Weaponising the law - Legal tricks used to harass environmentalists

It's been 15 years since the anti-mining activist Patrocinia Mejía had to hide in the forest to avoid being detained by the police, but the shame has never gone away.

- Nina Lakhani

Mejía was among scores of Indigenous environmental and land defenders criminalised for opposing a Canadian mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, an Indigenous municipality in Guatemala's western highlands. The mine had split the community and crippled the social movement.

"Neighbours accused us of being bad wives who neglected our children, of being antidevelopment. Even my mother turned against me. I was sick with stress for months, it was very hard," said Mejía, who keeps a few cows and sheep close to the now deforested mountain. "We were so scared of being captured we didn't hold meetings, and I was too afraid to show my face at protests." The mine, called Marlin, was built in the early 2000s after the end of Guatemala's 36-year civil war as part of a wave of internationally financed extractive projects allowed, critics say, without proper consultation, environmental safeguards or economic benefits for the local communities.

Natural resources on Indigenous lands have been exploited since colonial settlers first attacked Latin America, creating wealth for a few while fuelling violence, displacement and poverty for most. But the Marlin gold and silver mine - which made its owner, the Canadian gold-mining firm Goldcorp, billions of dollars before closing in 2017 - was one of the earliest documented cases of a transnational corporation and its state allies weaponising the legal system against environmentalists.