From the main square of Guatemala City's historic center, a shopping arcade opens with a tiled floor in a cream and black checkerboard pattern. Entering it feels like a step back in time. Right here inside is a restaurant that, if unfamiliar, might go unnoticed: El Portal. A simple diner hidden behind a wooden door. Once inside, a photograph of Che Guevara places this establishment in history. Here, the Argentine revolutionary recruited people to attack Cuba. Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias also wrote at these tables, a prominent figure who will be mentioned again later.

Guatemala exports more than 500 million dollars worth of forest products every year, according to data from the Guatemalan Forest Information System (Sifgua). A business that has also been growing in recent years in a country where 33% of the territory is covered by forest. Although more than half of these forests are protected, deforestation has slowed but not stopped: the country loses about 200 square kilometers of green forest every year.

Sunday is visiting day in Cobán prison, capital of the Alta Verapaz department of Guatemala. In the center of the city is the penitentiary where political prisoner Bernardo Caal awaits us. He has been incarcerated for two years for defending the Oxec River from a mega hydroelectric project called Oxec SA. Sentenced to seven years and four months in prison, he gives us two hours of his visiting time for the interview. His wife has made an eight-hour bus trip to bring him food. She says she has to cook twice as much so that the officials keep half of what she brings him. After going through a very strict search and entering the director's room with only a camera, notebook and pen, a voice is heard shouting: "Caal Xol, Caal Xol!". "Thanks for coming"he tells us, as they remove his handcuffs.

"Look, the river runs through a pipe! It's crap! It's just stone, look! The water runs through the Florentino tunnels there," shouts indigenous leader Ana Rutilia Ical, tears running down her cheeks as she watches from behind the razor wire that prohibits access to the Cahabón River. A river that is no longer a river. At least in this stretch, where the water runs through cement channels that pierce the mountains of San Pedro Carchá, a municipality in central Guatemala. Here the turquoise colour that characterises the Cahabón does not exist. From a distance, only brown stones can be seen.