No Answers in the Murder of Berta Cáceres

When the activist Berta Cáceres was gunned down in her home, last month, the Honduran government, which for years had been warned about mounting threats against her, professed shock and outrage; then it promised an investigation. In Honduras, which has the highest murder rate in the world, these investigations rarely end well: ninety-eight per cent of crimes go unsolved. So President Juan Orlando Hernández, an American ally, quickly claimed to be working with the F.B.I. to get answers about Cáceres’s murder. His government also sought the help of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.