The Mesoamerican Theory & Praxis Working Group invite you to a book talk and roundtable discussion by Dr. Giovanni Batz, author of La cuarta invasión: Historias y resistencia del Pueblo Ixil, with Baltazar de la Cruz Rodríguez, Ixil Maya leader and ancestral authority from Cotzal, Guatemala.

Baltazar de la Cruz Rodríguez is an Ixil Maya ancestral authority in Cotzal, Guatemala. He was involved in the resistance movement against the construction of the Palo Viejo Hydroelectric plant in his town of Cotzal between 2008-2012. He is a co-founder of the Ixil University and Tiichajil K'usal (a media collective). He has given presentations on Maya resistance in Guatemala at the University of Texas, Austin, Miami University in Ohio, University of Arizona, and the University of Texas, El Paso.  

Dr. Giovanni Batz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. He is the author of La Cuarta Invasión, published by Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales (AVANCSO). From 2020-2022, he was a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He was also a 2018-2019 Anne Ray Resident Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His research focuses on the relationship between historical indigenous and Maya territorial dispossession and transnational migration from Central America to the US.

Event sponsored by: The Latino and Latin American Studies Research Center, the Mellon Foundation’s Latinx Futures Grant, and the California Center for Native Nations.

For livestream link, please email: mariafc@ucr.edu