13):
the vote. She said, the same people who launched a
coup couldn't be trusted to make the process fair. Hundreds
of local and national candidates dropped out, but the election
went ahead anyway. The National Party consolidated its power and
now fully in control of the presidency and the National Congress.

(11:35):
The party's leaders wanted to send a message to the world.
They wanted other countries to know that things would be
different here from now on. The government adopted a new catchphrase,
and it was in English, as if composed especially for
a foreign audience. The slogan was h O B. Honduras

(11:59):
is open for business. For business in the new Honduran
government held an international business conference to sell the idea
to investors. The new leader of Congress, Juan Orlando Hernandez,
told the audience that Honduras was prepared to cash in

(12:23):
on one of its most valuable natural resources. We have
to take advantage of the enormous potential of our rivers
to build large dams and medium sized dams, and we've
awarded around fifty contracts for clean energy with a clear
message that this is the route we want to take

(12:43):
moving forward. For moments, I had Clara the Honduran business
elite rallied together to create companies that would build these
new hydro electric projects. One of these companies was called Dessa.
The government gave it the go ahead to build a

(13:04):
dam on the Gualcrate River, a few hours drive from
Las Bonanza. The project was called I was Zarca, and
as soon as that project was set, Dessa was on
a collision course with Berta. The Awa Zarka project was
considered a small dam by industry standards. The original plans

(13:27):
called for a damn wall that was about forty six
ft tall. At its highest point, there was to be
a mile long tunnel, a reservoir, and a power station.
Berta and the Rio Blanco residents who opposed the project
argued that the impacts would be devastating. The dam would
disrupt the flow of the river and degrade the land

(13:49):
they depended on for crops. But beyond those environmental impacts,
they argued that the Rio Gualcrate is sacred to the
link of people. They say the river is their life blood.
But almost everything about the project violated Berta's worldview. The

(14:10):
government was saying that this private company DSA would finally
bring critical infrastructure to the tiny communities by the river,
paved roads, electricity, schools. But in a radio interview in
less than a year before she died, bear to explain
that she hated that idea. She didn't want to leave

(14:33):
those sorts of things to a company that was not
subject to public oversight. This is the obligation of the state,
of the government. We pay taxes for that. But if
communities have a school, it's usually only because they fought
and worked for it. So this is the duty of

(14:55):
the state. It's not that you have to go to
a private company for the right to have a road
the indicated Helona company. So many of Berta's preoccupations as
an activist came together in this project. Her environmentalism, her
skepticism that a for profit business could reliably serve the

(15:17):
public interest, and then there was the politics of it all.
All of this was backed by the National Party, a
group her family had been fighting for generations. It seemed
like Berta's whole life had led her straight toward a reckoning.
On that river. You can run for it. Oh, I'm

(15:47):
in a van and it's January. More than three years
after Berta was killed, a member of Copeine, Berta's activist
organization is with me, as well as a guide who's
a friend of the casserous Emily. We're heading towards Rio Blanco,
a town near the Gualcrate River. The plan for today
is to meet people who worked alongside Bertha. I was

(16:10):
warned that this trip could be risky. There's only one
road that leads to Rio Blanco, the activists say. Locals
who supported the Agua Zarka project have been known to
attack people they believe are connected to Copeine. While we're driving,
it starts to rain, and soon, just a couple of
miles before we reach our destination, our van gets stuck

(16:34):
on a muddy road in precisely the worst place to
get stuck. We're directly in front of a group of houses.
The activists tell me most of the attacks have happened
Right here. Inside the van is Raoul, my copine friendly guide,
and an activist named Dunia. They huddled together trying to

(16:57):
brainstorm away out of this jam. Okay, so I'm saying,
what options do we have? Um? She said, and I said,
what about if we get beasts? And then she says
the problem will be leaving the car here, because they
have even attempted to set coping cars on fire, and
there were only reason they couldn't set it on fire

(17:18):
was because there was a crowd here like looking at
the car. That would not be good. One option we
don't have is calling someone. Our cell phones are not
getting reception. And as we sit stuck in the mud,
several people begin coming out of their homes. I see

(17:40):
someone pacing at the top of the hill. Our van
wasn't able to climb dune. You grew up around here,
and she recognizes his face. So here's a guy on
the hill top kind of walking around here with a machete.
And she said that that guy his family has been
harassing her family. It's not looking good. She's a little

(18:06):
bit concerned about being attacked. It's really hard to stop
looking at that machete, and pretty soon we noticed that
he's not the only person carrying one. In rural Honduras,
machetes are a pretty common sight for farmers here. It's
just a tool of the trade. But in the conflict

(18:29):
over the Awazarka Damn, machetes have been a weapon of choice.
Our driver, Rony, sits still for a moment behind the wheel,
letting everything sink in. Then he slams his palm onto
the side of his head three times, almost tass Ronnie,
almost bass see how he was, and he said stressed.

(18:56):
So here we are trapped. The vans, we ehels are
spinning and spraying mud everywhere, but we're not budging. And
all the while more people keep coming out of the
houses and they just stand there staring at us. This
goes on for about forty five minutes. The standoff is

(19:24):
an appropriate introduction to Rio Blanco. The threat of violence
has become this community's defining feature. Eventually, some people approach
the van from behind. DOONI recognizes them, their friends. They
offer us a ride in a truck that's a lot
more agile in the mud than our vehicle. We hopped

(19:45):
in and make it up the little hill, pass the
staring onlookers and pass their machetes. Safe. Before the damn

(20:06):
came into our community, this was a community that was
nice and clean. We were able to go out onto
the road in the dark. And now we can't, or
we can't, but we're torn to pieces. So that's why,
and even now it's still the case. This damn came
in and tore our community apart. There's this was one

(20:28):
of the people we'd come to see. Maria Santo Dominguez,
like everyone else in this tiny village. She lives in
a cramped cinder block house. Pigs and chickens root in
the yard by the outhouse. Sometimes they try to wander
in the front door. When officials from Deessa, the hydro
Electric company, came here in they promised electricity, new roads,

(20:53):
and new schools. Some of the locals welcomed that attention,
but Maria was skeptical. Her family got water from the
Gualcaque River they grew corn along its banks. When Bert
Casseres began organizing local opposition to the project, Maria became
one of her most loyal companions. If we weren't organized,

(21:17):
we wouldn't still be here, because the damn, it's a
dam of death. Dessa had hired Sino Hydro, a Chinese contractor,
to handle construction. In early Sino Hydro established a work
site a couple of miles from Maria's house. She worked
with Copeine to help erect roadblocks to prevent construction equipment

(21:41):
from moving in and out, but some of Maria's neighbors,
the ones who supported the project took offense. Things come
to a head that summer. One morning, Maria is walking
beside a dirt road when several neighbors surround her, three men,

(22:01):
two women. The men are holding machetes, the women carry
heavy sticks. They tell her she's strangling the local economy.
What else, That's why we live in poverty, they told me,
because I don't allow projects to come in that would

(22:23):
help everyone. And I told them, no, you're so wrong,
because what they're doing will only contaminate the water, the land.
They told me, okay, woman, what we're going to do
is kill you. And when they told me they were
going to kill me, that's when I felt the first blow.
The first strike of the machete hit me in the head,
and after that another machete hit me here in the chest,
and then there was another that got my finger. That

(22:53):
finger falls away, severed. She's bleeding from wounds in her
chest and her head. As Maria is being attacked, her
husband arrives on the scene. The attackers turn on him.
They slash him with a machete, heading into his hand,
his forehead, and the skin around his left eye. When

(23:17):
the carnage is over, the two of them are rushed
to a hospital. They spend eight days they're recovering. Maria
says they were still healing when a fellow coping activist
named Thomas Garcia helps organize an impromptu protest at the
Sino Hydro construction site. Maria refers to Thomas as her

(23:38):
ermano or brother in the sense that they were fighting
for the same cause. And yeah, so the day before that,
the police came and they offered my brother twenty lympidas
twenty thousand lympires at the time was worth about four

(24:00):
hundred and fifty dollars. That's a lot of money in
a place like this, more than a month's worth of
income for a lot of people, Maria says. Tomas Garcia
refused the offer. She says he considered it a bribe,
something to make sure he wouldn't stir up trouble for Deessa.
She says, the company and the local police seemed to

(24:22):
be working together. Company officials vehemently deny these allegations, and
we will fully explore their version of these events later
in this series. But Maria insists the offer was a bribe,
and so my brother said that there was no way
he was ever going to negotiate that he wasn't going

(24:45):
to go against his partners in this struggle. He said,
if he dies, it's better to die clean. He could
never get involved in that kind of negotiating. The next
day is July, the of the protest, and it will
define the conflict on the river up until the moment
where it gets killed. That morning, Thomas and the other

(25:08):
protesters gathered near the village to make the track to
the construction site. Thomas's seventeen year old son Alan tagged along. Today,
Alan is twenty four years old. From there, we started
to leave at exactly eight o'clock in the morning, and

(25:31):
we arrived at the site around ten o'clock. There we
found soldiers and police and some of the officials from
the company. Just then when we entered the site, they
shot my father, well, they assassinated him and they shot
me too. It was a soldier from see what the pick?

(25:57):
So that easy what the pick. The security force that
protected the work site was a mix of civilian and
military guards. Alan disputes the story that the soldier who
fired the shots later told the guards said he fired

(26:18):
in self defense because Alan's father was threatening him with
a machete. Alan survived three gunshot wounds to the chest
and back. His father was killed instantly. So even now,
nearly seven years after those incidents, the wounds still feel
fresh for those who lived through them. After my first

(26:43):
trip to Rio Blanco with Copaine members, I returned about
a week later. This time I wanted a different perspective.
I was with community members who had supported the Damn
project and Desa. The roads had dried out by now,
but I was shocked when they drove me to the
exact spot where the van had been stuck the week before.

(27:05):
They led me on foot towards the very house that
Copeine had described as the most dangerous one in Rio Blanco.
They told me this was the home of the Madrid family.
I recognized the name. Reports by various nonprofit groups outlining
the tensions here had mentioned the Madrids. One report I

(27:25):
had read from said the family had tried to intimidate
opponents of the Damn through quote constant harassment. It was
the Madrid's who had sold Dessa the land that would
become its work site. This was a family that clearly
and emphatically sided with the company. As I approached the

(27:45):
Madrid house, coffee beans were drying in the sun. We
walked around the back of the house. There we found
the family matriarch, sixty four year old Erinea Madrid. She
was washing her hair in a cistern she'd held off,
combed her hair and we sat down to talk a
Milion Massa Lanco. The family that has been the most

(28:11):
affected in Rio Blanco has been the Madrid family, all
because the institution of Copine, that lady Berta Cases came
here and poisoned the people. These ignorant people, ignorant of
a project that was going to move this community forward,
because she was only looking for benefits for herself. Solo

(28:34):
Aarona was inside this house the day of the tragic
protest in when the conflict carved permanent riffs in this community.
The fifteenth of July was a Monday. I can never
forget it. It was Monday, and they marched by here, yelling, yelling, yelling,

(28:55):
until they got to the work site Ritundo. No more
than an hour later, just after Thomas and Alan Garcia
had been shot, she heard more commotion. It was coming
from the field directly behind the house. Her grandson Christiane

(29:16):
had just headed down there and so the boy walks
down there. We have a pasture and there are cows
down there that the boy takes care of. Every day.
Christiane would milk the cows and give some to the
workers at the Sino Hydro site. They're in that pasture

(29:38):
with the cows. A group of men returning from the
deadly protest encountered the boy. Joey. I heard the shots,
but never did I imagine, Never did it cross my
mind that these people were going to repay me in
this way, because I before the eyes of my God,
I feel that I had freely eaten and drank them freely,

(30:00):
as with all my friends. Never could I have imagined
they'd pay me like this by killing that boy who
had nothing to do with this Copeene denies involvement in
that killing, but Aarona is convinced that the protesters took
the boy's life in exchange for Thomas Garcias Christian was

(30:24):
fourteen years old, his mother had died giving birth to him.
Erna was technically his grandmother, but she'd raised him as
her son. As aaron Ea tells me the story, I
noticed there's a picture of a boy on the wall
behind her. As she talks He's wearing a blue suit
and tie. A caption printed above the image reads, Christiane,

(30:50):
you live in the heart of our family and the Belos.
I took hold of him eight hours after he was born,
and so that's why this has cost me so many tears.
I said to God, leave him for me, because I

(31:11):
need him in my life, you know, I mean, my boy,
how can it be? And it hurts me? These things
they've done are unfair. Yo. I have not been able

(31:36):
to overcome this, the death of my son. It's already
six years ago, but for me, it's like it was yesterday. Yeah, okay,

(32:02):
Number Sergio Roriez. My name is Sergio Rodriguez. I'm a biologist.
I've been a consultant studying environmental impacts all of my
life twenty years, and I started working Fordessa in June
two thousand twelve. Then don't mean if the Awa Zarca

(32:26):
Damn project had a face in the communities beside the
Rio gual cart it was Sergio Rodriguez. Several development banks
in Europe and the America's were funding the project. To
get that money, the company had to meet certain environmental standards.
It was Sergio's job to make sure that happened, and

(32:49):
when Deessa contracted with Sino Hydro, the Chinese company to
start construction in early Sergio also was tasked with maintaining
good nations with the people living nearby. He pitched the
promised up sides, the new roads, new schools, new jobs.

(33:09):
Sergius says that at the time construction was set to
begin in the atmosphere in Rio Blanco was calm. In Shemo,
at first the project had good relations with the different
communities on both sides of the river and Inibuca and
Santa Barbara. Then when dro started, we ran into a

(33:34):
few problems with its workers going on to properties without
asking permission, or when they were doing topographical work, they
cut down some of the corn fields and the machines
plowed up land and some of the neighbor's property. So
these little problems started day by day, and we were like, Okay,
we have to fix this. We will fix this. Yeah.

(34:00):
With Sergio's promises didn't satisfy the damn's opponents. Sergio puts
part of the blame on Berta. He says she tried
to convince residents that the roads and schools would never
be built in July, Sergio says he wanted to work
things out with Berta. She agreed and they met for

(34:21):
the first time at a Copine run community center called
Utopia in La Speranza Das. We were there talking with
them and we proposed a way to solve the conflict
and to guarantee the communities that the social projects would

(34:41):
be completed and Copine could be in charge of them
or they could supervise our construction of them, and their
position was no. Three days later, in Rio Blanco, Tomask
Garcia and his son Alan were shot at the demonstration.

(35:02):
Young Christiane Madrid was killed in the family cow pasture went.
I went the next day and well, it was devastating
to see everything that had happened, painful because of the
deaths that had occurred, both of Tomas Garcia and Christian Madrid.

(35:24):
Christian I knew him, and so we evacuated some things
from the site and the project was suspended. As such.
In PRIs, project of Sergio filed criminal complaints against Berta
and Copeine. Cino Hydro abandoned the work site and never

(35:46):
came back. Dessa severed its relationship with the company soon thereafter.
Sergio says Dessa wasn't happy with the way Sino Hydro
had been operating anyway, and they hired a new contractor.
Dessa executives came up with a plan to salvage the project.
They tweaked the design of the dam. Now it would

(36:07):
be what's called a run of the river hydro electric project.
Instead of featuring a large dam wall, run of the
river project directs water into tunnels built beside the river
and into the power station. Then the water is rerouted
back to the river downstream, so there's usually much less
environmental impact. Additionally, Dessa moved the project to a new

(36:32):
location to avoid conflict. Then we moved the side of
the dam, relocating a two kilometers upstream where we had
one support and there was no problem. The move didn't
end the protests from Copeine. Even if the environmental impacts

(36:56):
were reduced, they didn't completely disappear. The protesters argued that
it was still a disruptive construction site. The river's aquatic
life and the strength of its flows could be altered.
Copaine planned one of its protests for February, just a
couple of weeks before Berta was killed. Sergio says most

(37:21):
of the protesters were bust In from Latahea, a neighborhood
in Rio Blanco that's on the other side of the river,
near the previous side of the project. We had information
that Berta Casseres was going to come and that she

(37:42):
had as the residence of La Teja to cross the
river again and they were to occupy the project's property
for something like eight days. Because we knew this demonstration
was going to happen, obviously, we called the police again
and the police arrived before the protests started, until they

(38:02):
When Sergio got to the scene, he spotted a familiar
face among the demonstrators. I approached Berta Cassis and greeted her.
How are you doing, Berta, I asked her. I congratulated
her on the golden prize that they had given her

(38:23):
in and she told me, you're invited to come visit
the Utopia Center so you can see what we've done
with the price premier that he says was the extent
of their conversation. Sergio says it was the last time

(38:45):
he'd ever see her. About two weeks after that meeting,
Sergio's phone rang Sinco on the third of March at

(39:05):
five thirty in the morning, approximately I received a call
from Claudia Dasso, my colleague. She told me Sergio they Kilberta.
I said, what what happened? The como Sergey has searched

(39:26):
for news on TV. He made a few calls and
he began exchanging text messages with others At Tessa, everyone
is like, what happened here? What's the latest, what's the
impact of this? And also, this is a crisis for
us because we're going to point the finger at us.

(39:48):
AGAs Arka was Copin's banner, so it was logical that
they're going to point to us. So Geo says he
expected investigators to come knocking on his door, and so
he waited. Days passed than a week, then another week.

(40:11):
No one came in those days after the murder, Gustavo
Castro had emerged as a prime suspect for police. He's

(40:35):
the Mexican activist who was in the house with Bertha
on the night of the murder, and he'd been shot
in the hand in the year. You might remember that
when we last heard from him, he was detained at
an airport in Honduras. Authorities wouldn't let him leave the country,
so a couple more weeks past, Gustavo was now hold

(40:56):
up in the Mexican embassy in Honduras, the only place
he says he felt safe. The Honduran investigators were still
trying to figure out how he might be connected to
the crime. Gustavo's brother flew in from Mexico to try
to help bring him home, but had no luck. They

(41:18):
took us to a room, and there they tell us
Gustavo Castro is now prohibited from leaving the country for
thirty days a little career. His lawyers asked to see
the court order declaring that he beheld in the country,
but Gustavo says there was no court order. So his

(41:41):
lawyers tried to fight back. They went to the courthouse
in Las Branza and filed two petitions. One was a
complaint about not being shown a court order. The other
asked that he be allowed to go home. And so
my lawyer comes back the next day and the judge

(42:02):
tells her he is suspending her from professional practice. In
other words, he said to my lawyer, it's ruled that
you cannot practice law for the next month, a suspension
that can only be done by a bar association there's
a whole process for that. So with complete impunity, they
wanted to leave me without legal representation and leave me

(42:23):
on my own. But I so Gustavo was stuck in limbo.
Authorities wouldn't tell him or bear to his family how
he fit into their investigation. Two weeks after the murder,
the Honduran prosecutors issued a declaration. They said that no

(42:47):
details of the probe were to be shared with the
Cassarus family or their lawyers. The decree said that the
family would only be given quote information that doesn't jeopardize
the investigation. The Cassarras family and Gustavo we're in the dark.
So they turned to an international network of activists. Environmentalists

(43:11):
and human rights campaigners have been following the story from abroad.
Those activists went on a media blitz, hoping to pressure
the Honduran investigation from the outside. This is a clip
from Democracy Now, an internationally distributed radio and TV program.
The host Amy Goodman is interviewing Beverly Bell, an American

(43:34):
activist who had been a friend to both Berta and Gustavo.
What is happening right now in the wake and the
horror of the Ertaksa's assassination. What's happening to Gustavo Castro Sota.
It reads like the worst horror movie you could ever imagine.
It's just been crazy where Gustavo was locked up in

(43:58):
horrible conditions. Horrible. What are you calling for now? We
are calling for his safe passage out of Honduras back
to Mexico. We are also calling for an independent investigation
of the assassination of Berta Casades because so far it's
been grossly manipulated by the Honduran government, which is seeking

(44:19):
to target and blame other members of Berta's group, who
themselves have been detained and are now being investigated. They
had ripped a page out of Berta's own playbook. If
the Honduran government wasn't listening to them, maybe the noise

(44:41):
of an international pressure campaign would attract some attention. They
argued that instead of focusing on Gustavo or on Berta's colleagues,
they should look at Dessa. Berta herself had repeatedly said
that the company had been the source of threats against
her life. Berta's daughter, er Tita Isabelle, continued to press

(45:04):
investigators to shift the focus of the probe. The public
ministry had no idea what to do with themselves, so
we were saying, look at the company. But thirteen or
fourteen days past before the company for the first time
was targeted in On March sixteenth, the prosecutor Ingredi Figured

(45:50):
called me and told me that I should go to
testify in the case of the death of Beta in
the city of Li Speranza and Prancer. Sergio says he
told the investigator the same version of events he described
to me. He said he'd barely known Berta, and that's

(46:11):
when the investigator dropped a bomb on him. Calida Investigato.
The prosecutor ingrid Figured told me, you're giving a statement
as someone who's being investigated. That's because there's testimony that
you threatened Berta cass with death. I was surprised. I

(46:35):
had seen Berta cas Is three times in my whole life.
Several of Berta's colleagues with Copaine told investigators that Sergio
had been harassing Berta since two thousand twelve. He threatened

(46:56):
her with repeated telephone calls, and that conversation that happened
a couple of weeks before the murder, the one that
Sergio says was friendly when he congratulated her on the
Goldman Prize. Copine witnesses say Sergio was angry with Berita
that he threatened her again. After his interview with a
prosecuting investigator, Sergio returned to his home into Goose Galpa.

(47:21):
Later that same day that Sergio was questioned, another copine activist,
a man named Nelson Garcia, was shot and killed about
a hundred miles south of La Speranza, and during police
considered it an isolated case. He'd been involved in other
protests which weren't connected to Dessa or a Wazarca. Even so,

(47:43):
that killing got the attention of two European development banks
that had backed the project. Both said they'd suspend financing
until the investigation was resolved. So now Sergio's job had
become much more difficult, but he hadn't given up on
the project. As far as he knew. The accusations against

(48:06):
him were going nowhere. He continued working for Dessa, waiting
for the smoke to clear, but there were signs the
investigation was evolving. In April, Gustavo Castro was finally allowed
to leave the country. He had been held by authorities
for more than a month, but now he was no

(48:26):
longer considered a suspect. The investigator's interests seemed to be
shifting towards other people. Sergio was one of them. And
then on May two, my lawyer called me and said

(48:46):
there's a warrant to search your house that day. May
second would begin at dawn with a series of raids
and so prize arrests. By late morning, secret developments inside
the investigation began to emerge. A new cast of characters

(49:09):
would assume center stage. By evening, more blood would be
spilled the story of that day from dawn to dusk
on the next episode of Blood River. Blood River is

(49:32):
reported and written by me Mons. Reel topor Foreheads is
our senior producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Our
theme was composed and performed by Senia Rubinos. Special thanks
to Patricia Eliah, Carlos Rodriguez and Jose Roscoe. Francesca Levy

(49:53):
is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe
if you haven't already, and if you like what you hear,
please leave us a review. It helps others find out
about the show. Thanks for listening.