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
- Middle East
- North America
- Outreach Partners
- Criteria for Partners
The Impact of Service
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The Río Negro Memorial Textile is a collaborative project between The Advocacy Project and weavers from the resettlement village of Pacux in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, who were displaced by the construction of Chixoy Dam in the early 1980s. Fifteen weavers created textiles to commemorate family members who died during a series of genocidal massacres perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army in and around the Maya Achí village of Río Negro between 1981 and 1982.
These genocidal attacks on indigenous communities in the Chixoy River Basin took place during the worst years of the internal conflict in Guatemala as the Chixoy Dam and Pueblo Viejo Hydroelectric Facility were being built. Villagers protested vehemently against the dam’s construction in the midst of a sacred area of the Achí homeland. More than 13,000 people are currently displaced by Chixoy and have never been compensated for their loss of land or lives.
To date, only eight ex-civil army patrolmen have been prosecuted for a handful of the nearly five hundred deaths that occurred near Río Negro, acts of genocide that are directly attributable to the construction of the Chixoy Dam. Most of the family members commemorated in the first Río Negro Memorial Textile died on March 13, 1982 at a hilltop lookout called Pak’oxom, located high above the village of Río Negro and the Chixoy River. One hundred seventy-seven women and children were murdered at Pak’oxom that day.
All of the weavers involved in the textile project are massacre survivors themselves or children of survivors. Their stories are harrowing; their ability to endure commendable. Mayan communities in the Chixoy Basin fought tirelessly against the construction of Chixoy Dam and paid with their lives for their valiant efforts to remain on these ancestral lands. Our partners in Pacux tried themselves to develop a memorial textile in recent years but were not able to do so for lack of funding. Through The Advocacy Project’s support of a weavers’ cooperative in Pacux, the first Río Negro Memorial Textile was completed in August 2008.
We invite you to read through the profiles of each weaver and the family member(s) she has commemorated. If you would like to support the next in a series of Río Negro Memorial Textiles, we welcome your donation of $40 per textile square. The money will directly fund the work of one survivor to commemorate a brave family member who died senselessly in an act of genocide. Their stories will not be forgotten.
The Río Negro Memorial Textile
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The Río Negro Memorial Textile is a collaborative project between The Advocacy Project and weavers from the resettlement village of Pacux in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, who were displaced by the construction of Chixoy Dam in the early 1980s. Fifteen weavers created textiles to commemorate family members who died during a series of genocidal massacres perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army in and around the Maya Achí village of Río Negro between 1981 and 1982.
These genocidal attacks on indigenous communities in the Chixoy River Basin took place during the worst years of the internal conflict in Guatemala as the Chixoy Dam and Pueblo Viejo Hydroelectric Facility were being built. Villagers protested vehemently against the dam’s construction in the midst of a sacred area of the Achí homeland. More than 13,000 people are currently displaced by Chixoy and have never been compensated for their loss of land or lives.
To date, only eight ex-civil army patrolmen have been prosecuted for a handful of the nearly five hundred deaths that occurred near Río Negro, acts of genocide that are directly attributable to the construction of the Chixoy Dam. Most of the family members commemorated in the first Río Negro Memorial Textile died on March 13, 1982 at a hilltop lookout called Pak’oxom, located high above the village of Río Negro and the Chixoy River. One hundred seventy-seven women and children were murdered at Pak’oxom that day.
All of the weavers involved in the textile project are massacre survivors themselves or children of survivors. Their stories are harrowing; their ability to endure commendable. Mayan communities in the Chixoy Basin fought tirelessly against the construction of Chixoy Dam and paid with their lives for their valiant efforts to remain on these ancestral lands. Our partners in Pacux tried themselves to develop a memorial textile in recent years but were not able to do so for lack of funding. Through The Advocacy Project’s support of a weavers’ cooperative in Pacux, the first Río Negro Memorial Textile was completed in August 2008.
We invite you to read through the profiles of each weaver and the family member(s) she has commemorated. If you would like to support the next in a series of Río Negro Memorial Textiles, we welcome your donation of $40 per textile square. The money will directly fund the work of one survivor to commemorate a brave family member who died senselessly in an act of genocide. Their stories will not be forgotten.
- Please contact Alison Suliter, Outreach Coordinator to make a dontation.