January 21, 2008: The Advocacy Project (AP) will hold two events this week in support of massacre survivors in Guatemala.

In 1982, several hundred Maya Achi Indians in the highlands of Guatemala were murdered by paramilitaries and government forces after they refused to make way for the Chixoy Dam, a large hydroelectric project. The Rio Negro massacres are notorious even by the standards of Guatemala’s bloody civil war and the dam remains controversial:
there is even some suggestion that it contributed to a recent deadly landslide.

On Thursday, January 22, Heidi McKinnon, an AP Peace Fellow who recently returned from Guatemala, will present a memorial quilt made by relatives of those killed during the Rio Negro massacres at Georgetown University. The relatives are now negotiating with President Alvaro Colom for reparations.

The event is sponsored by the Georgetown Human Rights Forum and the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), and will take place from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at the McGhee Library (ICC 301) at Georgetown University. Click here to RSVP.

On Friday, January 23, Ms McKinnon will present the quilt at an event sponsored by AP and the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi (ADIVIMA), the Guatemalan organization where she volunteered.

The event will be held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the boardroom of the Arca Foundation, located at 1308 19th St. NW, Washington, DC. To RSVP, please contact AP Outreach Coordinator Alison Sluiter.