February 10, 2020 - Meet the Honduran Water Protectors

courtesy: Pablo Ibáñez AraInfo

Most people have heard of the late Berta Caceres, the Indigenous environmental activist and movement leader assassinated for her activism in Honduras. What do you know, more generally, about feminist movements and women’s activism in Honduras? What do you know about Black Honduran women’s struggles?

In the first half of today's show, host Margo Okazawa-Rey speaks with Juana Esquivel, a feminist human rights defender who is one of 12 water-protectors jailed by the Honduran government as she and others struggle to protect natural resources in  Guapinol Honduras. Esquivel was among four activists who toured the US in October 2019 to expose US audiences to current events in their region. 

In the second half of the show, African-American feminist scholar and activist Kia Melchor Hall discusses the situation of Black Garifuna women in Honduras and the connections between their activism with the struggle in Gaupinol and other locations facing the destruction of the land, water, and human life caused by government-supported extractivist industries. Melchor Hall is Melchor Hall is a faculty member in Fielding Graduate University’s School of Leadership Studies in Human and Organizational Development programs. the author of the new book, Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness, just released by Routledge Press.

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