P
ascuelita Vásquez stood in the back of the room in one of the first meetings of COPINH, the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. The young council was gearing up to make an impact in Honduras with a new social movement.
COPINH had brought together activists from across the country to fight for a variety of social issues as one voice. At the top of their platform were the pressing themes of indigenous and environmental rights.
Not much taller than four feet, Pascualita is a tiny, elderly indigenous woman with a wide, knowing grin. She does not know her exact age, but she estimates that she's over 75 years old. Pascualita is known among her friends for travelling from La Esperanz to indigenous communities across the country on foot with her worn, brown sandals.
Pascualita joined COPINH to speak out for indigenous women like her, but at this particular meeting she remained standing at the back of the room in silence.
Over the course of the day, many people had gotten up to speak about the situation of the indigenous people, particularly the Lenca people. But so far, all the speakers had been men. Pascualita, nervous to speak in front of the experienced male leaders, had resigned herself to listen.
Then she felt a presence at her shoulder. She looked up and found Berta Cáceres standing next her. Berta was one of the original organizers of COPINH along with her husband Salvador Zuniga. In the organization's early stages, Berta acted as the coordinator for women’s issues. Berta looked down at Pascualita and gave her nudge.
Pascualita, get out there,” Berta urged. “Get rid of you fear and speak. Speak about the rights you have.”
At Berta’s words, Pascualita mustered up her courage and spoke. She spoke to the male COPINH members about the hardships and discriminations that indigenous women faced in Honduras, and they listened. Afterwards, one man came up to her and thanked her.
Pascualita, I didn’t know about that,” he told her.
From that moment on, Pascualita was a powerful advocate.
Triple Oppression
When COPINH began its work, much of the identity and customs of Honduran indigenous people groups had been lost from years of oppression. The Lenca, believed to be descended from the Mayans, were the largest indigenous group in Honduras at the time of the Spanish conquest, with a population off 600,000.
At the turn of the 20th century, most Lenca shed their language and identity to avoid discrimination by Hondurans of European and mixed descent.
A key element of the COPINH strategy was to rescue this indigenous identity and restore its beliefs and customs. Under new laws, namely the ILO Agreement 169, the restoration would be an element of protection against continuing oppression.
With her wrinkled face and wide toothless grin, Pascualita remembers Berta running some of the first workshops where she talked about the vision of COPINH.
I was with the first group of COPINH with Salvador Zuniga and Berta Caceres,” says Pascualita. “We spoke about spiritual issues and the Lenca identity, the things the Lenca priests and our grandparents did.”
Later, when Pascualita stood up to speak before the COPINH leaders, she addressed forms of oppression that specifically affected Lenca women in the indigenous community that were unique to its women. Like other indigenous women throughout the world, Lenca women face triple oppression in Honduras because of the intersection of their ethnic identity as indigenous people, their low economic status, and their marginalized gender.
At the time in the remote indigenous communities of Intibucá, the department where COPINH is based, there were no health centers or schools nearby. The closest health centers were in bigger cities, like La Esperanza. When women gave birth they had to travel down crumbled dirt roads to the city to see a midwife, like Berta Cáceres’s mother, or send someone to bring a midwife out to the communities.
Women had few options for their children’s health or education. They also had to completely rely on their husbands for their children’s future, since the men, not women, owned the houses and the land. Pascualita says that men could sell the land to migrate elsewhere and leave their wives and children in the street with nothing.
Before, the municipalities said that women didn’t matter,” explains Pascualita. “They wanted to the communities to stay silent. They should respect the communities and the women. Don’t they know they are the sons of a woman?”
Berta, Pascualita and other indigenous women stood up to advocate for change. Pascualita argued that the land should be passed on to the children, but that could not happen if women had no right to their land.
We fought for the right to health and for the right of a woman to defend the land for her children,” says Pascualita. “We freed the land for women, for food. [On the land] we have everything.”
The Road to Rights
In the mid 1990’s, COPINH took their advocacy on the road, quite literally. They organized marches to bring indigenous and environmental issues to the front doors of the country’s leaders. Pascualita remembers the time as an empowering moment for indigenous women.
Pascualita and a large group of women from Intibucá participated in the famous first march to Tegucigalpa. They were met by others from the Tulupan and Garífuna communities along the way.
We wanted approval to make a municipality in two communities. We walked for two days to bring our demands to the government,” Pascualita recalls.
(At the time, the Lenca communities in Intibucá were located within larger municipalities dominated by Hondurans of mixed descent, the ethnic majority. COPINH was advocating for the creation of new municipalities drawn more tightly around Lenca communities, in the hopes that this would give the Lencas more agency in local decision-making.)
The marchers carried pots and pans with them to make food along the way. They also stopped on the side of the road to perform the religious rituals of their ancestors. They were accompanied by supporters from Guatemala and Nicaragua. Once they arrived in the capital, they camped outside of the National Congress for four days and four nights.
Bringing her finger to her temple Pascualita says, “That I have not forgotten. I have it in my mind.”
Through their activism, the two municipalities were approved: San Francisco de Opalaca in the department of Intibucá and San Francisco de Ojuera in the department of Santa Barbara. Their movement also played a major role in the ratification of ILO Convention 169 in the Honduran National Congress in 1995 guaranteeing a number of rights for the indigenous people, including rights to land and cultural development.
Over twenty years of activism, Pascualita has witnessed many other changes in the communities. According to her, there are now elementary schools and health centers in over 20 communities. Many of them also have high schools. COPINH has set up special centers where people can learn about their rights as indigenous, as women and as youth.
There is a school where the young people learn about the Lenca culture so they also know about the fight and their rights, not just reading and writing,” says Pascualita.
For Pascualita, her role in the community is to pass on the culture their ancestors gave them and to continue in the fight for rights.
The Greatest Pain
Despite the great strides COPINH and others have made, the fight for indigenous rights continues. In the past few years, much of the effort has been focused on exploitation from energy companies like hydroelectric dams and solar energy projects.
Pascualita remembers visiting a Guatemalan village years before the hydroelectric dams were constructed in Honduras.
The members of the village showed her how the project had broken up their road and blocked up their river. Many of the animals left as result. They told stories of how men from the dam intimidated the communities and kicked families off their land to build the dam. When the people refused to give up, the company even resorted to murder.
I cried with my friends. They told me that these companies lie. They told me, ‘what happened to us cannot happen to you in Honduras. Don’t let the dams come,” Pascualita recounts.
She took a copy of their story back to Honduras and shared it with the indigenous communities and public officials.
When the hydroelectric dams came to Honduras, they were met with resistance from many indigenous communities and organizations despite the many promises they made about development and benefits. According to Pascualita, they never fulfilled those promises. The land that they had fought so hard to gain as women was now being taken by the government and private banks with the promise of food stipends and supplies for children.
Berta Cáceres filed a complaint against 49 dams for violating ILO Agreement 169 that states indigenous communities should be consulted before the dams can be built. She also signed an agreement with the administration of former President Pepe Lobo stating that the dams would not be built without the prior consultation.
Berta’s activism made her a target and she was murdered on March 2, 2016, in a crime that has been connected with employees of Agua Zarca, one of the dams she was protesting against.
What is the greatest pain? That they killed our coordinator,” says Pascualita, her face calm. “The government keeps going even though we decided that we want the dam to leave.”
The death of its coordinator has not detained COPINH. The organization continues to fight for the indigenous right to land, and Pascualita remains actively involved.
With a bandana in her hair and a walking stick in her hand, Pascualita makes frequent trips on foot to the community of Río Blanco where the dam was being built and to the community schools to teach the Lenca children about their heritage.
These are the desires and dreams that we have,” Pascualita declares. “To continue fighting, and justice for Bertita.”