43rd Anniversary of Los Encuentros Massacre in Guatemala

Written By Grahame Russell

To make way for ‘genocidal’ Chixoy hydro-electric dam project of World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, in partnership with U.S and Western-backed genocidal regimes of generals Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt

Below: Statement by the Comité de Víctimas de las Masacres Rio Negro/Represa Chixoy

May 14, 2025 marks the 43rd anniversary of the massacre of 85 women, children and infants in Encuentros along the Chixoy river, carried out with sexual violence and extreme savagery. It was one of four largescale massacres carried out in 1982 that left 450 Rio Negro villagers dead, their bodies dumped in mass graves, buried under the mud and silt of the flood basin of the Chixoy dam, or strewn in the surrounding mountain sides.

These massacres were the “relocation” of the Rio Negro villagers as promised by the World Bank and IDB, to make way for the completion of the dam wall in 1982 and filling of the dam’s flood basin, up river. The massacres were carried out by Guatemalan soldiers, “civil defense patrollers” and private security guards working at the project site.

Rights Action has again this year sent grassroots funds to the Committee of Victims of the Chixoy dam/Rio Negro massacres for a ceremony they will hold at a now sacred site on the mountain side above where Los Encuentros remains deep under the dam’s flood basin.

Rights Action’s 2-week educational road-trip, part of the “Global order, injustice and resistance in Guatemala” course offered by Professor Catherine Nolin at the University of Northern British Columbia, has the privilege of being able to attend the ceremony during a visit to the remains of the village of Rio Negro.

The victims of Los Encuentros deserve justice
May 14, 2025, Comité de Víctimas de Pacux

This May 14, starting at 4:00 pm, the Committee of Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, will commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the massacre in the community of Los Encuentros.

The Los Encuentros massacre occurred on May 14, 1982. On that day, Guatemalan Army soldiers and civil self-defense patrols (PAC) from the village of Xococ passed through Pueblo Viejo, where the Italian company COGEFAR, one of the transnational companies in charge of the construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam [project of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, together with the military regimes of those years], provided them with trucks to move into the community.

Upon arrival at the site, the military patrol fired on the villagers and captured 85 people, including men, women, girls, boys and newborn babies.

Forty of the detained men were tortured before being killed. Community leader Pedro Osorio López had the soles of his feet cut off and was forced to stand on burning coals until his death. Several women were raped. The next day, a military helicopter took 15 women and children to military zone 21 in Cobán and they were never seen again.

As a result of denunciations made by survivors, at the beginning of 2012 the Public Prosecutor's Office began exhumations in the facilities of the Regional Command for Peacekeeping Operations Training (CREOMPAZ), where military zone 21 operated. There they recovered the skeletons of 565 people, among whom they were able to identify victims who were taken by helicopter after the Los Encuentros massacre.

May 2012. UNBC-Rights Action two-week road trip had privilege of witnessing the exhumation, in CREOMPAZ, of the particular mass grave wherein were found the remains of the 15 women and children kidnapped and helicoptered by the military from the Los Encuentros slaughter site. Photo: Grahame Russell

These acts are extremely cruel, but it is necessary for the general population to know the barbarity with which the Army acted against thousands of innocent people during the internal armed conflict. Furthermore, these acts are part of the country's historical memory, and the State has the obligation to apply justice and guarantee the non-repetition of this absurd violence.

Although the CREOMPAZ Case took an important step forward in January 2016, when 14 military personnel were detained, today the victims and survivors are deeply outraged because, in November 2024, a High Risk Chamber reversed the progress made in the legal process. This was a hard blow for the families who have been waiting for justice for decades and exposes the deplorable situation of the Judicial Branch that is allowing the manipulation of the law to benefit military human rights violators.

As part of the commemoration of the Los Encuentros massacre, we call on the Constitutional Court not to allow the light of truth to be hidden by the shadows of impunity, and to reverse the arbitrary decision of the Court. The victims and their families deserve justice!

Rabinal, May 6, 2025

Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign

From 1993 to 2014, Rights Action was very involved in documenting and denouncing the Chixoy dam-Rio Negro massacres and eradication. During this time, we channeled grassroots funds to survivors from Rio Negro leading work and struggle for truth, memory, justice and reparations.

Inter-generational harms and suffering

It is impossible to document or even describe the amount of suffering, destruction and harm caused by the Chixoy Dam/Rio Negro massacres. To this day, many survivors of the massacres (and their children and grand-children) live in worse conditions than before 1982. Some of their children and grandchildren are amongst the countless thousands of people forced to flee Guatemala and seek any kind of life they can create for themselves in Mexico or the U.S.

Impunity and corruption at the highest levels

To this day, neither the World Bank nor the IDB have acknowledged any responsibility. Neither has paid one penny of reparations for the death, destruction and massive theft and loss of property and land caused by the Chixoy dam. Both banks profited financially from their “investments” in this genocidal project.

The World Bank and IDB must release all internal documents about the ‘genocidal’ Chixoy dam project, acknowledge the full truth about their roles and responsibilities, and pay reparations.

To the best of our ability, Rights Action will continue to support massacre survivor-led efforts to achieve a full and proper reparations from the World Bank and IDB, and –separately- to pressure the Guatemalan government to comply with the sentence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and pay reparations specifically to the surviving family members of the four largescale Rio Negro massacres.

Background

Grahame Russell
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