Guatemala's indigenous communities boosted by landmark reparations bill

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Guatemala's indigenous communities boosted by landmark reparations bill

US expected to instruct World Bank to address atrocities suffered by residents during Chixoy dam construction

Mark Tran
theguardian.com, Friday 17 January 2014 11.53 EST

President Barack Obama is poised to sign into law next week a landmark bill bringing closer the prospect of reparations for the indigenous Maya Achi community, more than 30 years after hundreds were massacred to clear the way for building the Chixoy dam in Guatemala.

The 2014 consolidated appropriations bill, involving more than $1tn, which funds discretionary government spending, instructs the US directors of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) – which co-financed construction of the dam – to "report … on the steps being taken by such institutions to support implementation of a 2010 reparation plan (pdf) for damages suffered by the communities when the dam was built".

For more than 20 years, survivors have called upon the Guatemalan government, the World Bank and the IADB to pay reparations for the atrocities in connection with the dam. Their efforts led to the 2010 reparation plan, which was signed by the government of Guatemala, affected communities and a representative of the Organisation of American States.

Two of the provisions for reparations include compensation for material and non-material damages and losses totalling $154.5m for communities affected by the dam and implementation of a management plan for the Chixoy basin based on integrated watershed management. This includes reforestation with native plants, establishing an ecological flow adequate for the basin, and guarantees of minimum water quantity and quality.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jan/17/guatemala-chixoy-dam-reparations-bill

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reparations for the Maya Achi Chixoy Dam Affected

Reparations for the Maya Achi Chixoy Dam Affected
Thu, 01/16/2014 - 7:47pm
By Monti Aguirre

The word reparations ­– feared by people in the world of infrastructure development – is finally starting to find a well-deserved and long-awaited place. Reparations means making up for a past wrong. US President Barack Obama is about to sign a bill that includes in its mandates reparations for the Maya Achi communities who were affected by construction of the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala. Financiers of the project – the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank – are now on the hook to right the wrongs that accompanied construction of the Chixoy Dam.

Financiers of large development projects have shunned away from admitting that some projects their institutions financed have caused harm. Consequentially, the damages caused to people and the environment do not get addressed and thousands of peoples’ lives are ruined and their livelihoods destroyed forever. This cannot continue to be so.

I began to learn of the horrors of what had happened to the Maya Achi when I first met community representative Carlos Chen in 1999. Surprisingly expressionless, lowering his eyes, Carlos spoke in a monotone before the World Commission on Dams in 1999 at the Public Hearing in Sao Paulo. Just minutes before, 26 buses had arrived with close to a thousand dam-affected people from Brazil. The auditorium got hot.

Three decades ago, in the midst of Guatemala’s civil war, Carlos’ community was persecuted, threatened and killed in the most horrendous ways to make way for the dam, he said. The Maya Achi suffered five massacres that chillingly took away the lives of more than 440 people. He described how children were taken by their feet and banged against rocks. I would later see one of those rocks and stand by a tree where some girls’ bodies had been dropped. Can you imagine that?

More:
http://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/233/reparations-for-the-maya-achi-chixoy-dam-affected