Chixoy River

Rio Chixoy in Alta Verapaz (2009)

The Río Chixoy, also called Río Negro in the lower reaches of the Río Salinas in the upper reaches, is a 400 km long river in Guatemala. It rises between the northeastern foothills of the Sierra Madre guatemaltektischen and the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, southwest of the city of Huehuetenango. On his way to the east, the river forms part of the boundary between the Department of Huehuetenango and Quiché and its neighbors Totonicapán. The latter crosses the Río Negro in east-west direction, only to culminate in Baja Verapaz in Chixoy reservoir. From there, it flows as Río Chixoy first briefly in a northerly and westerly direction and then meanders in a northerly direction to the Mexican border, where it divides to get the departments of Alta Verapaz and Quiché. Northwest of the Chixoy dam separates the river and the Cuchumatanes in the west of the Verapaz mountains in the east. The river forms the Rio Salinas is located 100 km border between the Department of El Petén and Mexico. At the border crossing Pipiles of Salinas meets the Río La Pasión, which together form the Río Usumacinta, which then flows to the north in the Gulf of Mexico.

The mean annual discharge of the river Chixoy (or Río Negro and Río Salinas ) is about 555 m³ / s Starting in 1977, the flow between Rabinal and Coban was dammed in Santa Ana and built a large hydroelectric plant. For more than 140 km ² Chixoy Reservoir several communities were forcibly relocated. The protests led between 1980 and 1982 to several massacres of the indigenous population, the government forces accused the local population to support the leftist guerrillas in the Civil War. Particularly affected was the town of Río Negro.

Another power plant with a 32 -acre reservoir is to be built near the Mexican border at Playa Grande in the municipality of Ixcán.