Castillo sentenced for Cáceres' killing
(June 21, 2022)
Roberto David Castillo, the former head of Honduran hydroelectric dam company Desarrollos Energéticos (DESA) was sentenced to 22 years and six months for ordering and planning the 2016 assassination of the Indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres.
Cáceres, winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was killed by hitmen in her home, after years of threats linked to her opposition of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River. (See post for March 4, 2016.)
The sentence comes almost a year after Castillo, a US-trained former Honduran army intelligence officer, was found guilty, reports the Guardian.
According to the Public Ministry, Castillo arranged Cáceres’ murder “as part of a plan to eliminate any obstacle interfering with DESA’s operations on the Gualcarque River, the ancestral lands of the Lenca people.”
Cáceres’ family welcomed the sentence, but said it isn’t enough: “The sentence against … Castillo does not satisfy the demands of justice of the Lenca people. The Honduran state still owes us,” said Bertha Zuñiga, the daughter of the dead ecologist. (EFE)
Cáceres’ murder forms part of a broader pattern of attacks against human rights defenders in Honduras. Killings are the biggest danger faced by environmental defenders in the country, which, according to Global Witness has the world’s second-highest homicide rate per capita. The start of 2022 has been particularly deadly for environmental defenders in Honduras, with two activists found dead in January. Amnesty International has also documented threats, including disappearances, targeting environmentalists.
El Salvador
At least 40 inmates have died in state custody since El Salvador imposed a state of exception suspending certain civil liberties in March, according to data from Amnesty International shared with Al Jazeera. More than 40,000 people have since been arrested under the mano-dura policy that rights groups say has led to widespread abuses.
One year after El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law was fast-tracked by the country’s lawmakers, most Salvadorans say its benefits have been minimal. The government keeps related spending a closely guarded secret, and its bitcoin portfolio has lost $57M in taxpayer money, reports El Faro English.
Ecuador
Thousands of indigenous demonstrators marched through Quito yesterday, urging Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso to agree to demands for economic and social support, including a fuel price cut, preventing further expansion of Ecuador's oil and mining industry, and more time for small and medium-sized farms to pay off debt. (Reuters)
Colombia
Colombia’s president-elect Gustavo Petro has vowed to vastly expand the country’s social programs, providing a significant subsidy to single mothers, guaranteeing work and a wage to unemployed people, bolstering access to higher education, increasing food aid, shifting the country to a publicly controlled health care system and remaking the pension system. He will pay for this, in part, he says, by raising taxes on the 4,000 wealthiest families, removing some corporate tax benefits, raising some import tariffs and targeting tax evaders, reports the New York Times. (See yesterday’s post.)
Despite the election euphoria, Colombian president-elect Gustavo Petro has a thin mandate and is viewed with suspicion by many, reports the Guardian.
Petro’s victory in Colombia’s elections on Sunday is just the first step towards the change a majority of Colombians desire, writes WOLA President Carolina Jiménez. Actual change will require a move from polarization towards adoption of common goals, coalition building and conflict resolution — and U.S. support could play a critical role.
Security is a major challenge for the incoming Colombian government which will have to confront reviving the FARC peace agreement; expansion of criminal organizations; the border with Venezuela; and cocaine production — InSight Crime.
Regional
Petro’s victory “was the most stunning example yet of how the pandemic has transformed the politics of Latin America,” according to the Washington Post. (See yesterday’s post.) “Across the continent, voters have punished those in power for failing to lift them out of their misery. And the winner has been Latin America’s left, a diverse movement of leaders that could now take a leading role in the hemisphere.”
The grounding in Argentina of a Venezuelan-operated Boeing cargo jet, with Iranian crew members apparently linked to the Quds force, points to the continuing durability of Iran-Venezuela relations, according to the Latin America Risk Report.
While the U.S. Biden administration struggles to impugn former president Donald Trump for his attempted coup, its approach to Bolivia is undermining that country’s efforts to bring their own coup perpetrators to justice, write Bret Gustafson and Kathryn Ledebur in Nacla.
Artisanal fishers, thousands of people in Central America who carry out an activity that is vital for the food security of a large part of the 43 million inhabitants of this region, work almost without social protection measures, a situation the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has urged countries to address, reports IPS.
Honduras
Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have been caught in the crossfire of gang violence and had to uproot their lives, often at a moment’s notice, reports the Guardian. The latest figures suggest that, between 2004 and 2018, 247,090 people in Honduras had been internally displaced by violence – equivalent to 2.7% of the population.
Mexico
Two Jesuit priests have been killed inside a Mexican Chihuahua state church after a man pursued by gunmen apparently sought refuge there. (Associated Press) The killings shocked even Mexicans accustomed to high levels of violence, reports the Washington Post.
Brazil
The killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Javari valley earlier this month echo that of Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, the Indigenous protection agent killed in cold blood three years ago in the same region of the Brazilian Amazon, reports the Guardian. (See last Thursday’s briefs.)
Petrobras chief executive José Mauro Coelho resigned yesterday, after just two months on the job at Brazil’s state-oil firm, amid political pressure from top lawmakers and President Jair Bolsonaro. (Associated Press)
Argentina
“Our Bodies Are Your Battlefields,” a documentary by Isabelle Solas about a community of transgender women in Argentina conveys a feeling of intimacy and closeness — Guardian.