Authorities in Honduras finally released environmental activist Gustavo Castro Soto, who has returned to his home in Mexico - a month after he survived an assassination attempt that killed fellow Honduran activist Berta Caceres.

"What we are confronting are forces very powerful, obscure forces, filled with ambition, and these forces are what the movements are fighting," Mr. Castro Soto said to reporters outside his home in San Cristobal de las Casas. 

Early in the morning on 3 March, gunmen burst into the home of Berta Caceres.  They shot her dead and wounded Castro Soto - who only survived because he played dead.  Caceras was the founder of COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations) which has been fighting against hydroelectric dam and mining projects that would displace the indigenous Lenca people of Southwestern Honduras.  Since the US-backed overthrow of progressive President Manuel Zelaya in June of 2009, violence has been directed against Honduran environmental defenders.  

"COPINH has been an example of the power of this struggle and the unbreakable spirit of the comrades of the indigenous communities, who have marched, who have walked, until exhaustion, all to demand respect to their territories and to demand their land be free of these mega projects that are being imposed and that are evicting people from their lands," Castro Soto said to Mexico's Radio Progreso.

Last Friday, Berta Caceres' family issued a statement deploring the lack of progress in solving the case after the passing of a whole month.

"We are asking for an independent commission of experts because we don’t trust the public prosecutors' office in Honduras," said 25-year-old university student Bertha Isabel Zuniga Caceres, daughter of the slain activist.  "The goal is to put some pressure to make our voices heard, by Honduras because they are washing their hands after the martyring of people.  We want the voices of the victims to be heard by the government.  They have not attended to the public request (for an investigation) made right after the assassination," she added.