September 09, 2004
More Violence in Chixoy
By Kevin
If your land--and the land of all your neighbors--has been confiscated by the government, and you are all given shoddy replacements, your options are limited--that is, unless you live in Guatemala:
You might remember the Chixoy Dam Massacres, even if only because the survivors wanted the World Bank to pay reparations for financing the project.GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Hundreds of angry farmers seized Guatemala's largest hydroelectric dam Tuesday, threatening to shut off power to large parts of the country unless the government agrees to return nearby lands to them.
The farmers forced their way into the Chixoy dam complex in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, seized the control room and were trying to force employees to close the gates that supply water to the facility's turbines...
President Oscar Berger urged the farmers to hand over the facility. "This is no way to negotiate or solve conflicts," Berger said.
The farmers are demanding the institute give them land around the dam. The agency expropriated that land - and gave residents other plots - in order to secure the dam's watershed and catchment basin.
However, the estimated 500 farmers say they were given land of inferior quality in compensation.
The takeover of the plant, which supplies about 60 percent of the country's electricity, comes on the eve of a deadline set six months ago by various peasant groups for the solution of the problem.
This is what the state of nature looks like, and it ain't pretty. I am uncertain how one is to "negotiate" with a government that was complicit in murdering 444 of 791 of your fellow men, as they tried to expropriate your land.
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