Berta Cáceres, Agency and Resistance: A Feminist-indigenous interpellation of the Capital / Life crisis

Resumen

This article explores the relationship between and the intersection of Feminist agencies and
indigenous women’s resistance movement strategies in Mesoamerica by focusing on Honduran indigenous
activist Berta Caceres Flores, who was murdered in 2016. Caceres’s speeches as leader of the
Honduran Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations (COPINH) between 2009 and 2016 are
analysed through the lens of three key topics: Agency; Resistance strategies; Grassroots-indigenous
Feminism. The methodology used in this paper builds on Sociological Discourse Analysis (SDA) and
highlights the structure of discourse based on categories such as the context of production and its
interpretation as a social practice. The study’s findings lead to the idea that Caceres’ discursive
position embodies the junction between indigenous resistance and Feminist agencies, which is to say
the grassroots defence of land and body as a response to the Capital-Life crisis and the
commodification of common goods. The paper also questions Neo-Liberalism’s hegemonic narrative as
it showcases subjective proposals forming part of resistance to colonial capitalist power. These
subjectivities are expressed in practices based on ‘commons’, care, reciprocity, community life
linked to nature, and the priority given to life’s reproductive cycle.