PBI-Canada to co-sponsor World Water Day screening of Berta Didn’t Die, She Multiplied!

PBI-Canada is co-sponsoring a screening at the Water & War virtual film festival being organized by World Beyond War.

World Beyond War notes: “The festival finale features Berta Didn’t Die, She Multiplied!, a celebration of the life and legacy of Honduran Indigenous, feminist, and environmental activist Berta Cáceres.”

They add: “The film tells the story of the Honduran military coup, the assassination of Berta, and the victory in the Indigenous struggle to protect the Gualcarque River. The insidious agents of the local oligarchy, the World Bank, and North American corporations continue to kill but that will not stop the social movements. From Flint to Standing Rock to Honduras, the water is sacred and the power is in the people.”

To get your ticket for the film festival, click here.

As co-founder and leader of the Council of Popular Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Cáceres fought against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam being built by Desarrollos Energéticos on the sacred Gualcarque River without the free, prior and informed consent of the Lenca people.

Cáceres was killed on March 3, 2016.

In July 2021, Roberto David Castillo – the former head of the dam company Desarrollos Energéticos, or Desa – was found guilty of being co-collaborator in ordering the murder. Castillo has not yet been sentenced.

In March 2019, Vice reported: “All three foreign investors—including Dutch [entrepreneurial development] bank FMO, Finnish finance company FinnFund, and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (CABEI)—have withdrawn from the [Agua Zarca] project, putting the construction project on indefinite hold.”

However, that Vice article adds: “DESA owns the concession for 50 years, [COPINH general coordinator Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres] says, meaning the company has the exclusive right to work the land until 2059.”

Zúñiga Cáceres has highlighted: “They have not given up and apparently have no intention of abandoning the project altogether.”

We also recall at this time that in January 2015 COPINH issued a condemnation of a dam being built without Lenca consent on the Canjel River by Montreal-based Hydrosys and Vancouver-based Blue Energy. In April 2015, Cáceres said “men close to Blue Energy” were behind death threats against her.

PBI-Honduras began accompanying COPINH in May 2016, two months after the assassination of Cáceres.

You can watch the powerful trailer for the film here.

This screening is also being co-sponsored by Mutual Aid Media.

Photo: In November 2021, PBI-Honduras accompanied COPINH coordinator Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres in her office.