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Guatemalan Maya: compensation after massacre


WOLA

Carlos Chen Osorio overlooks what used to be his community's farmland.


Patricio Carrera
Especial para Washington's Voz
07/29/2005

After 23 years of fighting, indigenous Maya people from Guatemala are still demanding compensation from the IADB and the World Bank for being driven from their ancestral lands by the blood-soaked construction of a bank-funded dam.

A new study concludes that the development of the Chixoy Dam took place at the cost of land, life, and livelihood, in violation of national and international law, and that the project caused extreme poverty in communities that formerly enjoyed a sustainable way of life.

“The legacy of Chixoy includes extreme poverty and immense suffering caused by inept development, corruption and violence,” said by Dr. Barbara Rose Johnston, an anthropologist from the Center for Political Ecology in Santa Cruz , the author of the study. “If this is the legacy of the past, this study and its recommendations comprise a blueprint for the future, a future that promises reconciliation and propels the communities and Guatemala towards the restoration of a healthy and dignified way of life.”

Now the Mayas and advocacy groups that support them are calling on the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to take responsibility for their roles in the building of the Chixoy Dam in central Guatemala two decades ago.

The Chixoy Dam Legacy Issues Study was coordinated by Dr. Johnston, with peer review by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Anthropological Association (AAA). The study took place over a two-year period and included review of primary documents, community workshops, interviews, household surveys, a land title search and other research methods.

The Mayas drew attention to what they said was a massacre in 1983 by the Guatemalan army of 444 hundred people -- mostly indigenous women and children -- who refused to abandon their homes to make way for the hydroelectric dam.

"The World Bank, the IDB and the government should take responsibility for their actions," said Carlos Chen Osorio, a spokesman for the affected communities who said his wife and children were killed in the massacre.

"We want our lives restored and to live with dignity," he said. About 3,500 residents were forcibly evicted without adequate compensation when the dam was built in the 1970s and 1980s, the protestors said in presenting the results of a two-year study on the dam's legacy.

When Osorio remembers, his big eyes are unsettling, and he doesn't blink. “We didn't know what a dam was,” he says and keeps describing how the soldiers came to his community “coming up by the Río Negro, killing the neighbors, accusing them of subversives.”

His wife persuaded him to leave, to avoid being killed. “‘Don't stay, they'll kill you,' she begged, ‘I don't think they'll kill me with my two babies, and you have to leave to tell this story,' she said.” Chen left. When he came back, with other survivors, he couldn't even find his way home.

The document recommends unspecified reparations from the Guatemalan government, restoration of lost land, the supply of drinking water and electricity and economic development plans.

“This study is very important for us as it documents all that we have suffered over the past 20 years as a result of the dam. We hope that the Guatemalan government, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) seriously consider the recommendations of the study and in this way are able to restore our way of life to what it was before,” said Chen Osorio, a member of the Negotiation Commission of Committee of Communities Affected by the Construction of the Chixoy Dam (COCAHICH).

They accused the World Bank of failing to ensure proper relocation and compensation for affected communities when it extended loans for the dam project in 1978 and 1985.

The international lender in recent years has turned away from funding large infrastructure projects in favor of smaller, community-based schemes to alleviate poverty in the developing world.

COCAHICH presented the Legacy Study to the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank as part of their effort to urge the Banks to participate in the recently established Damages Verification Commission that will examine their claims.

Upon receipt of the Legacy Study, on July 13, 2005, Dr. Frank LaRue, Director of the Guatemalan Presidential Human Rights Commission (COPREDEH), officially announced the formation of the Damages Verification Commission. The Government formally invited the World Bank and IDB to participate in the Commission that same week.

COCAHICH called on the World Bank and IDB to join negotiations already launched by Guatemalan government to assess damages caused by the dam.

"The recent formation of the Damages Verification Commission is an important step toward the process of achieving a resolution in this matter. Justice has been delayed far too long for the residents of the dam-affected communities. We are pleased that the Guatemalan government has recognized the legitimate concerns of our clients and has established a commission to consider their claims in order to reach a just and equitable settlement," said Enrique Gomez-Pinzon, the attorney heading up a team of Holland & Knight's lawyers who represent COCAHICH in the negotiations.