It has been 15 years since the anti-mining activist Patrocinia Mejía was forced to hide in the forest to avoid being detained by police, but the shame has never gone away.
Mejía was among scores of Indigenous environmental and land defenders criminalised for opposing a sprawling Canadian gold and silver mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, a rural Indigenous municipality in the western highlands of Guatemala, which divided the community and crippled the social movement.
