And this makes me think all of a sudden of a wonderful expression I once heard, "If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never spent the night in bed with a mosquito." So these unarmed and under-resourced people are indigenous folks, without so much as a cell phone, but they were actually able to get the World Bank and the largest dam company in the world to stop. But the dam itself and the company behind it continue under construction.
DB: What about the second murder? Please remind us what the situation is there.
Bell: Yeah. So, one might think that all of the condemnation that has been brought down on the Honduran government's head after it killed Berta Caceres, its best-known international figure, would have stopped it. But that is not the case. Since her death the government has attacked I think something like eight other COPINH members, arresting them, beating them, or threatening them. And it did kill Nelson Garcia, who is another of the leaders of COPINH, The Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, which Berta Caceres started at the ripe age of 20 years old.
Nelson was coming back from helping some people whose land were being illegally seized by the military, and so the government, in a very clear message to all Hondurans who attempt to stand up and speak out and fight back, killed him as well. Then this past Friday, April 15th, numerous other people came quite close to losing their lives, including me. Yes, the government is continuing on its path.
DB: What happened to you? And where did the danger come from, in terms of the work you're doing on the ground now.
Bell: Well, I wasn't targeted, in my case, I'm sure. Although it was targeting in the case of some of the others who were attacked. But the third day of this international gathering of people from all over Europe and the Americas, to honor the life of Berta and to recommit to her struggle, involved a trip to the site of the dam construction, which was the final reason for which the infuriated Honduran government and the dam company killed her, after so many threats on her life for so many years. This was the final straw for them, that she and COPINH had been able to stop construction of the dam for about a year and a half.
So the dam company had actually moved from the village of Rio Blanco, which is organized as a COPINH Lenka indigenous community, which had stopped the construction to the other side of the river, the northern edge of the river where there is a town of people who are not organized, who do not identify as indigenous. Although, of course, they are all the same people.
And so now the dam construction is continuing on the northern bank of the river. So there was a delegation of many hundreds of us, no one knows for sure, maybe 500 who went to that village and were to make the trek down, way down the dirt road to the river itself, both to hold a ceremony, given by Mayan Guatemalan healers, and also to take a swim in the sacred river.
Well, what happened ... first we were stopped several times along the way by police, but the COPINH members -- whose fierceness I could never overstate, it's extraordinary, their bravery -- got out of the vehicles, and basically harassed the police until they let us go. But when we got to the village where we were to -- on foot after we had gotten out of the buses -- where we were to go to the river, there were about 20 paid thugs. They were paid by the company. Some of them were known hit men, who had threatened Berta and others in prior times. And they were waving machetes and shrieking like crazy people, shouting horrible racist remarks, and holding rocks and some of them holding guns. And they even said, one of the chants was, "We killed the fly, and yet her plague remains," referring to the beautiful Berta Caceres.
And they, in turn, were protected by about the same number, about 20 police who held them back, clearly stood there, wanted nothing to do with us. So we went down to the river anyway, and did what we came to do, and as we were turning these thugs, these goons, by now many of whom were quite drunk, were let loose by the police. The police just stepped aside and then watched, without any intervention, as the goons started attacking people with machetes, and rocks, and sticks.
And there were between eight and 10 people wounded, none very seriously. However, there was one man who almost lost his hand. One of these goons was bringing his machete down on the man's arm when someone else, one of us, one of our team, grabbed a machete away from him.
And then in my case, two different men ... I went to get a bottle of water and I somehow ended up on the wrong side of enemy lines. Everything shifted very fast, and two different men within moments came up to me [with] machetes, raised them sharply over my head, just started to bring them down, and then I guess seeing that I was a gringa, thought better of it and stopped.
So it was horrible, and then the police continued harassing people. And in fact they themselves got more violent, and really jumped into the action, and started physically pushing us back toward the buses. Some of the police got in their vehicles and were pushing, literally, almost literally pushing some of the walkers who were retreating at that point, to our vehicles, with their trucks. If someone had tripped the police car could have easily run over that person. Shouting at us, cursing at us, and waving their rifles at us.
DB: Wow. We have repeated announcements from the U.S. government, official announcements from the State Department that they are cooperating with what the government is doing. Is this about right? Is there any response to this, what happened in this attack by these thugs? You say the police let them go. What is the government thinking? What can we think about the government's policy?
Bell: Well, the Honduran government is very much a part of this. And they have worked hand in hand with the paid death squads of this dam company, DESA. Which, again, has been the target of opposition of this wonderful, radical, militant, passionate, committed, justice minded, indigenous group, COPINH.
The government, as you mentioned Dennis, is a completely illegitimate government. There was a coup, your listeners may know, in 2009 that the U.S. was very behind. Hillary Clinton herself has taken pride, and publicly bragged at having consolidated it. As we have spoken about before on this show, in her last book, Hard Choices, she even said that, speaking of the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, she said, "We rendered Zelaya moot." Which is an extraordinary statement about a sovereign government of another country.
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