A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

ADIVIMA – Getting Organized

The foundation for the Rio Negro campaign was laid in 1993, when three leading survivors of the massacres formed a new community group in Pacux called the Association of Widows, Widowers, Orphans, and Displaced of Rabinal Maya-Achi, (Coordinadora de Viudas, Viudos, Huerfanos y Desplazados Rabinal Maya-Achi).

Carlos Chen.

All three founders were lucky to survive. 

Carlos Chen was one of those who fled into the hills after news of the first (March 13, 1982) massacre. His wife and children were killed in the second massacre, a month later. Carlos then spent five years hiding in the forests and mountains, dodging army patrols and bombing raids. He eventually emerged and went to work on the south coast of Guatemala. It was not until 1992 that he returned to Rabinal to rejoin the other Rio Negro survivors, who were now living in Pacux.

Jesus and his son.

Jesus Tecu Osorio was one of the 18 who survived the second massacre. He remembers being taken up the kill with his little brother by the patrolmen. As his mother was being taken away, she told him to take care of the baby. After killing her, a civil patrolman came looking for her sons. He killed the baby and took Jesus home.

Jesus was one of eighteen youngsters who survived the massacre. He worked as a slave for two years before he was freed and released to a relative. In 1986 he returned to Pacux, to find patrolmen living in houses that had been promised to the villagers by INDE (Guatemala's National Institute of Electrification).

Pedrina Burrero Lopez.

Pedrina Burrero Lopez was from a nearby village that also suffered massacres. She lost most of her relatives, but her two children survived. Her husband was taken away one day and "disappeared," whereupon Pedrina moved to the south coast. Here she learned Spanish and worked at cutting sugar cane and coffee. She returned to her village near Rabinal in the early 1990s.

In 1994, Carlos, Jesus and Pedrina adapted their association into a broader organization known as Adivima (Association for Development for the Victims of Violence in Maya Achi Verapaz).

Adivima quickly became the focal point for the campaign against impunity. Taking advantage of the political opening that occurred in Guatemala in the mid-1990s, its members filed requests for exhumations, pressed charges against war criminals, called demonstrations, and erected monuments in memory of the victims. Within months, Adivima had attracted 800 members.

Pedrina Burrero Lopez remembers it as being deeply cathartic.

"Through the work of this organization, people have defeated their fear. We would go to the communities to talk about what happened. People responded by talking more openly about what had happened. They felt that they were not alone. Now they are not only talking about the past, but filing complaints about new threats as well."