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When did the violence begin?

I really feel that if it hadn't been for the dam, the military would never have come to Río Negro. We used to be so remote; there was not even any access by road. But with the construction of the dam, roads were built, and the military suddenly had much better access to our community.

The violence began on March 4, 1980, after two men were accused of stealing from the construction company's store. When the community protested against these accusations, three company security guards opened fire, killing seven people. A security guard was injured and died that day too. But that was just the beginning.

Shortly thereafter the military began to threaten and persecute us, coming to our village in groups of 300, sometimes 400 at a time. On July 10, 1980, two members of the negotiation committee were bringing the community's land titles to the dam site at the request of INDE when they were kidnapped and later found dead with signs of torture; the deeds were never found.

Many of us had individual titles, and the community had a title for the finca Los Pajales and another for communal land in Río Negro proper. We also shared a large finca with two other communities, which we used for our cattle and to plant corn and palm. Altogether, we owned a total of 22.5 caballerías (1440 hectares).

The threats persisted. I was scared. Before all of this I had always thought the military protected the country and its people. I didn't know they were capable of such atrocities, that they were assassins. … Later in 1981, the PACs ["voluntary" civilian defense patrols, under control of the Army] were established, which only fortified the military's presence in our area, … .

On February 13, 1982, community members were told to bring their identification cards to the neighboring village of Xococ, which by then had been turned into a civil patrol outpost. Seventy-four villagers who went never returned. They were massacred and buried in a clandestine cemetery.

On March 13, 1982, the military and the PACs killed 70 women and 107 children in Río Negro. Eighteen children survived [and were] kept as slaves for the civil patrollers. That was when I lost my family -- my wife, who was nine months pregnant at the time, and my two children. According to an eyewitness, my wife's unborn baby was removed from her uterus while she was still alive.

After that, most of us sought refuge in the mountains, but one group fled to Los Encuentros, which is an archeological site nearby. On May 14, 1982, the military came to Los Encuentros in Cogefar's truck [Cogefar was the Italian construction company commissioned to build the dam. Ed.] and massacred another 79 people before taking 15 women away in a helicopter. The 15 women were never seen again.

September 14, 1982, 92 more campesinos were killed in Agua Fría, including about 35 Río Negro children who had been orphaned from previous massacres.

What did you do after these massacres?

When and how was ADIVIMA formed? I was hiding in the mountains. When Ríos Montt began campaigning in 1983 saying that peace had arrived, and that there wouldn't be any more killings, many of my compañeros went back to Pacux and turned themselves in. Of course, Ríos Montt's words were not true and those compañeros fell under the military's control.

By then the military was using the houses in Pacux as a military base, claiming that the houses were theirs since the government had built them. The survivors of the massacre had their hands tied; there was no way to organize again.

In February of 1986, during Vinicio Cerezo's government, I managed to return to the village with others. But shortly thereafter two campesinos disappeared and we decided to leave again. Some went to Izabal, others to Escuintla. I went to Retaluleu … . I was there for eight years working as a bus assistant. But I could never get out of my head what had happened in Rabinal, that there remained nothing but silence, that the people couldn't do anything because they were so heavily controlled and threatened by the military.

…So I had to figure out a way to go to Rabinal. .. [Finally], I arrived and [went first to talk with the parish priest.] … One boy who had lost his father, mother and siblings, agreed to help. The two of us went to Guatemala City and denounced the massacre, and then we filed the complaint at the public prosecutor's office in Salamá, the capital of Baja Verapaz.

Finally, … on October 8, 1993, the exhumation of the Río Negro massacre began. … [After the exhumation had ended], I insisted that we couldn't stop there because there were more sites to be exhumed. The exhumation of the Río Negro massacre was just the beginning of our efforts to seek justice.

That was when we formed ADIVIMA, in 1994. We began to collect more testimonies; many people came forth to tell us where such and such family was buried, etc. It saddened me tremendously, and we were scared too. But little by little we carried out our work.

Now we have denounced 65 clandestine cemeteries to the public prosecutor's office, and we have completed seven additional exhumations. We have built a monument that bears witness to the Río Negro massacre; it has the names of all of the victims, the names of those responsible, and what happened on that day.

Where are you with the legal procedures against those who committed the massacre?

After spending six years in jail, three civil patrollers were given a 50-year sentence on January 25, 2000, for their role in the massacre. We are very relieved that they were tried and prosecuted. But it is a sad shame that in Guatemala the high military officials are never held responsible; they always use the line of defense that any war crime committed was not their responsibility, that they were not aware such things happened, and blame it on the patrollers. We don't think it is right that only the patrollers are imprisoned while their superiors walk free.

Now, with the assistance of other human rights organizations, we are pursuing a case against the military officials who gave the orders: Captain José Antonio González Solares, who at the time was commander of the Rabinal military base; Erick Ponce, who was commander of the Cobán military base; Lieutenant Colonel Julio Otzoy Colaj; and Benedicto Lucas García, who was the military chief of staff at the time.

Since filing the case before the Guatemalan courts, what has the environment been like in and around Rabinal?

It has been extremely difficult because we all live side by side, victims and perpetrators, and everyone knows who the witnesses are. We have received many threats throughout, some direct, some anonymous; some threatened to kill us once Ríos Montt was back in power. When we arrived at the courtroom for the trial, the patrollers who were not being tried threatened us, saying that we were accusing three innocent campesinos who didn't know anything about the massacre. But the truth is there are witnesses, eighteen of them, who saw what happened and who directly participated. …

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