The LAIS Program would like to congratulate Professor Giovanni Batz, of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, on his newly released book, featured in The Current. Over a decade of ethnographic research went into “The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala.”
Professor Batz was engaged for years doing fieldwork in Guatemala, building and maintaining a relationship with the Ixil Maya people of Cotzal in the Western Highlands. Sharing a collective memory of invasions and resistance, the community has been reminded of this history in the past two decades by the construction of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant. Professor Batz wrote his book about present-day extractivist projects such as this one but more importantly, he features the people affected by them. The foreword of “The Fourth Invasion” was written by local ancestral authorities.
Professor Batz utilized a research fellowship and his position as an academic to bring light to these historic and modern injustices. He has uplifted voices such as the ancestral authorities of Cotzal and the independent archaeologist Adriana Linares, also of Mayan descent, who recently spoke at UCSB about these issues. Thank you for your contributions, Professor Batz!