Thiele, Brett; Gomez, Mayra --- "Genocide in Guatemala: The Roles of the World Bank and Inter - American Development Bank" [2005] IndigLawB 43; (2005) 6(13) Indigenous Law Bulletin 8
Genocide in Guatemala: The Roles of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank
by Bret Thiele and Mayra Gómez
In the early 1980s the Government of Guatemala was involved in one of the most brutal phases of an already brutal war against the majority of the Guatemalan people. With the initiation of the ‘scorched earth’ policy, developed with the intellectual and financial assistance of the Reagan Administration of the United States of America, and undertaken by military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, the Government of Guatemala embarked on an all-out military campaign to annihilate hundreds of thousands of mostly poor peasants from the Mayan Indigenous population. The decades-long abuse of the human rights of the Guatemalan people was well-known around the world, and was eventually found by the United Nations to constitute genocide.
At about the same time, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank negotiated a multi-million dollar deal with the military Government of Guatemala. Both Banks partnered with the Government of Guatemala in order to fund the construction of the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam, a project that would greatly benefit many of the military leaders who owned vast tracks of land in the area to be serviced by the Dam. The first phases of the Dam project involved displacing the rural Mayan peasants from the reservoir basin in which they had lived for scores of generations.
The residents of Río Negro, one of the communities to be displaced, were offered grossly unfair compensation for their homes and lands, and desired to negotiate further with Guatemalan authorities. The Guatemalan Generals in charge of the operations decided on a different solution.
In February 1982, after reaching an impasse in negotiations with the Government, 73 women and men from Río Negro were ordered by the local military commander to report to Xococ, a village upstream from the reservoir zone which had a history of land conflicts and hostility with Río Negro. Only one woman out of the 73 villagers returned to Río Negro - the rest were tortured, including rape, and then murdered by Xococ's Civil Defence Patrol (‘PAC’), one of the notorious paramilitary units established by the Guatemalan military. On 13 March 1982, 10 soldiers and 25 patrollers arrived in Río Negro, rounded up the remaining women and children, and marched them to a hill above the village where many were tortured, including rape.
Seventy of the women and 107 children were then brutally murdered, with most of the women dying of strangulation or hacked to death with machetes. As for the children, the perpetrators smashed their heads against rocks or trees until they were dead. Only two women managed to escape. Eighteen of the children survived because they were taken back to Xococ where they were enslaved by the very patrollers who had murdered their families.
Two months later, on 14 May 1982, 82 more people from Río Negro were massacred at the nearby village of Los Encuentros. Fifteen of the victims were taken away by helicopter and never seen again. Witnesses testify that the perpetrators were Government soldiers and members of the Xococ PAC who arrived in a truck owned by Codifa, a company under contract of the Chixoy Dam project and funded by the Banks.
Finally, in September 1982, 35 orphaned children from Río Negro were among 92 people machine-gunned and burned to death in another village near the Dam. Broken, terrorised and grieving, the survivors of the community were then forcibly evicted from their homes, uprooted from their lands, and moved to a grossly inadequate resettlement site. Filling of the reservoir began soon after this final massacre.
The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (‘COHRE’) conducted a fact-finding mission to Guatemala in 2003, where we visited with and took testimony from the survivors of the Río Negro massacres as well as from representatives of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Most of the survivors live in the ‘model village’ of Pacux, established by the Government behind a military base near the town of Rabinal. Pacux is nothing more than an urban slum and the residents live in extreme poverty without adequate food, housing, water, health care or educational opportunities. Over the years, members of the community have been beaten and raped by soldiers at the military base situated at the entrance to their community. In order to escape this ordeal, 13 families have returned to the site of Río Negro and have built homes on the hillsides above their former village, which is now under water. These families eke out a subsistence life on the steep hillsides above the reservoir. While they are free from the abuse of the soldiers, however, they live in a greater degree of poverty than those who remain at Pacux.
To date neither the Government of Guatemala, the World Bank, or the Inter-American Development Bank will acknowledge responsibility for the massacres and the way the forced eviction of Río Negro was carried out, even though all three had a direct supervisory role in the Chixoy Dam project. While a representative of the World Bank admitted that the Bank's project ‘wasn't supervised in a sound manner’, he followed with ‘but what can you do now?’ He condescendingly went on to state that the Río Negro survivors have to quit acting like victims and take advantage of the ‘free market’ opportunities the Bank is providing in Guatemala. The World Bank's knowledge of these prior events is recorded. Indeed, COHRE and other human rights organisations have sought copies of the World Bank's Supervision Reports, but have repeatedly been told that they are classified and will never be made public.
COHRE is involved with the Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign[1] in an effort to finally bring justice to the survivors of the Río Negro massacres, including just and fair compensation from the Government and the two Banks.
In September 2004, COHRE filed a case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (‘IACHR’) on behalf of the victims of the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala. This case was filed against the Government of Guatemala, the Government of the United States, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. The Petition has been initially accepted by the IACHR. A more thorough admissibility decision is pending. In February 2005, COHRE filed supplemental information regarding the exhaustion of domestic remedies issue.
It is interesting to note that the IACHR was aware of the situation with the Chixoy Dam as early as 1981, when they reported the following:
Río Negro is a village in the municipality of Pueblo Viejo in the Department of Alta Verapáz. Construction of the Chixoy Hydroelectric Complex is under way in that municipality. This will serve as an energy source for the entire region, principally for exploitation of the northern transversal strip, which contains the most important copper and nickel deposits exploited, as well as the oil deposits thus far unexploited.
According to information received by the IACHR, on March 4, 1980, several army contingents arrived in the village of Río Negro. They were carrying three inhabitants of the municipality whom they had captured on the road and whom they accused as being “subversives”. Upon arriving at the village, the arrested persons began to shout so that the people in the town would know they were in the hands of the army. A crowd gathered around the vehicles carrying the troops. Some asked them to release the campesinos, who were known at that place, others asked them not to take them away, not to hit them and to think of their families. Upon seeing that the people were gathering, the soldiers machine gunned the crowd, which resulted in six dead, including two women, and 13 wounded.[2]
COHRE’s Petition has already been used by the victims in order to place pressure on the Government of Guatemala and the two Banks in an effort to get them to negotiate with the affected communities.
Around the same time that the petition was filed, on 7 September 2004, over 1,000 members of the Chixoy Dam-affected communities participated in a peaceful protest at the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam. The communities were protesting the lack of reparations for past human rights violations, for the losses incurred during the construction of the Dam, and for the lack of free running water and electricity in the communities as offered before the construction of the Dam.
On 8 September 2004, the community ended the protest following an agreement with representatives of the Instituto Nacional de Electrificación (‘INDE’) - the State electricity institute - and authorities and observers from the Procuraduría de los Derechos Humanos (‘PDH’) – the State human rights ombudsman’s office – to negotiate with the communities.
In the week of 14 September 2004, INDE representatives formally presented a complaint to the Ministerio Público - the Public Prosecutor’s Office - in Cobán against members of the Chixoy Dam-affected communities. Those who took part in the protest were accused of ‘actividad contra la seguridad de la nación’; activity against national security. As a result, several representatives of the 18 Dam-affected communities involved in the protest, who signed the agreement with INDE on 7 September 2004, are currently facing criminal charges.
Those facing charges include: Carlos Chen Osorio, a survivor of and key witness to the 1982 Río Negro massacre; Juan de Dios García, director of the Asociación de Victimas de Rabinal (‘ADIVIMA’) (the Rabinal Victims’ Association); and other leaders of other Chixoy Dam-affected communities including Domingo Sic, Rafael Santiago Fernández, Félix Alonso Raymundo, Antonio Vásquez Xitumul, and Víctor Lem Colorado. Carlos Chen Osorio and Antonio Vásquez Xitumul have been detained for short periods of time and later released. COHRE has communicated its concerns in this case to the Government of Guatemala, as well as to various United Nations experts, organisations and agencies, including the Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders, the Independent Expert on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Measures, the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. COHRE has also issued Protest Letters to the Government of Guatemala, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and successfully lobbied Amnesty International to consider these persons to be Prisoners of Conscience and to monitor their situation.
In light of the situation, COHRE held a Press Conference in Guatemala City in February 2005 along with our partner, Rights Action, and the survivors of the affected communities, in order to discuss the COHRE Chixoy Dam Fact-Finding Mission Report and the Petition to the IACHR. This event took place as part of a broader effort to put pressure on the Government of Guatemala to respect the rights of the affected communities. COHRE met with the Guatemalan lawyer representing the affected communities and accompanied those facing charges to court in Cobán, Guatemala, where they decided to turn themselves in and fight these arbitrary charges. Following the proceedings, all of the persons facing charges were released on their own recognisance until a trial date is set.
COHRE also met with representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank in Guatemala City, and continues to be actively involved in the Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign.
For more information, please see: http://www.cohre.org/guatemala/.
The authors work for the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (‘COHRE’), an international human rights organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.
[1] See <http://www.cohre.org/guatemala> at 22 September 2005.
[2] Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Republic of Guatemala, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.53 doc. 21 rev. 2, 13 October 1981, <http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Guatemala81eng/chap.2.htm> at 22 September 2005.