Photo: Berta Cáceres with her children in 1999. Two years later, just after her 30th birthday, Cáceres was in Quebec City to protest the FTAA.
Long-time solidarity activist Tracy Glynn recalled at a memorial for Berta Cáceres in Fredericton, New Brunswick: “In 2001, Berta marched on the streets of Quebec City against the Free Trade Area of the Americas [FTAA] — with some of us here today. Let’s be clear that free trade agreements are foreign investor protection agreements. Berta fought against these kinds of agreements most of her life.”
“¡Hermano! Let’s get closer. Vamos.”
Nina Lakhani, author of Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet (Verso Books) has also written about Cáceres in Quebec City in April 2001.
Lakhani highlights: “It was a crisp spring day and Berta Cáceras was there wrapped up, pumped and ready to resist on behalf of the Lencas, her indigenous group. …Berta was with the Mexican environmentalist Gustavo Castro. They had travelled to Quebec up the east coast as part of a speaking tour organized by Rights Action, a not-for-profit group investigating the impact of North American trade, economic and security policies in Central America.”
“Berta and Gustavo stood in front of parliament facing the impenetrable chain of riot cops, among protesters drumming and singing. It struck Berta that the demonstration was too far back. ‘¡Hermano! Let’s get closer. Vamos,’ she shouted, grinning at Gustavo, grabbing one end of the blue and white Honduran flag. Gustavo seized the other end and they rushed forward into a cold jet of water from a cannon behind police lines. They were pushed back and soaked, the flag went flying.”
Lakhani adds: “But Berta jumped up and yelled, ‘Let’s go again.’ This time, blinding tear gas forced the pair back. But they surged forward again and again, recalled Gustavo. ‘That was Berta. Always tenacious and always willing to put herself in the middle of every act of resistance. She never lost that energy.’”
“Adelante Compañero, you’ll recover from this soon enough.”
Daniel Fireside also recalls: “I met Berta in the spring of 2001. I was hired to be her accompanier/translator/driver for the next two weeks as we traveled across Canada on a speaking tour culminating in a series of protests and alternative conferences outside the Summit of the Americas… After almost two dozen speaking events in half as many towns, we ended up in Quebec City. There we met up with the co-directors of Rights Action, Grahame Russell and Annie Bird, as well as the leader of an environmental activist NGO based in Chiapas, Mexico, the sociologist Gustavo Castro Soto.”
“The lines of police, decked out in full riot gear, gas masks, and body-sized shields, took a proactive approach, lobbing canisters of tear gas and spraying water cannons whenever more they saw a handful protesters gathering together.”
Fireside then writes: “After one too many of these smoking cans was shot in our direction, I was moved to kick it away. I succeeded, but the winds changed and I was enveloped in a cloud of gas. …Berta squirted my eyes with a cleansing solution and gave me an approving smile for my foolhardy action. ‘Adelante compañero’, she said. ‘You’ll recover from this soon enough.’ And then she added with a laugh, ‘At least it isn’t the stuff your government sells to Honduras. They add a chemical that makes us vomit.’”
“Canadian-backed regime change coup”
Grahame Russell has written: “I met Berta in 1998 through my work with Annie Bird at Rights Action that, for 18 years, funded and was a partner-in-activism with Berta and COPINH that Berta had co-founded with her former partner Salvador Zuniga. Over these 18 years, Berta became a very dear friend.”
“On March 2, 2016, Berta was assassinated late at night in her bed, in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras.”
Russell writes: “It bears repetition over and over in the U.S. and Canada, that Berta was assassinated by a narco-dictatorship government and sectors of the traditional Honduran elites who came back to power after the U.S. and Canadian-backed regime change coup in June 2009.”
Photo: On the tenth anniversary of her death, PBI-Canada and PBI-Honduras gathered with many others, including Berta’s children and Gustavo Castro, at the cemetery in La Esperanza, Honduras where Berta Cáceres is buried. Peace Brigades International has accompanied the coordinators of COPINH, including Berta’s daughter Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, since May 2016.
Photos: Peace Brigades International-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson, March 2, 2026, en route from La Esperanza to Tegucigalpa, Honduras for a march to demand justice for Berta Caceres; and April 20, 2001, FTAA protest, Quebec City.
Photo: Grahame Russell and Brent Patterson, Trent Community Movements Conference in Peterborough, Ontario; April 2023.
