Paper short abstract:

CCDA is a peasent organization with 42 years experience reclaiming Indigenous land. They focus on sustainability, gender equality, and the preservation of Indigenous patrimony

Paper long abstract:

The water resource in the highlands of Guatemala, especially in the Verapaces region, has been the scene of large massacres against Indigenous peoples for the implementation of Hydroelectric Plants.

In the 70's, resistance communities in the banks of Río Negro began facing persecution, dispossession, and criminalization. Río Negro is one of the great rivers that supply the largest Hydroelectric Plant in Guatemala called Chixoy. There were massacres, many disappeared, others forcibly displaced, exiled from their territories where they were born and others who remained in resistance.

With the largest hydroelectric plant in the country 4 kilometers away and despite suffering dispossession and criminalization, more than 500 families from the departments of Quiché, Alta and Baja Verapaz live in conditions of abandonment, without electricity, without development programs for health, housing, education etc.

Despite all the violations against humanity committed in the Río Negro Massacre, many Q'eqch'i' Mayan families are still waiting for compliance with the resolutions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights -IACHR-, which mandates the recognition of the violations of Human Rights, the compensation to the families and the legalization of some 1,500 caballerías of territory in favor of the families by the State of Guatemala.

We are not opposed to the energy transition, but respect for the lives of families, their development, respect for the life cycle of Rivers and Mother Nature.

Leocadio Juracán

Comité Campesino del Altiplano –CCDA-

Guatemala.