Why Tortuguita's Murder is only The Tip of The Iceberg

[Judi Lynn]

By Eva Novak
April 8, 2023

Few people outside of Atlanta knew about the police training facility nicknamed “Cop City” when plans were approved in 2021, but all that changed in January when Manual Esteban Páez Terán, known as “Tortuguita,” was murdered by police.

Their death launched a torrent of news coverage, including an article by NBC stating that police had never killed an environmental activist in the U.S. before Tortuguita. That may be true, but the U.S. has long been complicit in the death of activists abroad through its involvement in resource extraction and training police and military personnel.

One such country is Honduras, which had the highest number of killings of land defenders per capita in the world in 2019. There, in the community of Azacualpa, land defenders are fighting against extractivism, despite the real dangers they face. Their struggle and the Stop Cop City movement may seem unrelated, but they are deeply interconnected and both in need of international solidarity to win.

‘A power that we have to confront’

For 200 years, the cemetery in Azacualpa, Honduras was the resting site of generations of Chorti people, descendants of the Indigenous Mayans. But in January 2022, in the middle of the night, the Canadian-based mining company Aura Minerals destroyed the sacred burial site to get at the gold beneath it. In the morning, the people woke up to find the bodies of their loved ones gone — to where, they still have no idea.

More:
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-tortuguitas-murder-is-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/