by Daniel Fireside
This article was originally published on medium.com. Posted here with permission from the author.

Berta Caceres, a 44-year old human rights and environmental activist, was murdered in the early morning of March 3, 2016. She was a member of the Lenca indigenous group of Honduras. The assassins broke into her home and shot her, killing Berta and wounding the Mexican sociologist and environmentalist, Gustavo Castro Soto.

Berta had received countless death threats for her activism. The indigenous rights organization she co-founded kept a eulogy for her on file. The Inter American Commission on Human Rights had ordered the government to protect her from attacks. The night of the assassination, however, the Honduran police claimed that they were mistakenly guarding the wrong house.

I met Berta in the spring of 2001 on an activist speaking tour

I met Berta in the spring of 2001. I was hired…