Proleptic Elegy to the Gualcarque River: Submerged Perspectives and Solastalgia as Forms of Resistance in the Lenca Community of Honduras

Abstract

Berta Cáceres was brutally murdered for, among other reasons, defending our land: specifically, the Gualcarque river. Given the context of predatory extractivism in Honduras, my intention is to examine the importance of incorporating into the process of mourning and melancholia earth beings and non-human bodies as submerged perspectives, to break the binary cultural hierarchy that has historically undervalued the role of nature. I first analyse the theories of Macarena Gómez-Barris and the studies by Ashlee Cunsolo, Karen Landman, and Glenn Albrecht in Mourning Nature. Then, through the analysis of three documentaries, I trace how the Lenca’s submerged perspectives generate feelings of solastalgia and create an anticipatory mourning and an activist melancholia that present themselves as a proleptic elegy for the Gualcarque river. This serves to make us conscious of the violence perpetrated in Indigenous territories and the catastrophic consequences for the earth and for humanity.