Who Killed Berta Cáceres?: Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet

The very first time Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres met the writer Nina Lakhani, Caceres said, "The army has an assassination list with my name at the top. I want to live, but in this country there is total impunity. When they want to kill me, they will do it." In 2015, Caceres won the Goldman prize, the world's leading environmental award, for her leadership of indigenous organizations against illegal logging and the construction of four giant dams. The next year she was murdered. Lakhani tracked Caceres's remarkable career in the face of years of threats--two fellow environmental campaigners were killed before her--and the journalist also endured threats and harassment herself. She was the only foreign journalist to attend the 2018 trial of Caceres's killers, where security officials of the dam builders were found guilty of planning her death. Many questions about who ordered the killing remain. Drawing on years of familiarity with Caceres, her family, and her movement, as well as interviews with company and government officials, Lakhani paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman as well as a state beholden to both corporate control and US power.

About the Author :
Nina Lakhani reports on Central America for The Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, Global Post, and the Daily Beast, among other publications. She previously worked for the Independent. She is based in Mexico City.

Review :
Lakhani's book meticulously unpicks a Gordian knot of corruption, impunity, and violence, to show how the struggle against the dam is deeply-rooted in historical power dynamics in Honduras. Nina Lakhani is a brave reporter. She had to be. Since the coup in Honduras, 83 journalists have been killed; 21 were thrown in prison during the period when Lakhani was writing her book. She poses the question "would we ever know who killed Berta Cáceres?" and sets out to answer it. Who Killed Berta Cáceres? offers the inside track on a case that is not only emblematic of the struggle for rights and representation in Honduras, but of the global battle for rights and the environment in the face of corrupt governments and irresponsible business. Without a doubt, the most comprehensive account of the events which led up to and followed Cáceres murder... It lays bare the facts of the Berta Cáceres case and demands they are faced. In the long struggle against colonial extraction and systematic violence, Who Killed Berta Cáceres? points to the rough road ahead. A powerful indictment of the Honduran justice system and peeling back the mask on how power operates in the country. Important reporting not just on Cáceres but on the current state of Honduras, a cosseted US ally presided over by a kleptocratic elite, where nearly a third of the population lives on less than $3 a day.