Temporalities of Loss: Berta Cáceres and Futurity

• In Event: Environment, Coloniality, and the Imagination

Abstract

In this talk, I will explore the temporalities of mourning and activism in response to the loss of human and nonhuman life in Honduras. Deemed “the deadliest country in the world for environmental activism” by Global Witness, over 120 people have been killed in Honduras since 2010 for defending the land. The most high profile of these cases was the assassination of Lenca leader Berta Cáceres in 2016. The result of a coordinated plot by corporate and state interests, Cáceres’ death has become a nexus for artistic and activist response to environmental and human destruction. This talk proposes to study two such responses, the 2016 documentaries Berta vive [Berta Lives] and Guardiana de los ríos [River Guardian]. I argue that these films interpret Cáceres’ death as a finality that denotes the fight for futurity in the face of its foreclosure. In other words, they perform the remembrance of an ever-present past. They also enact a series of questions about time: about the disposability of indigenous and nonhuman bodies, the anger and sadness inherent to the act of remembering premature death, and how to fight for an alternate future in the face of immediate and long-term threats. By performing the act of remembrance through the medium of the documentary, these artists reject and subvert attempts to silence Cáceres’ legacy, thus pushing it forward into the future.

Author

• Carolyn Fornoff, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign