- In 2023, there were four recorded killings of environmental defenders in connection to their work; in 2024, this figure shot up to at least 20, according to advocacy group Global Witness.
- An ongoing political crisis, persistent criminalization, and the spread of organized crime have all fed the rise in violence against Indigenous and campesino communities and defenders.
- This is happening despite a change of government, led by President Bernardo Arévalo, whose movement was backed by Indigenous communities.
- Land grabbing, mass arrest warrants and judicial persecution are increasingly common, together with the use of force, say human rights defenders and activists.
Environmental and territorial defenders in Guatemala face a critical moment as violence targeting them increases across the country. In 2024, at least 20 such defenders were killed for their work, up from four in 2023, according to a report by advocacy NGO Global Witness.
The country was second only to Colombia in the number of defenders killed or disappeared, accounting for 13% of the total cases identified worldwide by Global Witness. As a proportion of the country’s population, the number also leaves Guatemala with the highest rate of killings of environmental defenders in the world. The report says that at least 10 of those killed were Indigenous or campesino individuals.
Since 2012, Global Witness has documented 106 killings and disappearances of environmental defenders in Guatemala, half of them Indigenous people and a fifth campesinos, who were engaged in defending their rights to land or opposing the extraction of natural resources.
Mongabay Latam interviewed the report authors, along with activists and defenders, who agreed that the main factors behind the increase in violence are a land distribution system that has historically benefited the elite, the continued violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the spread of organized crime.
The new political landscape
When Bernardo Arévalo took office as president in January 2024, he and his party, Movimiento Semilla, had the broad backing of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples. But this hasn’t translated into a reduction in violence against communities and environmental defenders.
The Global Witness report indicates the current administration hasn’t managed to contain violence against defenders, despite having a more inclusive political agenda.
“It’s a huge paradox that we’re in this situation, when we’ve got a government that’s risen to power thanks in part to the support of Indigenous peoples, which has spoken about the impact of unequal access to land on campesinos, but this hasn’t led to a decrease in violence,” Laura Furones, lead author of the report and senior adviser to Global Witness’s land and environmental defenders campaign, told Mongabay Latam.
However, she acknowledged political factors that may have constrained the administration, such as a conflict with the judiciary that saw the Public Prosecutor’s Office launch investigations into the president for allegedly political reasons, according to reports by Human Rights Watch.
In response to promises of land redistribution and resolution of agrarian conflicts, and the conflict between the executive and judiciary, representatives of Indigenous communities and human rights defenders point to inaction on the part of the Arévalo administration.
Neydi Juracán, member of the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA), a campesino movement of rural farmers and artisans, said environmental and territorial defenders are on the frontlines of these disputes, making them more vulnerable.
“We hadn’t had a social democratic government in 70 years, but we’ve also seen an increase in this violence against defenders. We were the ones who defended this process and now there’s a dispute between the branches of government,” she said at the presentation of the Global Witness report.
For Juracán, being at the forefront of this dispute also means that environmental defenders experience other types of state violence, such as criminalization and judicial persecution, and the extrajudicial evictions of communities from their territories by clandestine groups active during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict from 1960-1996.
“We not only have judicial evictions carried out directly by the state apparatus, but the illegal bodies and clandestine apparatuses used during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war have been reactivated,” Juracán said.
She added that despite the existence of an agrarian agreement with the current government, to date not a single case out of the 1,300 the campesino committee monitors has been resolved. Instead, she said, the violence has only intensified.
“In the past 19 months we’ve had 12 murders, 3,100 active arrest warrants — one of them against me as coordinator of the CCDA — over 15 extrajudicial evictions carried out, 60 communities with active eviction orders, and 25 colleagues imprisoned,” Juracán said.
This pattern of intimidation has become more sophisticated through the use of legal mechanisms and institutions that facilitate bringing lawsuits against communities and defenders, she said.
“The creation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Against Usurpation proposes a modification of the Criminal Code so that defenders, through judicialization, may be accused of aggravated usurpation and receive a harsher judicial sentence,” she said.
Juracán also pointed to the creation of the Property Rights Observatory, which facilitates judicial processes. “It’s basically an initiative by the country’s historical landowning oligarchy to also carry out private investigations that are then used in cases against defenders,” she said.
Brenda Guillén, coordinator of the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Guatemala (UDEFEGUA), agreed that the mechanisms of criminalization have become more complex, mainly due to the justice system, which she said neither investigates nor punishes aggressions against this group of human rights defenders.
“Unfortunately, aggressions escalate to killings, because ultimately there aren’t any state institutions that are investigating or punishing these crimes,” she said.
Guillén added that criminalization has primarily targeted Indigenous communities, such as the Q’eqchi’ and Poqomchi’ peoples, who have faced mass arrest warrants and evictions in various communities.
“Indigenous peoples have experienced criminalization for many years. We accompany an entire community for which an arrest warrant has been issued and what’s interesting is that it’s women who are defending the river where they live and who are much more active as defenders,” she said.
Mongabay Latam contacted the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala regarding its position on the figures in the Global Witness report and to ask whether any arrests have been made in the killings documented in 2024. We received no response by the time this article was originally published.
Organized crime exacerbates violence in Guatemala
The Global Witness report says the rise in organized crime activities in Guatemala has been another risk factor for defenders, noting that in the last 12 years more than half the attacks took place in four departments — Alta Verapaz, Izabal, Jalapa and Huehuetenango — that are hotspots for coca cultivation and the drug trade.
It also draws attention to violence in the coastal province of Escuintla, which, in 2024 alone, recorded the killings of eight defenders. In six of these cases, the alleged perpetrators had links to organized crime, according to the report.
“Escuintla’s proximity to Mexico, and its ports on the Pacific coast, have made it a strategic thoroughfare for the drugs trade — fuelling violence and conflict over resources during the past decade,” the report says.
Rights group UDEFEGUA has reported difficulties advocating for protection of vulnerable communities and individuals in these areas due to the strong presence of organized crime.
Guillén pointed to factors that she said demonstrate the relationship between organized crime and the risks that defenders face in areas like Guatemala’s southern coast.
“You have the oldest monocultures in Guatemala there, which are associated with the oligarchic families, the same people who control the chambers of commerce and who have their sugar, banana and other plantations,” she told Mongabay Latam.
She also said the ports of Quetzal and San José, two of Guatemala’s main Pacific ports and located in Escuintla, are caught up in a turf war between organized crime groups, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which controls most of the Mexican Pacific coast and Guatemala, according to reports by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“When you see the illicit and illegal appropriation of territories and when communities begin to object and evictions are carried out, what you have after these evictions is the murder of various community leaders,” Guillén said.
Urgent measures to stop the killings of defenders
All the sources we interviewed said the escalation of violence that took place in 2024 continued into 2025, with the killings of more land defenders and the intimidation of communities and defenders resisting extractive projects.
There was the case of Marco Zuleta, a forest firefighter and defender of the Sierra de las Minas Reserve, who was threatened and killed in May after reporting irregularities in the extraction of resources from the protected area. Days later, Misael Mata Asencio, who participated in protests against mining activity in Sierra Santa Cruz, a special protection area constantly threatened by mining, and was also killed.
“First, they attacked community leaders, then regional leaders, and now in 2025 they’ve arrested three of our national leaders,” Juracán said. “Unfortunately, it’s a privilege to be arrested and not killed.”
Guillén said that despite the violence and the political crisis in Guatemala, the Arévalo administration must continue to pursue actions that allow Indigenous communities to defend their territories. She cited the cancellation of 10 mining licenses in Sierra Santa Catarina, a nature reserve in Izabal department that at least 54 communities depend on for their water supply.
“We must draw attention to the opportunity this government has to moderately introduce mechanisms, actions and policies that, while only at the executive level, may in some way ensure the security and protection of people who defend territories,” Guillén said.
She also said the administration must fulfill its promise of implementing a public policy of protection for human rights defenders, following a 2014 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
“This policy has yet to be adopted, and I think it’s very necessary when you see the killings and criminalization that people who defend land, territory and the environment are experiencing,” Guillén said.
Mongabay Latam also contacted the Presidential Commission for Peace and Human Rights (COPADEH) and the Ministry of the Interior for comment on the issue, but received no response.
Banner image: Guatemala accounted for 13% of the environmental defenders killed or disappeared across the world in 2024, as documented by Global Witness. Image courtesy of the Guatemalan President’s Office.
This story was first published here in Spanish on Sept. 17, 2025.
In Guatemala, young Kaqchikel Maya protect their sacred forest with open mapping
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