Weaponising social media: smears of Indigenous leaders in Guatemala

Global Witness examined how social media platforms — principally X and Facebook, with TikTok also implicated — have been used in Guatemala to run coordinated smear campaigns against anti-corruption activists, environmental defenders, and Indigenous leaders, drawing on interviews with Mayan leaders, including some imprisoned or living in exile.

The investigation found that networks linked to entrenched political and economic elites flooded these platforms with abusive, defamatory, and misleading posts, frequently framing Indigenous or land-rights activism as criminal, extremist, or foreign-influenced. The report describes this as reinforcing longstanding patterns of discrimination against Mayan communities and as a deliberate strategy to isolate defenders, delegitimize their claims, and lay the groundwork for criminal charges — some leaders of the post-2023-election pro-democracy movement have since faced arrest and the prospect of decades in prison.

Global Witness concluded that the intensity of these campaigns increased after Meta and X rolled back fact-checking and safety measures, and that continuing platform deregulation is actively facilitating the criminalization and repression of land and environmental defenders in Guatemala.