A group of 500 people took control of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam in Alta Verapez, a department in the north of Guatemala, on September 7. The protesters were displaced by the construction of the dam in 1982, and are part of 3400 people, mostly indigenous, living in eighteen affected communities that were promised compensation which never materialized. When they attempted to resist in 1982, government forces killed 257 people in the community of Rio Negro.
