Global conservation efforts are celebrated for saving Guatemala’s Maya Forest. This book reveals that the process of protecting lands has been one of racialized dispossession for the Indigenous peoples who live there. Through careful ethnography and archival research, Megan Ybarra shows how conservation efforts have turned Q’eqchi’ Mayas into immigrants on their own land, and how this is part of a larger national effort to make Indigenous peoples into neoliberal citizens. Even as Q’eqchi’s participate in conservation,Green Warsamplifies their call for material decolonization by recognizing the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land itself.
Megan Ybarrais Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington.
“Bold, raw, and discomforting,Green Warsplainly documents contradictions, expulsions, and abject violence in the Maya Forest. Indigenous communities, for whom peace in Guatemala never came, have been rendered illegal and criminal through acts of conservation and narco-control. To make real change, we will need to pass through the truthful darkness at the heart of Megan Ybarra’s account.”—Paul Robbins, author ofPolitical Ecology: A Critical Introduction
“
Green Warsis a theoretically rich and sophisticated analysis of conservation politics in Guatemala that advances significantly our current understanding of such conflicts. Drawing on indigenous studies, feminist political ecology, and postcolonial and critical race theory, Megan Ybarra illuminates the hemispheric dynamics that created Mayan dispossession, how the Maya are typically misread, and how we might begin to forge a new future. A must-read!”—Laura Pulido, author of
Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Conservation and Settl£5
![Green Wars Conservation and Decolonization in the Maya Forest [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/4/3/7/2_1259044.jpg)