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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. Through a historical account of cyclical waves of invasions and resistance in Cotzal during the four invasions, Giovanni Batz argues that extractivist industries are a continuation of a colonial logic of extraction based on the displacement and destruction of Indigenous Peoples' territories and values that has existed since the arrival of the Spanish in 1524. The current movements in Cotzal, rooted in a long history of resistance, counter dominant narratives of Indigenous Peoples that often portray them as “conquered.”
Open Access
The Fourth Invasion Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala
About the Book
Reviews
"This brilliant book shows how colonial logics of extraction reach into the present, while also illuminating how Indigenous world-making ideas of time, space, and history shape contemporary resistance to megaprojects. Its deep and careful collaboration with Mayan communities in Guatemala is a model for scholars and activists alike."—Elizabeth Oglesby, coeditor of The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics"This extraordinary, detailed account of Maya-Ixil framings of five hundred years of struggle against colonial and postcolonial projects of dispossession is quite unlike most of what is written about Guatemala in anthropology. It is a remarkable achievement for the author and the Ixil communities with which he collaborates."—Carlota McAllister, coeditor of War by Other Means: Aftermath in Post-Genocide Guatemala
"Giovanni Batz’s The Fourth Invasion is a wonderfully insightful and powerful book, which vividly captures the continuity of colonialism and the way the past presses on the future. I strongly recommend it."—Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
"Giovanni Batz has written a powerful, historically rooted analysis of present-day conflicts over land, culture, and citizenship in the rural highlands of Guatemala. An impressive example of engaged scholarship, The Fourth Invasion will shape thinking for years to come about Guatemalan history writ large and about the Indigenous communities who have resisted for centuries the external forces that have sought to eliminate them or force them into a state of permanent subjugation."—Jo-Marie Burt, Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University
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