A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Paula and Rights Action

During her participation in The Advocacy Project’s 2005 Summer Internship Program, Paula was placed with ADIVIMA, a partner of Rights Action in Rabinal, Guatemala.

Formerly Guatemala Partners, Rights Action supports human rights projects in Chiapas, Honduras, and Guatemala. The organization was formed in 1983 and provides funding for regional efforts relating to development, human rights, and humanitarian relief. Rights Action also educates the North American public about globalization and human rights issues and seeks to remedy endemic poverty, repression and racism through cooperation with international partners.

ADIVIMA serves a network of indigenous communities that suffered from massacres in the Guatemalan region of Rabinal in 1982. Survivors formed the community organization to campaign for reparations and to pursue legal action against the people responsible for the massacres. They have uncovered mass graves and brought prosecutions against some of the killers, as well as pressuring Guatemalan authorities to provide them with new farmland. ADIVIMA also actively works to support the education and economic development of survivors and their families in the region. Though much remains to be done, this campaign has turned Rio Negro into a source of inspiration for other Guatemalan communities victimized by violence in the 1980s. It has also attracted intense support outside the country.

Indigenous women in Guatemala.

Most of Paula’s work centered on providing support for the Coordinadora de las Comunidades Afectadas por la Construcción de la Hidroeléctrica Chixoy (COCAHICH), a program operated by ADIVIMA to document the damages sustained by communities as a result of the large Chixoy Dam project funded by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, as well as exposing cases where fair compensation has been withheld from people affected by the project. Paula helped design rules and regulations which will govern the future activities and structure of COCAHICH and increase its ability to negotiate effectively during anticipated talks with the Guatemalan government.

Paula also assisted in gathering information from nearby communities and drafting a report recording the adverse impact on communities below the dam. Additionally, she did some proposal writing and acted as a translator when needed.

While in Rabinal, Paula reported on her experience in the form of online blogs. Her detailed entries chronicle the exhumation of mass graves, an arduous trek she took to visit a community devastated by the construction of the Chixoy Dam, and the lack of basic necessities available to many of Guatemalans struggling to survive.

• Paula's blog