Irma A. Velásquez Nimatuj

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj is a Maya-K’iche’ journalist, activist and Stanford University visiting professor from Guatemala.  Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj is an international spokeswoman for Indigenous communities in Central America and was the first Maya-K’iche’ woman to earn a doctorate in social anthropology in Guatemala.  Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj was also instrumental in making racial discrimination illegal in Guatemala and is featured in 500 Years, a documentary about Indigenous resistance movements, for her role as an activist and expert witness in war crime trials. Dr. Nimatuj writes a weekly newspaper column for elPeriódico de Guatemala and has served on UN Women as a representative for Latin America and the Caribbean. The fall 2019, she joined the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford where she teaches courses about Central and Latin American history and resistance. She is part of a long line of struggle and resistance in her community since the Spanish invasion in 1524.  She is the author of the books:  La pequeña Burguesía Comercial de Guatemala: Desigualdades de clasa, raza y género (2003),  Pueblos indígenas, Estado y lucha por tierra en Guatemala: Estrategias de sobrevivencia y negociación ante la desigualdad globalizada (2008), Lunas y Calendarios, colección poesía guatemalteca (2018) and “La Justicia nunca estuvo de nuestro lado” Peritaje cultural sobre conflicto armado y violencia sexual en el caso Sepur Zarco, Guatemala (2019) and with Aileen Ford, Acceso de las Mujeres Indígenas a la tierra, el territorio y lo recursos naturales en América Latina y El Caribe (2018).  In 2020 she was awarded with LASA/Oxfam America-Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship.