PBI-Honduras accompanies assembly of grassroots organizations on the second anniversary of the murder of environmental defender Juan López

Video still of the assembly by Radio Popular del Aguan.

On September 13, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project observed an assembly of grassroots organizations in Tocoa, Colon that brought together social, community and human rights organizations including the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

This assembly took place in the context of the second anniversary of the murder of environmental defender Juan Lopez, the coordinator of the Tocoa Municipal Committee for Common and Public Goods (CMDBCPT) who defended the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers against the Los Pinares megaproject.

Radio Popular del Aguan interviewed Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, the General Coordinator of COPINH, at that assembly.

The full interview can be heard here.

Zúñiga Cáceres told Radio Popular del Aguan: “We have come as COPINH to this Popular Organizations Assembly, first of all, to show our solidarity with the fight that the Committee has maintained in defence of public and communal goods, the fight of all communities in this area, which continues to defend the Carlos Escaleras National Park, and fighting against those attempts to plunder the territories and plunder nature. But also, obviously, to honour the memory of comrade Juan López…”

“We know that [the ZEDEs and the privatization of the national energy company] are lucrative businesses, where not only the corporate power of this country, but also the international power, is involved, articulated, right, with the magic of power that exists in this country. But we also believe, right, in the hope and in the capacity that the Honduran people have been sustaining for so many years to give the battle and to face these powers that today are very clear, very evident, today they are known who they are.”

“We really have an active territorial struggle in the communities of the southwest of the country where the COPINH has work, claiming autonomy, fighting for the territories of the Indigenous communities which unfortunately today do not have a community title that supports their need for the land…”

Zúñiga Cáceres further noted: “[We are] defending the rivers against the interests of private companies, of privatizing them to generate energy and to scam the state of Honduras itself. And well, also articulating with more local spaces, more regional, to also defend concrete rights, for example, defend the right to an energy that is popular based on the needs of the people and not a privatizing energy that responds to the interests of the capitalist dynamics and business of this country.”

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Accompaniment

After the murder of Berta Cáceres in March 2016, her daughter Bertha Zuniga Cáceres left her studies in Mexico City to take up the leadership of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and in May 2017 she was elected general coordinator of that body, the same position her mother had occupied.

The coordinators of COPINH, including Zuniga Cáceres, have been accompanied by Peace Brigades International since May 2016.

Further reading: PBI-Canada joins PBI-Honduras in remembering Juan Lopez and the legacy of his struggle two years after he was killed in Tocoa (PBI-Canada, September 13, 2026).