CHIXOY DAM" FORCED EVICTIONS AND MASSACRES
More than 30 years ago Guatemala's military government began construction of the Chixoy Dam on land belonging to indigenous communities. The dam, financed by the World and Inter-American Development Banks, was announced in 1976. When local residents resisted proposed resettlement, the government, accusing the locals of being guerillas and subversives, used force to push them into 'model communities'.
"Particularly worrying, however, is the very dramatic increase in [World Bank and IDB] lending that coincided with the highest waves of terror, which reached genocidal proportions in the late 1970s and early 1980s."
Since early 2012, the remains of hundreds of Guatemalans have been exhumed (dug up) from mass graves scattered inside the Guatemalan Army's military base in Coban.
A statement from ADIVIMA about a legal hearing, before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, concerning the 1982 Rio Negro / Chixoy Dam massacres (killing over 440 Mayan Achi people from the remote village of Rio Negro.
News article about the Chixoy Dam forced evictions and related massacres in Guatemala. The Chixoy Dam was a business investment and project of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank (WB), in partnership with successive military regimes, 1975-1985.
Along the Chixoy river, where the dam was built, some 32 remote, poor Mayan villages were devastated by this project (1975-1985). Most harmed villages were in the flood basin up river from the 125 meter high dam wall. Many were illegally forced to leave; others lost much of their lands and/or were cut off from and isolated by the existence of the flood basin.
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