28 September, 2000

Communiqué #5: Interview with Carlos Chen

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

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Communiqué #5 is an interview with Carlos Chen, a survivor of the Rio Negro community, and one of the principal activists working for human rights, compensation and reparations. This interview was conducted by GNIB - Guatemala News and Information Bureau.

Interview with Carlos Chen Osorio: "We Could Not Stay Silent Anymore"

Carlos Chen Osorio is a survivor of the 1982 massacre in the Maya-Achí community of Río Negro, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. In that massacre, 107 children and 70 women were brutally tortured and murdered, including Carlos' wife and children. Between 1980 and 1982 a total of five massacres-committed by the Guatemalan military and local Civil Defense Patrols (PACs)-resulted in the loss of over half of Río Negro's inhabitants.

While the massacres took place during the bloodiest years of Guatemala's civil war, an added dynamic was present in Río Negro: the community's resistance to the massive Chixoy dam construction project, which required the forced relocation of the entire village.

After living in hiding for ten years following the massacres, Carlos returned to Rabinal determined to break the silence about what had happened to his community. He contributed to the founding of ADIVIMA (Association for Development for the Maya-Achí Victims of Violence, formerly the Rabinal Coordinator for Maya-Achí Widows, Widowers, Orphans, and Displaced), a local human rights and development organization dedicated to -- amongst other things -- exhuming clandestine cemeteries in the Rabinal area, bringing the perpetrators of the massacres to justice, and obtaining reparations from the Guatemalan government.

Now the community is joining an international campaign to demand that the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) -- the international financial institutions that funded the Chixoy dam -- pay reparations to the survivors of Río Negro for the loss of their land, their village, and their loved ones. This interview with Carlos was conducted by Report on Guatemala in April of this year during Carlos' tour to publicize the campaign in the US

When and how did the people of Río Negro first hear about the Chixoy dam project?

In 1976 representatives from INDE (Guatemalan National Electric Institute) came to Río Negro by helicopter. They told us about the project and tried to convince us that we would be able to live a better life, that we would be given more land, a fish cooperative, bridges, etc. … We didn't know exactly what they were going to do; we just knew the river was a blessing from God and no one should ever cover or block it. [W]e … didn't want to abandon our land.

It isn't the same to live on land different from the land you were born on, especially when you depend on the land for your very survival. Río Negro is our ancestral land; it had been good to our ancestors and good to us. It provided us with firewood, palm to make petate (straw mats), other materials to build our houses, fish to feed us. The land was good for farming; it didn't require fertilizer to grow corn, beans, or fruit trees.

At one point the INDE representatives told us that the government was responsible for making this kind of decision, not us, and that if necessary they would relocate us by force. We told them that this land belonged to our ancestors, which means it is our land and not the government's, and therefore it is our decision to make. Tension was rising … .

We formed a negotiating committee to represent the community. In 1978, 20 families negotiated a multi-point agreement with INDE to resettle on some land near the town of Rabinal, called Pacux. Part of the agreement stated that INDE would build cinder block houses for the community. But when the 20 families arrived in 1980 and saw that INDE was building poor quality wood houses, they went back to Río Negro frustrated and convinced that resistance was the only route to take. INDE had broken the agreement once, and would probably do so again.

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