Cultivators: Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores
Womanica
Acast Creative Studios
4.3 • 920 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores (1971-2016) was a Honduran environmental activist who spent decades leading various land and water struggles in western Honduras. In 1993 she helped found and coordinate the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known by its Spanish acronym COPINH. In the late 2000s, Berta organized a lasting resistance to the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam on the Gualcarque River, whose construction violated the rights of indigenous peoples, and would have effectively cut them off from important resources. She was awarded the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize (the highest honor in the field) for her success in stopping the dam's construction through grassroots movements.
For Further Reading:
- Berta Cáceres - Goldman Environmental Prize
- Honduran indigenous rights campaigner wins Goldman prize
- Who killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender's Battle for the Planet
- Remembering River Defender Berta Caceres
This month, we're talking about cultivators — women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my new true crime podcast, Murder on the Tooth Path, |
| 0:05.3 | I'm taking it back to 1964 to the cold case of artist Mary Pinch O'Meyer. |
| 0:11.5 | She had been shot twice in the head and in the back. |
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| 0:20.0 | I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression. |
| 0:24.4 | John F. Kennedy. |
| 0:26.3 | Listen to Murder on the Toothpath with Soledad O'Brien on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, |
| 0:32.3 | or wherever you get your podcast. |
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| 1:05.6 | on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:21.4 | Hello, I'm Malia Agudelo, a production assistant at Wonder Media Network, and I'm so excited to be guest hosting this episode of Wamanica. |
| 1:29.6 | This month, we're talking about cultivators, women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world. Today, we're talking about an environmental |
| 1:35.3 | activist who dedicated her life to her community and protecting the land they depended on. She had a gift |
| 1:41.0 | for cultivating coalitions to oppose powerful and violent interests. |
| 1:45.9 | Let's talk about Bertha Isabel Caseres Flores. |
| 1:57.0 | Bertha was born in 1971 in western Honduras into the indigenous Lenka community. |
| 2:03.6 | Her mother was a midwife, local politician, and activist. |
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