Megan Ybarra
  • home
  • Research
    • Abolition Geographies
    • Green Wars
    • Latinx Geographies
  • Teaching
    • Abolition Geographies
    • Environmental Justice
    • Developing World
    • Race, Nature & Power
    • Race & Anticolonial Geographies
  • Advising
  • CV
  • En Español
My research interests include abolition, environmental justice, and Latinx geographies. I serve on the editorial/advisory boards of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; and The Professional Geographer. I also serve as Chair of the Committee for Annual Honors of the AAG (2023-2024).

Book cover of man in forest holding machete, Green Wars in yellow text


​Green Wars

Green Wars critiques the criminalization of Indigenous land defenders in settler colonial Guatemala and calls for a material decolonization in recognition of Q'eqchi' Maya territoriality. The book is published in English (distribution in the US) by UC Press and Spanish (distribution in Guatemala) by AVANCSO. The book is also available open-access through the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO) at http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/gt/20211007025743/Guerras-verdes.pdf

Winner, 2019 Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Outstanding Publication Award, American Association of Geographers.

Photo of a mural at night reading (Illustration by Wesley Carrasco)



​Abolition Geographies

My research imagines what abolition geographies mean in practice -- a Tacoma without a detention center? a Seattle without a police department? All too often, seeking to end violence ends up relying on hierarchies of oppression, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC), and individualized charismatic leadership. Instead, I think about radical placemaking that is centered on relationships of solidarity rather than individualism, an abolition that means that no person --and no land --  is disposable, and building non-hierarchical relations across communities on the same place.

Picture of El Nopal with words



​Latinx Geographies 

My research working with Q'eqchi' land activists challenged my assumptions about a singular Chicanx / Latinx identity. Attention to place-making in Latinx geographies reveals what is at stake in Latino studies' cultural appropriation of Indigenous language and art for Indigenous nations' material claims to their homelands. 
  • home
  • Research
    • Abolition Geographies
    • Green Wars
    • Latinx Geographies
  • Teaching
    • Abolition Geographies
    • Environmental Justice
    • Developing World
    • Race, Nature & Power
    • Race & Anticolonial Geographies
  • Advising
  • CV
  • En Español