< I. Background
II. The facts
III. The acts that followed >
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II. THE FACTS: THE MASSACRES AND THE ELIMINATION OF THE COMMUNITY

On 5 March 1980, two Rio Negro inhabitants who were in Pueblo Viejo were accused of stealing beans from the workers´ cafeteria at the dam site. Two soldiers and one Mobile Military Police (PMA) agent pursued them.

Upon arriving in Rio Negro, the two villagers started to shout that they were being pursued by the military. The community came together, encircled the soldiers and took them to the chapel. One member of the community, who was drunk, hit the PMA agent, who -- by way of defending himself -- shot and killed seven people.

Immediately, the campesinos reacted with stones and machetes, and killed the agent. One of the soldiers, seeing the crowd's reaction and his dead companion, left his weapon and fled. The other soldier was detained for sometime but then released.

The next day, the Army issued a statement, saying that the community was under guerrilla influence and that this was the cause for why the community refused to leave their lands. The military report affirmed: "For some time now, the Rio Negro village has become conflictive under subversive influence [who] have benefited from the land problems in which their lands will be affected by the Chixoy Dam, contrary to other villages who voluntarily have accepted their relocation to more secure places where they have better life chances."

Since the [March 5th] incident [and the Army's declaration], members of the Army started to visit the Rio Negro community. They frequently searched the houses, asking for the firearm that the soldier had left on 5 May, treating the people badly, and illegally detaining the campesinos.

In 1981, the first selective disappearances of community leaders occurred. Given these circumstances and with the aim of avoiding the Army repression, community representatives went to the Coban military base and the military outpost in Rabinal to apologize for what happened on 5 May. The military's reaction was to accuse them of being guerrillas and threaten them with death. One eyewitness affirms that the captain told them: "We (the Rio Negro campesinos) were trained by the guerrilla. They said that we had to give up our arms and if we did not, they would turn Rio Negro into ashes." The military never found the arms that they were looking for.

While this was happening in Rio Negro, the Xococ community was also victim of military repression. From the collective testimony given to the CEH, it was understood that between October 1980 and September 1981, members of the Army assassinated 18 campesinos who were harvesting peanuts.

In February 1982, a group of armed men, presumed guerrillas, burned the Xococ market and killed five people. The Army identified this act with the guerrilla and the Rio Negro campesinos. The Xococ people broke commercial relations with Rio Negro and declared them their enemies.

This is what a Xococ inhabitant declares: "When the war started, the friendship ended." The Xococ community asked the Army to organize Civil Defense Patrols (PAC). "Father Melchor (Rabinal priest and person who understood the village situation) said that in Xococ they were willing to collaborate [with the Army] in everything, under the condition that they [the Army] would not continue killing them.

The Rio Negro community was labeled guerrilla. The Xococ PAC, armed, trained and guided by the Army, were from then forth in confrontation with the Rio Negro inhabitants.

The first Xococ PAC action was on 7 February 1982, when they, in the name of the Rabinal military outpost, called 150 people from the Rio Negro community. The head of the Xococ PAC received them and chastised them for participating in the guerrilla as well as attributing the market burning to them. The Rio Negro inhabitants replied that the Xococ market was also of benefit to them and they did not have any reason to burn it. Finally the PAC kept the national identity cards of the people present and ordered them to return to Xococ the following week to pick them up.

On 13 February 1982, 74 people (55 men and 19 women) from Rio Negro returned to Xococ. Once there, the Xococ PAC assassinated them. One month later, 13 March 1982, at six o'clock in the morning, 12 members of the Army accompanied by 15 Xococ PAC, entered the Rio Negro community. They went house by house asking for the males, who were not in their homes since they stayed in the mountains for security reasons. The soldiers declared that they were sure these men were with the guerrilla. Later, they asked the people to leave their houses to participate in a meeting.

Meanwhile, the soldiers and PAC members had breakfast, eating the food found in the houses. When they were done eating, they pillaged the village. A person who was witness to the events declares: "They took long sticks, axes, rope and tape recorders; they took everything that was in the houses."

Afterwards they gathered the women together. They played marimba music and forced the women to dance with them "in the same way they danced with the guerrilla", according to the soldiers. Several young women were separated from the group and raped.

They then forced the people grouped together to walk three kilometers uphill. "During the walk, the hit the women a lot, they called them cows, they treated them as if they were cows rustled into a new field. They hit the children a lot and said they were children of the guerrilla." When arriving at the zenith of Pacoxom hill, a member of the Army, according to a declarant, said that "now it will be easy to kill some guerrillas."

In this manner, they continued to torture and kill the passive victims. Some were hung from trees, others were killed by machete and others were shot. "The small children were held by their hair and hit against rocks to kill them." In one mass grave, they were throwing the cadavers.

"One that was still alive, suffering, was left there like a log; one on top of another, they were not left in an orderly manner because they were just thrown in there." The grave was covered with rocks and branches. Around five o'clock in the afternoon the massacre was over and the assassins headed to Xococ. The aggressors took nineteen child survivors to Xococ.

The testimonies received coincide in that 177 people - 70 women and 107 children -, civilian and defenseless population from the Rio Negro community, were killed in this massacre. The exhumation of the cadavers, which took place 12 years later, found 143 skeletons in three graves. 85 of these skeletons were children's´ and the rest were women's.

< I. Background
II. The facts
III. The acts that followed >
IV. Conclusions, contact info >>