The US military trained him. Then he helped murder Berta Caceres

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

The US military trained him. Then he helped murder Berta Cáceres

The indigenous activist was opposing the construction of a dam being constructed by Roberto David Castillo’s company

Chiara Eisner
Tue 21 Dec 2021 09.30 GMT

When Roberto David Castillo graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Honduran cadet was confident he’d leave behind a legacy.

“He will be remembered by all as being a fearless leader committed to God, his family and serving others,” read the caption under his yearbook portrait.

Castillo is certain to be remembered: earlier this year, the Honduran high court found him guilty as the joint perpetrator in the 2016 assassination of the indigenous activist Berta Cáceres, then one of Latin America’s most prominent environmental defenders.

Cáceres was killed by a team of hitmen after years of death threats linked to her opposition of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca dam, approved by the government without permission from the local indigenous people.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/21/the-us-military-trained-him-then-he-helped-berta-caceres

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for the information on a professional monster paid by the USS:

That Castillo had support from an influential US network was not an accident. West Point’s International Cadet Program “was established as a foreign policy tool to provide a means for the United States government to improve relations and to foster stability with friendly nations”, said a 1997 report in the academy archives.

And Central American cadets have been outsized fixtures of the program since it began in 1889. Since then, almost a fifth of the more than 500 international graduates have come from the seven small Central American countries.

US taxpayers have covered some or all of international students’ costs – an expense that should be viewed as an investment – the author of the 1997 report argued. After being exposed to US democratic ideals, he posited, they would spread those principles at home.

Similar arguments were made in support of the “School of the Americas”, a US Army program founded in 1946 to train Latin American soldiers – more than a hundred of whom have been accused of human rights abuse at home. Among them were two of the other seven men convicted in 2019 of participating in Cáceres’s murder.

“US-trained military figures have caused immeasurable destruction and death in Central America over the past several decades and continue to do so today,” said Gynther, now a coordinator at School of the Americas Watch.