And I'm going to All right. Thanks for joining us, Nina Lecani. You're the author of a really amazing book that I just finished, who killed Verta Casares and published through Verso coming out this

month in June. So could you just start by introducing yourself and how the story came to you or how you came to this story.

Sure, so I'm Nina Lekani. I am a British journalist, you might tell by my accent and I for the before moving to the US

six months ago I was based in Mexico City and I was a freelance journalist covering

Mexico and Central America.

So I met Bertha when I went to Honduras for the first time,

which was at the end of 2013 and you know my main reason was for going was that they were going to be elections and these were like the first so-called free and fair elections after a coup which had been had taken place in 2009.

But you know I've stayed for a couple of weeks to report some different stories and that's when I met

Bertha and interviewed her the only time that I interviewed her and she then she was on

the lam she was on the one trying to avoid being arrested on a trumped up charge that had been

bought by a damn company called Dessa and this dam company had been given a license to build a hydroelectric dam on a river called the Gualcarka River on Lenka territory. So Burta is indigenous

Lenka and the Gualcke River is considered sacred by the Lenka people and that dam was sanctioned,

also, you know, that it was licensed without consulting the local communities as required by law.

And so she, at the request of the community,

had been spearheading a campaign to stop construction of this dam and as a result the company with the help of

the state you know and by that I mean prosecutors, judges, police, the military who would all come in on top of her and the community and her organization called Copin, had, you know, they'd been terrorising them and part of that campaign had been to try and jail her and a couple of other leaders of the organization.

And so there are three of them were facing charges,

but she was the only one that the judge had ordered to be imprisoned on remand.

And so when I met her her she was on the run and so I went to

interview her at her at her family home in a town called Lai Sparanza which is at the heart of Lenka territory in Western Honduras

towards El Salvador, that border.

And yeah, and we spoke for an hour, you know, and that was the only interview I ever did with her and

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