A Poem for Berta Cáceres

by Danilo Vásquez

March, 2026

March 3, 2016

We grieve for Honduras
Like the twin sister
Who suffers at the same time as the heart
We grieve
Because we carry a sea of blood that unifies us
Because for every thorn that wounds us
Grandparents
parents
And siblings bleed.
It breaks our soul
To know that foreign gunpowder
Keeps exploding in our mountains
Cowards
Murderers
How dare they spill our blood
Murderers
Forever dammed
The blood that dyed red
Our rivers wasn’t enough for them
Did they really think that the children of Manawana Lempira
won’t raise their spears?
Our arrows will be poisoned with dignity
With decorum
To combat the grim and crude invader
All the fury of the confederation
All the strategy and tactics
Will be felt in the vengeance for our spilled blood
Our fallen, heroic siblings
will be avenged one by one
The fight begins
The combativeness of the glorious Lenca will be felt
Even in the rotten and dirty bones of the transnationals.

Translated by Christián González Reyes

From Cuadernos lencas taulepa (2016)

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Photo: Lenca activist Berta Cáceres. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize.

Danilo Vásquez

Danilo Vásquez (b. 1960) is a Lenca poet and teacher who was born in San Miguel, El Salvador. He received a Bachelor’s in Literature from the University of El Salvador. He resides in Santa Rosa de Lima where he teaches language and literature at the Centro Escolar Centroamericana. His published writings include El diablo en Santa Rosa de Lima (1987), Náuseas de Lemas y Dilemas (1988), Adiós a un ideal (1989), Cuentos de Santa Rosa de Lima (1989), Mamá abuela (1990), Cuando la luna llena (1992), Fragmentos de un sueño (1998), Cuba…una sílaba tras otra (1999), and Cuadernos lencas taulepas (2016).

Christián González Reyes

Christián González Reyes (b. 1997) (they/he) is a scholar and artist based in Anaheim, California and Michoacán. Christián is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley where they focus on post-civil war Central American, Mesoamerican, and diasporic literature and film. They are interested in the impact Marxism has had on these cultural archives. Christián is also a writer of short stories in Spanish, and they are currently finishing a book of short stories, tentatively entitled Relatos del bulevar.

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