A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
- Africa
- Asia
- Europe
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management
- Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense
- Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi
- ADIVIMA – Guatemala
- Goals
- Team
- The Memorial Quilt
- Multimedia
- Outreach
- Get Involved
- Middle East
- North America
- Outreach Partners
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The Impact of Service
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The Río Negro Memorial Quilt is a collaborative project between The Advocacy Project and Maya Achí villagers in Guatemala who suffered from a series of devastating massacres in the early 1980s. The massacres occurred after the villagers from one community, Rio Negro, refused to move and make way for the Chixoy Dam, which was built by the government with funds from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. A total of 28 communities were affected by the dam.
The survivors of Rio Negro were moved to a settlement at Pacux, in Rabinal, but they never gave up their struggle for justice and formed a community association, ADIVIMA (the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi). Their brave campaign won admiration and support from a wide range of activists. By the mid 1990s, ADIVIMA’s community-based approach was widely replicated.
AP first worked with ADIVIMA in 1999, when AP staffer Peter Lippman visited to profile their campaign and tell the story of Rio Negro. The next year, AP helped leaders of ADIVIMA to present their case at the World Bank in Washington. Between 2003 and 2008, AP sent five Peace Fellows to support ADIVIMA’s advocacy.
ADIVIMA pursues a three-pronged approach. At the community level, it seeks to rebuild the lives of survivors through development projects, education, exhumations and legal cases. Nationally, ADIVIMA has been pressing the government to pay damages for the murders and forced relocation. Internationally, its friends have taken cases to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and even the Spanish courts. These efforts achieved a major breakthrough in 2008, when the government finally agreed to pay reparations. The negotiations are scheduled to end this summer.
In the villages themselves, Heidi McKinnon, ADIVIMA’s current Peace Fellow, has been helping women who lost relatives in Rio Negro to weave a memorial quilt to commemorate those who died in the massacres. The quilt was launched on December 10, 2008, in Santa Fe, before moving to Washington. During 2009, it will be used by the weavers and their friends to keep the memory of Rio Negro alive, and generate support for a large artisanal project in the 28 communities that were affected by the Chixoy Dam.
AP will support all aspects of this ambitious campaign to restore the identity of those who died, and help ADIVIMA develop a model that can benefit all communities that suffered during the genocide.
ADIVIMA – Guatemala
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The Río Negro Memorial Quilt is a collaborative project between The Advocacy Project and Maya Achí villagers in Guatemala who suffered from a series of devastating massacres in the early 1980s. The massacres occurred after the villagers from one community, Rio Negro, refused to move and make way for the Chixoy Dam, which was built by the government with funds from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. A total of 28 communities were affected by the dam.
The survivors of Rio Negro were moved to a settlement at Pacux, in Rabinal, but they never gave up their struggle for justice and formed a community association, ADIVIMA (the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi). Their brave campaign won admiration and support from a wide range of activists. By the mid 1990s, ADIVIMA’s community-based approach was widely replicated.
AP first worked with ADIVIMA in 1999, when AP staffer Peter Lippman visited to profile their campaign and tell the story of Rio Negro. The next year, AP helped leaders of ADIVIMA to present their case at the World Bank in Washington. Between 2003 and 2008, AP sent five Peace Fellows to support ADIVIMA’s advocacy.
ADIVIMA pursues a three-pronged approach. At the community level, it seeks to rebuild the lives of survivors through development projects, education, exhumations and legal cases. Nationally, ADIVIMA has been pressing the government to pay damages for the murders and forced relocation. Internationally, its friends have taken cases to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and even the Spanish courts. These efforts achieved a major breakthrough in 2008, when the government finally agreed to pay reparations. The negotiations are scheduled to end this summer.
In the villages themselves, Heidi McKinnon, ADIVIMA’s current Peace Fellow, has been helping women who lost relatives in Rio Negro to weave a memorial quilt to commemorate those who died in the massacres. The quilt was launched on December 10, 2008, in Santa Fe, before moving to Washington. During 2009, it will be used by the weavers and their friends to keep the memory of Rio Negro alive, and generate support for a large artisanal project in the 28 communities that were affected by the Chixoy Dam.
AP will support all aspects of this ambitious campaign to restore the identity of those who died, and help ADIVIMA develop a model that can benefit all communities that suffered during the genocide.
- Support the Rio Negro quilt
- Help Victims of the recent deadly landslide in the province of Alta Verapaz, near Rio Negro