6 October, 2000

RIO NEGRO'S FIGHT FOR REPARATIONS: THE MASSACRE THAT WON'T GO AWAY

CHIXOY DAM / RIO NEGRO MASSACRES REPARATIONS CAMPAIGN: to get full compensation and just reparations from the World Bank & the Inter-American Development Bank for indigenous (Mayan-Achi) survivors of the Rio Negro community destroyed by construction of the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala

Advocacy Project's On the Record: Your Electronic Link to Civil Society in Guatemala

CONTENTS

Introduction
The Massacres
The Dam
The Violence
The Civil Patrols
The Cause and Effect
The Survivors Organize
The Fight for Compensation
The Power of Rio Negro
Further Reading: Web Site Links, Background, Sources, Contacts

INTRODUCTION

Early in 1982, the community of Rio Negro, in the highlands of Guatemala, lost over half its population in a series of massacres. This report looks at the inspiring efforts of those who survived-to rebuild, to recover, and to claim justice.

In 1993, the survivors formed a community organization to investigate the murders and bring the killers to justice. Since then, with support from friends and non-governmental organizations abroad, they have made remarkable progress. Graves have been uncovered. Killers have been brought to trial.

But the survivors still suffer from extreme poverty. They blame this on the loss of their traditional lands to a large dam that was built on the river Chixoy near the original community in 1983. They have never received adequate compensation for the losses.

Thus, community leaders from Rio Negro call on the World Bank, which partially funded the dam's construction, to accept its share of responsibility for the losses suffered by the community and to provide reparations.

The report is abridged from a series of the online newsletter 'On the Record' that was distributed in April of this year and is available free of charge online to subscribers. To subscribe, send the text "subscribe Guatemala" to the following address: info@advocacynet.org, along with your email address.

The Advocacy Project was established in 1998 to assist community activists to get their message out and take advantage of information technology. 'On the Record' is the Project's principal product. Among other recent series produced are: civil society in Kosovo; the return home of Bosnian refugees; Cambodians speak out on justice for the Khmer Rouge; and trafficking from Nigeria.

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THE MASSACRES

The village of Rio Negro was located on the bank of the Chixoy River (also known as the Rio Negro, or Black River), in the Department of Baja Verapaz. The land was a source of livelihood for the villagers, as well as a link to their Mayan past and culture. The Rio Negro community owned 1,440 hectares of land, roughly half of which was privately owned. The whole community used the rest for pasture and firewood.

Five massacres occurred in the community of Rio Negro between 1980 and 1982. In all, 444 of the community's 791 inhabitants were killed. All were indigenous people from the Maya-Achi, one of the 22 Mayan linguistic groups in Guatemala.

By the time of the Rio Negro massacres, the heartland of Guatemala was one of the great killing fields of the Cold War. The violence in Guatemala began in 1960, six years after the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) led a coup that overthrew the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz.

The Guatemalan government was routinely condemned for gross abuses at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. UN reports painted a particularly bleak picture of cruelty against the indigenous people, who lived in the central highlands.

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THE DAM

In the mid-1970s, Guatemala was in the throes of a severe energy crisis. Over half of the country's export earnings were going to import oil to generate electricity. Blackouts were frequent. In February 1975 the state-owned National Institute of Electrification (INDE) unveiled a plan to dam the Rio Negro and flood 31 miles of the river valley.

Initial funding for the dam came from the Inter-American Development Bank ($105 million) and Italian aid. The Italian company Cogefar was to be prominent in construction.

The first roads for the Chixoy project were built in 1976, but that same year a massive earthquake delayed the plan and forced a revision when the dam site was found to be straddling a seismic fault. Even so, INDE secured a large loan from the World Bank ($72 million) in 1978.

Preparations for the dam were then well under way. INDE measured out the land that was to be flooded and decided to award between 2 and 3 hectares of land each to 150 families from Rio Negro.

The precise nature of this compensation plan remains controversial. From the community's perspective, it was developed without consulting those affected. INDE officials descended on Rio Negro by helicopter, and told the villagers that their land was to be flooded. They would have to leave.

The arrival of the INDE helicopter looms large in the folklore of Rio Negro. Rio Negro survivor and human rights activist Carlos Chen Osorio remembers how some angry villagers wanted to burn it, but calmer heads prevailed. The villagers appointed a committee, which negotiated with the INDE team and came up with a provisional agreement on a site for the resettled families. This was known as Pacux, next to the town of Rabinal. According to the survivors, INDE also agreed in writing to provide a package of eight components, including land and cement-block houses. Building began in Pacux.

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THE VIOLENCE

On March 4, 1980, the simmering feud erupted into open violence. Two young men from the community were accused of stealing beans from the Cogefar canteen and arrested by two soldiers who were employed by the project as security guards and a policeman. The two men were bound and taken to the village center. On the way, the trio arrested another villager and tied him up with his lasso.

Their arrival interrupted a heated community discussion in the village church about the dam and eviction. Angry words were exchanged and stones thrown. The three security men opened fire and killed seven villagers.

In the melee that followed the security men fled the village and tried to escape. One was hit by a machete and drowned trying to swim cross the river.

Four months later, on July 10, the Rio Negro community suffered another major blow when it lost its written record of the agreement with INDE and all the titles to its land to another act of violence. In response to a request by INDE, two community leaders took the documentation to the dam site. Their tortured bodies were discovered several days later.

The community of Rio Negro had lost all proof of its compensation agreement with INDE and its ownership of the houses. The authorities have never investigated this critically important incident.

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