Chixoy Dam forcefully illustrates this. To quell opposition to the dam and to speed up the clearing of the submergence zone, in March 1980 Guatemalan paramilitary units conducted a series of massacres, slaughtering 378 Maya Achi Indians. The brutality took a bloody, local form, but the decisive players were the invisible, bloodless transnational collaborators with the Guatemalan dictatorship: the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank who buttressed the dam with their loans.
