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

The Power of Information

Information has kept the Rio Negro campaign alive, and located new allies in the most unlikely places.

When The Advocacy Project recounted the story in our series of 'On the Record,' we were contacted by Stefan Schmitt, from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Florida, who was one of the first forensic scientists to exhume the remains of those killed in the Rio Negro massacres. Stefan's website documents the work of the forensic team in Guatemala and has several pages on individual exhumations, including Rabinal.

The publicity surrounding Carlo's trip to the United States produced one remarkable, and poignant, postscript. Dominga Sic Ruiz was nine years old when her family was massacred at Rio Negro. She was smuggled out of the danger zone and ended up in the United States where she lived for the next 18 years as Denese Becker.

Denese heard about Carlos Chen's work during his visit to America and contacted Rights Action. In June, she traveled back to Guatemala to where she had lived. Her visit was widely covered in the press and on June 13, 2000 she addressed a crowded press conference in Guatemala City with the following words:

"When I arrived in Rabinal, I was met by a large group of people, including my aunts, uncles, and many cousins. We spent last week getting to know one another and learning about each other's lives since the violence.

I have been asked what I had hoped to accomplish with this visit. I came to Guatemala because I am looking for family; I want to learn about my past; I am seeking peace in my heart; and I'm looking for my heritage for the sake of my children.

During this trip I have found that my family and the rest of the survivors of the Rio Negro community face many serious problems. Many wrongs have been committed against us as a people, and we continue to suffer the consequences of those actions.

What I remember about Rio Negro-a fertile river valley, plenty of food, a normal family life-no longer exists. I have seen the terrible conditions in which my relatives live today and this has motivated me to publicly state the following:

I want to help in the struggle to get fair compensation for the losses suffered during the violence, especially our land.

I want to help my family get out of the extreme poverty in which they live.

I want to help them with their struggle for justice.
But these goals cannot be achieved without financial and legal help. I know that there are institutions that could and should fulfill legal and moral obligations toward my community.

Today, I am publicly imploring the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to take responsibility for their negligence-to fund the projects that my community needs to escape the extreme poverty in which they live. I am asking them to help my people reconstruct their lives-lives that were destroyed by the Chixoy dam project and state violence.

I also believe that justice should be done for those who planned and ordered the killings of my family and for this I support my community in their efforts to prosecute the military high command.

The remains of my father and the other men that were massacred with him on February 13, 1982, still lie in a clandestine grave in Xococ. It is my understanding that this grave has been illegally tampered with on several occasions. It is also my understanding that one such incident led to the 1994 arrest of the ex-civil patrollers from Xococ. These men were later tried and convicted for a different crime-the March 13 massacre of the women and children of Rio Negro.

I want to know why the Ministerio Publico did not move immediately to have the tampered-with grave exhumed. Why has this clandestine grave been left unprotected from those who want to destroy evidence of crimes?

I urge the Ministerio Publico to do everything possible to expedite the exhumation of the clandestine grave located in Xococ in which lie the victims of the February 12, 1982, massacre. Like other survivors, I would like to bury my father with dignity.