GUATEMALA 1982 AND THE CHIXOY DAM MASSACRE

"If the CHIXOY Dam had not been built, then most of our community members would be alive today. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank should pay reparations to the survivors of the massacres of Rio Negro. We can't get our loved ones back but we should be compensated for the land that we lost, our fruit trees and our sacred sites."

-- Carlos Chen, survivor of the campaign of terror unleashed upon the community of Rio Negro in the early 1980s.

Carlos Chen is in Washington DC this week (April 10-18), as part of the Mobilization for Global Justice, to raise awareness of his communities' plight. His trip to the US is being co-hosted by Rights Action and International Rivers Network. He will meet with World Bank and Inter- American Development Bank (IADB) officials to press them for reparations for his community.

In 1978, at the time of massive state-sponsored repression (defined by the United Nations as "genocide"), the World Bank and IADB funded the Chixoy dam project. The IADB loaned $105 million in 1978, and $70 million in 1981. The World Bank loaned $72 million in 1978 and another $44.6 million in 1985, after massacres had killed more than 400 members of the Rio Negro community opposed to the dam.

On March 13, 1982, the Guatemalan military and Civil Defense Patrols (paramilitaries) slaughtered 107 children and 70 women in the isolated Maya-Achi community of Rio Negro. The victims included Carlos' first wife, pregnant at the time, and their two infant children. This was the third of five massacres committed against the people of Rio Negro, following the community's refusal to leave their lands for Chixoy Dam's construction. The flooding of the reservoir began a few months after the last massacre.

Yet, despite sending numerous missions to oversee the project before, during and after construction, the World Bank and IADB apparently kept silent about the massacres until 1996, when human rights groups uncovered this story. The World Bank's own internal investigation then absolved it of responsibility.

The survivors of Rio Negro never received adequate compensation for the land, homes and personal property they lost or that was stolen from them, much less reparations for the violence perpetrated against them. Independent of the massacres, the World Bank, under its resettlement policy, has obligations to ensure that those resettled are not worse off after the project. [due to the massacres, there was little actual "resettlement"]. World Bank officials claim that they have restored the community to its 1975 standard of living. This is not so.

A growing movement of dam-affected communities from all over the world is demanding reparations, or retroactive compensation, for the continuing damage to their lives because of dams which have already been completed. The World Bank has been the largest single source of funds for large dam construction worldwide, and as such is a major target for dam-affected communities.

"Under its stated aim of alleviating poverty, the World Bank has promoted and funded dams that have displaced more than 10 million people from their homes and land, caused severe environmental damage, and pushed borrowers further into debt. Yet the Bank has never paid for the destruction it has caused to millions of people's lives and the environment. Now, it's time for the Bank to pay its own debts."
-- Ms. Aviva Imhof, South-East Asia Campaigner with International Rivers Network


ANTI DAM ACTIVISM HAS PICKED UP IN SINCE THE 1980 AND HAS ALREADY WITNESSED THE CANCELLATION OF SEVERAL PRESTIGIOUS PROJECTS LIKE THE FRANKLIN DAM IN AUSTRALIA,SILENT VALLEY IN India .

FURTHER THE WORLD BANK HAS BEEN FORCED OUT OF THE SARDAR SAROVAR PROJECT IN 1993 AND HAD TO BACK OUT OF THE ARUN3 PROJECT IN NEPAL ,THE WB NOW FUNDS DAMS IN AREAS GOVERNED BY TOUGH REGIMES ONLY WHERE POPULAR RESISTANCECAN BE CRUSHED.