When I first meet Juan de Dios García, he’s laughing. His dark eyes twinkle as his dimples indent and his smile broadens. But there is something else behind his eyes that belie his smile.

Our conversation quickly takes a serious turn. As we sit down across from one another with a translator, he leans in, resting his forearms on his knees and clasping his hands together. He looks me directly in the eye as he speaks, even though he knows I can’t understand his language. He describes the tragic events that brought him here — the situation that drove him to flee his home country of Guatemala with his wife and three children. It’s a hard story that includes everything from village massacres to having his own life threatened.

“In Guatemala, there has been a systematic violation of the rights, principally of indigenous peoples, who struggle to defend nature and natural resources,” Juan says. “This policy of expropriation and the economic interests of governments and investors, both national and international, have always found a way to abuse or take advantage of these resources.”

Juan is the executive director of the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achí (ADIVIMA), a nonprofit human rights and development organization in Guatemala. The organization was founded in 1994 by survivors of the Chixoy massacres in Rabinal, a region long populated by the Maya Achí people. Juan, from Rabinal himself, became the executive director of ADIVIMA in 1999.

Beginning in 1980, funding from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and a few other investment banks helped build the the Chixoy hydroelectric dam, roughly 200 kilometers north of Guatemala City. But the dam required the flooding of Maya Achí communities in the valley and some of the indigenous people refused to leave their homes, their land and their livelihoods; others tried to return after finding poor resettlement conditions. They were met by Guatemalan military and paramilitaries who killed 444 people in the village of Rio Negro alone.

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