GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan farmer and activist Rodrigo Tot has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for work in his homeland. It's an honor that comes after two previous Latin American winners have been murdered in the last year.

The diminutive, soft-spoken evangelical pastor is being recognized for defending his indigenous Q'eqchi community's lands against a mining company and the government.

Goldman praises what it calls Tot's "intrepid leadership of his people and defense of their ancestral land." It notes that has come at great personal cost to Tot: In 2012 one of his sons was shot dead in "an assassination that was passed off as a robbery."

Tot tells The Associated Press he considers the award to be recognition for the community's struggle to defend its land and resources.