Description
The very first time Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres met the writer Nina Lakhani, Caceres said, "The army has an assassination list with my name at the top. I want to live, but in this country there is total impunity. When they want to kill me, they will do it." In 2015, Caceres won the Goldman Prize, the world's most prestigous environmental award, for her leadership of indigenous organisations against illegal logging and the construction of four giant dams. The next year she was murdered.
Lakhani tracked Caceres's remarkable career in the face of years of threats-two fellow environmental campaigners were killed before her-and the journalist also endured threats and harassment herself. She was the only foreign journalist to attend the 2018 trial of Caceres's killers, where security officials of the dam builders were found guilty of orchestrating her murder. Many questions about who ordered the killing remain.
Drawing on years of familiarity with Caceres, her family, and her movement, as well as interviews with company and government officials, Lakhani paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman as well as a state beholden to both corporate control and US power.
Deeply affecting and polemical portrait of the life and death of a courageous environmental activist
About the Author
Nina Lakhani reports on Central America for the Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, Global Post, the Daily Beast, and elsewhere. She previously worked for the Independent. She is based Mexico City.
Reviews
Lakhani's book meticulously unpicks a Gordian knot of corruption, impunity, and violence, to show how the struggle against the dam is deeply-rooted in historical power dynamics in Honduras. -- Julia Zulver * openDemocracy *
Nina Lakhani is a brave reporter. She had to be. Since the coup in Honduras, 83 journalists have been killed; 21 were thrown in prison during the period when Lakhani was writing her book. She poses the question "would we ever know who killed Berta Caceres?" and sets out to answer it. -- John Perry * Council on Hemispheric Affairs *
Who Killed Berta Caceres? offers the inside track on a case that is not only emblematic of the struggle for rights and representation in Honduras, but of the global battle for rights and the environment in the face of corrupt governments and irresponsible business. -- Ben Leather * Global Witness *
Without a doubt, the most comprehensive account of the events which led up to and followed Caceres murder... It lays bare the facts of the Berta Caceres case and demands they are faced. In the long struggle against colonial extraction and systematic violence, Who Killed Berta Caceres? points to the rough road ahead. -- Harry Holmes * Bright Green *
A powerful indictment of the Honduran justice system and peeling back the mask on how power operates in the country. -- Alice Stevens * Dublin Review of Books *
Important reporting not just on Caceres but on the current state of Honduras, a cosseted US ally presided over by a kleptocratic elite, where nearly a third of the population lives on less than $3 a day. -- Jennie Erin Smith * Times Literary Supplement *
Book Information
ISBN 9781788733069
Author Nina Lakhani
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 436g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 26mm
Lakhani tracked Caceres's remarkable career in the face of years of threats-two fellow environmental campaigners were killed before her-and the journalist also endured threats and harassment herself. She was the only foreign journalist to attend the 2018 trial of Caceres's killers, where security officials of the dam builders were found guilty of orchestrating her murder. Many questions about who ordered the killing remain.
Drawing on years of familiarity with Caceres, her family, and her movement, as well as interviews with company and government officials, Lakhani paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable woman as well as a state beholden to both corporate control and US power.
Deeply affecting and polemical portrait of the life and death of a courageous environmental activist
About the Author
Nina Lakhani reports on Central America for the Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, Global Post, the Daily Beast, and elsewhere. She previously worked for the Independent. She is based Mexico City.
Reviews
Lakhani's book meticulously unpicks a Gordian knot of corruption, impunity, and violence, to show how the struggle against the dam is deeply-rooted in historical power dynamics in Honduras. -- Julia Zulver * openDemocracy *
Nina Lakhani is a brave reporter. She had to be. Since the coup in Honduras, 83 journalists have been killed; 21 were thrown in prison during the period when Lakhani was writing her book. She poses the question "would we ever know who killed Berta Caceres?" and sets out to answer it. -- John Perry * Council on Hemispheric Affairs *
Who Killed Berta Caceres? offers the inside track on a case that is not only emblematic of the struggle for rights and representation in Honduras, but of the global battle for rights and the environment in the face of corrupt governments and irresponsible business. -- Ben Leather * Global Witness *
Without a doubt, the most comprehensive account of the events which led up to and followed Caceres murder... It lays bare the facts of the Berta Caceres case and demands they are faced. In the long struggle against colonial extraction and systematic violence, Who Killed Berta Caceres? points to the rough road ahead. -- Harry Holmes * Bright Green *
A powerful indictment of the Honduran justice system and peeling back the mask on how power operates in the country. -- Alice Stevens * Dublin Review of Books *
Important reporting not just on Caceres but on the current state of Honduras, a cosseted US ally presided over by a kleptocratic elite, where nearly a third of the population lives on less than $3 a day. -- Jennie Erin Smith * Times Literary Supplement *
Book Information
ISBN 9781788733069
Author Nina Lakhani
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 436g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 26mm
