Book Talk: Giovanni Batz Presents "The Fourth Invasion"

Please join us in the CSRC Library when Giovanni Batz (Maya K'iche'), assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UC Santa Barbara, presents his book The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala (UC Press, 2024).

Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research, The Fourth Invasion examines an Ixil Maya community’s movement against the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. The arrival of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant (built by the Italian corporation Enel Green Power) to the municipality of Cotzal highlighted the ongoing violence inflicted on Ixils by outsiders and the Guatemalan state. Locals referred to the building of the hydroelectric plant as the “new invasion” or “fourth invasion” for its similarity to preceding invasions: Spanish colonization, the creation of the plantation economy, and the state-led genocide during the Guatemalan armed conflict.

Book will be available for purchase at the event. Profits from sales will go to the ancestral authories of Cotzal.

Organized by the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and cosponsored by the Latin American Institute, the Central American Studies Working Group, and the CSRC.