ADIVIMA Founder

Carlos Chen is one of the founders of ADIVIMA and a Co-Director of their partner organization, COCAHICH, which is negotiating with Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom for reparations of damages caused by Chixoy Dam. Carlos is originally from the village of Río Negro and spent several years in hiding before beginning a campaign to support the families affected by the massacres that occurred in Río Negro and throughout the states of Alta and Baja Verapaz. Carlos lives in Pacux with his wife and two children.

ADIVIMA Director

Juan de Dios Garcia is the Director of ADIVIMA, based in Rabinal, Guatemala. Juan is the spokesperson for the Chixoy Dam reparations campaign. He directs ADIVIMA’s exhumation work in Baja and Alta Verapaz and ADIVIMA’s legal cases against the intellectual actors of massacres that occurred during the internal conflict in Guatemala during the 1980s. Juan lives in the resettlement village of Pacux with his wife and two children.

2008 AP Peace Fellow

Heidi McKinnon is currently an AP Peace Fellow working in Guatemala with both ADIVIMA and COCAHICH on the reparations campaign and an economic development plan for the 13,000 members of the communities affected by Chixoy Dam. Heidi has a BA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico and years of experience working with indigenous communities in Latin America both as a researcher at Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and as an independent consultant for indigenous cooperatives in Brazil, Chile and Argentina through her own Santa Fe-based company, Materiaprima.  Email Heidi!