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

Guatemala – The Rio Negro Campaign

In the spring of 2000, Carlos Chen, one of the community leaders from Rio Negro, arrived in Washington, where he called on the World Bank to accept its share of responsibility for the losses suffered by the community in the early 1980s and to help with reparations.

This is the context for this series of On the Record. During the time of Carlos Chen's trip,  AP staffer Peter Lippman visited survivors of the Rio Negro massacres that occurred in 1982 in the central highlands of Guatemala. During his visit, he produced this series of On the Record - The Rio Negro Campaign. Working with Rights Action, The Advocacy Project helps indigenous campaigners make their case for reparations from the World Bank on the occasion of the highly contested spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

For more of AP's coverage of the fight for indigenous rights in Guatemala and background on the Rio Negro conflict, see the Guatemala: Indigenous Advocacy section below.

Issue 1: The Struggle Against Impunity
The first issue of this series gives a background on the massacre, including the link between the World Bank dam and the violence.

Issue 2: Profile of a Campaign
Issue 2 introduces the public campaign for justice. It introduces ADIVIMA and Rights Action and their work fighting against impunity, including exhumations, the construction of monuments, their legal battles, and international advocacy.

Issue 3: People of Rabinal
In this issue, Peter Lippman visits Rabinal and talks to some of the community leaders who are fighting against impunity and striving to raise the morale and living standards of the former Rio Negro inhabitants.

Issue 4: In the Shadow of the Dam
Issue 4 begins with a first-hand account by Peter Lippman of his recent visit to the Chixoy dam. Peter then discusses some of the environmental and technical problems that plague the dam, which will almost certainly shorten its working life. Later, he assesses conditions in Pacux, the first resettlement site that was offered to the Rio Negro survivors immediately after the massacres of 1982. The last part of the issue presents a chronological account of the different stages of resettlement, as it unfolded.

Issue 5: The World Bank and the Chixoy Dam
This issue looks at the World Bank's role in the resettlement of the Rio Negro villagers who were displaced by the Chixoy dam and addresses the disagreement between the Bank and survivors over reparations.

Issue 6: Communities Struggle for Justice in Guatemala
After concluding his written dispatches from Rabinal, our principal writer, Peter Lippman, spent a week in Guatemala on a study tour organized by the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). This issue includes a profile of NISGUA, a letter from Rights Action about Carlos Chen and a statement issued by Denese Becker, an American with family in Guatemala.

Issue 7: Portillo Casts a Shadow Over Activism
This issue talks about the obstacles faced by activists due to the government, including the populist President Alfonso Portillo and the former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, now president of Congress. While activists for peace and justice have faced formidable obstacles before, the new government promises to present the most serious challenge to confront them since the genocide of the 1980s.

Issue 8: The Dispossessed
Issue 8 examines other displaced communities in Guatemala and reveals that hundreds share Rio Negro's history. The problems of the Rio Negro survivors are universal.

Issue 9: Banana Wars
The final issue in this series profiles SITRABI, the union of Guatemalan banana workers. Founded in 1947, SITRABI is the oldest union in Guatemala and the strongest in the private sector. But it also faces constant harassment and intimidation. Last year, after SITRABI called a strike, armed thugs surrounded the union hall, kidnapped the union leaders, and threatened to 'hang them in the park and light them on fire.' The leaders fled in fear for their lives.