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

The Massacres

It did not take long for the dispute to turn violent. Early in March 1980, two young men from Rio Negro were accused of stealing food from the Cogefar canteen. They were seized by three company security officials and taken to the village. This provoked an angry confrontation in which seven villagers and one of the Cogefar guards was killed.

A week later the Rio Negro community suffered another blow when the written record of the agreement with INDE and all the titles to its land were stolen. In response to a request by INDE, two community leaders had taken the documentation to the dam site. Their tortured bodies were discovered several days later. This critically important incident has never been investigated.

In 1981 the noose further tightened around the community of Rio Negro when a new strategy to combat "subversion" was introduced by the Guatemalan government. Part of this strategy involved 

One PAC was created near Rio Negro in Xococ, with the aggressive name of "Combative Village of Xococ." The Xococ patrol became an instrument of terror in the government's campaign to break the spirit of Rio Negro. On February 13, 1982, villagers from Rio Negro were told to bring their identification cards to Xococ and return a week later to get new cards. Seventy-three villagers obeyed and were killed. Back in Rio Negro, the remaining men fled into the hills, leaving the women and children behind.

A month later, on March 13, the patrolmen of Xococ arrived in Rio Negro and killed 177 women and children. Two months later, the army attacked and killed another 84 people in the Rio Negro valley. Fifteen women were taken off by helicopter, never to be seen again. On September 14, 92 villagers were burned to death in a nearby community. The victims included 30 youngsters from Rio Negro who had survived the previous massacres.

The Destruction of a Community

Were the villagers of Rio Negro killed because they refused to move to make way for the Chixoy dam? The timing is certainly highly suspect. Construction on the dam began in January 1983, almost immediately after the final massacre of 1982.

The most authoritative link was made by the Commission of Historical Verification (Truth Commission), which was set up by the United Nations as part of the Guatemalan peace process. The Commission issued its report in February 1999.

The Commission selected a series of case studies to illustrate different aspects of the violence. One of the case studies looked at the "massacre and elimination of the Rio Negro community." It described the context of the massacre as being "the hydroelectric project. . .and the resistance of the Rio Negro community to being removed from their land." The case study also concluded that Rabinal had been the target of genocide.

One thing is clear: the loss of the community's land to the Chixoy dam, combined with the massacres, destroyed Rio Negro.

According to a census taken by INDE, 791 people had lived in the community in 1977. By 1983, 444 were dead. The community had cultivated 1,440 hectares of land. By 1983 it was mostly under water. Also lost were the land titles.

The dam had drowned Rio Negro's links to its rich Mayan past-its burial grounds, ceremonial sites, and artifacts. (One of the 16 sites that were flooded, at Cahuinal, reemerges every year when the water level falls, bearing more signs of deterioration.)

Lost was the pelota playing field, the palm trees that provided the raw material for the petate handicrafts and the medicinal plants that were used for traditional medicine. Two Mayan priests had practiced the ancient art of healing. Both had been murdered. Lost were the houses, the 300 cows, and the 20 horses-all stolen by the patrolmen from Xococ. Those houses that were built on the upper reaches of the valley were burned.

The community had also lost its traditional structure of authority with the murder.