Guatemala: The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala (Review)
by Sarah Foss
In 2011, Ixil Maya residents in the municipality of San Juan Cotzal, Guatemala, blockaded the road into Finca San Francisco (San Francisco Estate), the site of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant that Enel Green Power constructed on Ixil land. This blockade began after Enel failed to conduct Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) for their project and ignored repeated overtures from the Alcaldía Indígena/B’oq’ol Q’esal Tenam of Cotzal for open dialogue. A year later, the same Alcadía Indígena that represents Cotzal’s 39 communities brought a legal suit against the Ministry of Energy and Mines for failure to conduct FPIC before approving the construction of an electrical station to transport the energy generated by Palo Viejo. Remarkably, in 2015, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled in the Alcalde Indígena’s favor, a landmark decision that reinforced the required practice of consultation and recognized the Alcalde Indígena’s authority. In doing so, the court supported Ixil claims that the Finca San Francisco—and other fincas in the region—are actually Indigenous communal lands that outsiders have illegally usurped. Understood as reparative justice (as construction on Palo Viejo had concluded), plaintiffs began dialogue through the Cabinet of Indigenous Peoples with the municipal authorities.
However, in 2019, these meetings ceased when former president Jimmy Morales Cabrera abruptly disbanded the Cabinet of Indigenous Peoples, effectively undermining the Constitutional Court’s ruling. Meanwhile, Enel’s Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant annually delivers 386.95 GW of electricity. Yet in the nearby municipality of Cotzal, only 37 percent of the population has access to electricity. The project generates $30 million in profit every year, but Enel only pays a measly $294,871 per annum to the municipality, repeatedly refusing the Alcaldía Indígena’s demand of $1 million a year. Enel also regularly rejected the communities’ demand that 20 percent of the energy generated by Palo Viejo be distributed locally, and it has routinely failed to deliver promised development aid and funds for infrastructure projects. Locals view Enel’s actions as part of a long history of invasions on their land. Giovanni Batz frames his book, The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Extractivism, and Maya Resistance in Guatemala, according to this worldview. Based on ethnographic research, oral history, and archival materials, The Fourth Invasion presents the history of Indigenous (in this case, Ixil and K’iche’ Maya) resistance and efforts to navigate outside attacks on their land since Spanish colonization.
When the Guatemalan government introduced a land titling system in the 1870s, archival documentation indicates that Cotzal, Chajul, and Nebaj all successfully obtained title to their ejidos.
Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala view time cyclically and as overlapping, drawing connections between past, present, and future. Batz captures this sense of temporality in Part One, which analyzes the first three invasions from the perspective of Ixil Mayas. Spanish efforts at colonization define the first invasion, and while Europeans did not settle the Ixil Region in a systematic way, Ixils still suffered the effects of colonialism, particularly in relation to the spiritual conquest. Forced resettlement and conversion, violent priests, and tribute collection threatened Ixil communities, who resisted in a variety of ways: taking flight to the mountains, legal action through the colonial judicial system, and uprisings. Despite efforts by colonial officials and settlers to control Ixil peoples and land, Ixil communities retained control over their collective ejidos (lands). When the Guatemalan government introduced a land titling system in the 1870s, archival documentation indicates that Cotzal, Chajul, and Nebaj all successfully obtained title to their ejidos.
Despite obtaining state-issued titles, the second invasion by national and foreign elites challenged the ability of Ixil communities to keep their land. These outsiders participated in land grabs across Guatemala—including in Ixil territory—to promote cash crop cultivation. Batz meticulously traces this process through the archival record, demonstrating the sheer illegality of the process through which landowners like the infamous Brol family and Herrera family—families which remain amongst Guatemala’s elites—obtained state title for properties like the Finca San Francisco that had already been titled as ejido lands. Seizing communal lands paired powerfully with the state’s passage of repressive forced labor laws, demonstrating the Guatemalan state’s collaboration with elite landowners in directly challenging Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods and autonomy. Again, Batz provides local histories of this second invasion, showing readers how Ixils challenged this wave of state violence by organizing into campesino unions and reclaiming land through the short-lived 1952 agrarian reform or the 1936 revolt that caused plantation owners to flee the region.
The very fincas that represent the outcome of the second invasion served to support the third invasion—the state-sponsored genocide during Guatemala’s 36-year armed internal conflict. Used as military garrisons and later as sites for model villages, elite landowners continued their longstanding collaboration with the Guatemalan state, only this time in labeling Indigenous Peoples as the “internal enemy.” Batz illustrates ethical sensitivity in unpacking local histories of the genocide. He utilizes Truth Commission records and contemporary accounts to detail how the third invasion impacted the Ixil Region. Additionally, Batz presents two oral histories that individuals shared with him on their own accord to document the lived experiences of the third invasion, including the various means of resisting state violence, such as participating in unions and cooperatives, joining the guerrilla movement, and forming a clandestine community in resistance.
Part Two focuses on the fourth invasion, or the violence extractive industries enact against the land and its peoples. Reminiscent of Diane Nelson and Carlota McAllister’s 2013 edited volume, War By Other Means, that suggests that the 1996 Peace Accords did not bring peace to Guatemala but instead ushered in the continuation of “war by other means,” Ixil communities frame Enel’s actions as “kidnapping the river,” a clear parallel to the state’s counterinsurgency tactics during the genocide. As Batz explains, the invasion of extractive industries repeatedly violates the Ixil concepts of tiichajil, or the “cultural norms and values of how humans should live their lives in relation to the environment” and txaa, or actions that violate these norms. Taken together, these two concepts require a version of living that enacts a “mutually beneficial relationship with Mother Earth.” Extractive industries like the Palo Viejo plant that pollute water, air, and land, that violently displace human and non-human animals, that enrich the few while harming the majority, violate tiichajil.
After four months, the Alcaldía Indígena ended the blockade when Enel agreed to a dialogue, based on terms that the communities of Cotzal mandated.
Furthermore, companies such as Enel failed to properly obtain FPIC, as mandated by Guatemalan and international law. When Cotzal communities failed to obtain an audience with Enel authorities despite multiple attempts to do so, and once Enel began construction on Palo Viejo without FPIC, the Indigenous authorities called for collective action. They blockaded the entrance to Finca San Francisco and to the Palo Viejo site. In response, the state sent in the military, causing much trauma and fear for genocide survivors. After four months, the Alcaldía Indígena ended the blockade when Enel agreed to a dialogue, based on terms that the communities of Cotzal mandated.
Batz covers these meetings in depth, showing how over the course of nine dialogue meetings, Enel negotiators violated agreed-upon terms and repeated false tropes and erroneous data. They insisted on closed meetings, attempted to turn communities and leaders against one another through resource distribution and payoffs, and even relocated these meetings to the distant capital rather than in Cotzal. When the Indigenous authorities and representatives from the Cotzal communities refused Enel’s new terms, Enel abandoned the dialogue and in 2012, declared that it rejected Indigenous land claims and the authority of the Alcaldía Indígena. The Guatemalan state reinforced Enel’s position by again deploying military troops to Cotzal, echoing the violence of the previous invasions. Meanwhile, construction on the Palo Viejo hydroelectric dam concluded while the Alcadía Indígena of Cotzal began the aforementioned legal case against the Ministry of Energy and Mines. At Batz notes, the legal case remains unresolved, and the Ixil Maya of Cotzal continue their ongoing efforts to reclaim and protect their land from the violence of repeated invasions.
Our access to this history is testament to Giovanni Batz’s committed collaboration with the ancestral authorities and communities of Cotzal. For over a decade, Batz closely worked with Ixil leaders and communities to tell their stories on their terms. Researched and written in collaboration—and published first in Spanish and always as open access—The Fourth Invasion decolonizes academic research in ways that must inspire many of us, as we seek meaningful and ethical engagement with the region and its people.
Sarah Foss is Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University. She is author of On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
