By Oliver Valenzuela-Nettell, SFSU, 2021
The Chixoy Dam is a hydroelectric dam in Guatemala on its Chixoy River, between the Departments of El Quiche, Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz. The dam is 100 meters high and floods approximately 1,400 hectares in the Chixoy Basin [1]. Construction on the project began in 1976 [2], completed in 1982 [3] and was initially funded by a series of loans from the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank [4]. The Chixoy Basin was fertile farmland before the flooding and 3,400 people were killed or displaced by its creation [5].
A memorial dedicated to those massacred in Rio Negro
The former residents of the Chixoy Basin are mainly comprised of Achi speaking Maya (Maya Achi) who were not adequately consulted prior to the construction of the dam, only receiving one year’s notice of the flooding and relocation, pressuring many to accept the governments proposed relocation plan [6]. Many of the Maya opposed relocation and were forcibly relocated by the Guatemalan government which was a military dictatorship [7] at the time and willing to use state sponsored violence [8] to make way for the construction of the dam. These and the other aforementioned factors resulted in a massacre. In 1982, 92 people were killed by government forces in a village near the dam site after accusations that the people of the area supported guerrilla forces that actively opposed relocation and the Guatemalan military [9]. Some 500 people in all were massacred by the time of the dam’s completion in 1985 [10].
The Maya Achi who survived the massacres were relocated from the fertile, productive land of the Chixoy Basin to the surrounding infertile, inhospitable highlands on which the government had built inadequate and substandard housing for those relocated [11]. The energy produced by the dam did not initially supply the relocated communities until local pressures finally garnered concessions granting access [12]. The Guatemalan government’s massacre and relocation of the Maya Achi received international attention when the World Commission on Dams (WCD) released a report of the finding of an independent assessment of the intersection of dam construction and the displacement of Indigenous people worldwide in 2005 [13]. The report finds that entities often do not keep contractual agreements, fail to prevent environmental degradation and disproportionately affect and displace indigenous people such as the Maya Achi [14]. These findings played a key role in reparation negotiations [15] which have resulted in some reparations for displaced Maya Achi. In 2015, 120 families received $11,205 as a part of a larger reparations package that includes infrastructure and environmental restoration as well as individual payments [16].
The land the Maya Achi were displaced from was sacrificed so that urban areas of Guatemala could receive electricity, and the fact that the displaced residents of the basin benefit very little from the dam and its electricity makes it a resource curse to those same residents. Carlos Chen, a leader in the fight for reparations for those displaced by the dam, was quoted as saying, “We can now enjoy a cold beer at home,” said Carlos. “We still need potable water in most villages, but we are working on that [17].” The WCD reports that 40 to 80 million people, primarily indigenous have been affected by the building of 45,000 large dams worldwide, and the resulting conditions have been that of poverty [18]. Finally, the large debt accumulated by Guatemala represents a form of colonialism. Institutions like the World Bank, backed primarily by western countries such as the Unites States, receive the benefits of Guatemala’s natural resources through loan repayment, and the pressure of these loan repayments along with the infusion of capital facilitated the Guatemalan military dictatorship to carry out its campaign of displacement and murder against the Maya Achi. The WCD called for all financial institutions complicit in this way in the 200 dam projects it monitors to acknowledge the damage they have caused and to make reparations [19].
References
[1] Aguirre, M. (2004) “The Chixoy Dam Destroyed Our Lives.” Human Rights Dialogue: “Environmental Rights” (Spring 2004) | Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 16 Apr. 2004, www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/archive/dialogue/2_11/section_3/4456
[2] “Fighting Human Rights Abuses: The Chixoy Dam and the Rio Negro Massacres” | Environmental Defender Law Center.Https://Edlc.org/, 10 Dec. 2012, edlc.org/cases/fighting-human-rights-abuses/the-chixoy-dam-and-the-rio-negro-massacres/
[3] Dearden, N. (2012) “Guatemala’s Chixoy Dam: Where Development and Terror Intersect” | The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 Dec. 2012, www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/dec/10/guatemala-chixoy-dam-development-terror
[4] Johnston, B.R. (2010) “Chixoy dam legacies: The struggle to secure reparation and the right to remedy in Guatemala.” | Water Alternatives 3(2): 341-361, 2010 Chixoy Dam Legacies: The Struggle to Secure Reparation and the Right to Remedy in Guatemala (water-alternatives.org)
[5] Aquirre, M. (2020) “Chixoy Reparations at Last: Checks Are In.” | International Rivers, 13 Nov. 2020, www.internationalrivers.org/news/blog-chixoy-reparations-at-last-checks-are-in/
pgeproject.wordpress.com 