One person arrested following protest at Los Angeles Times Festival of Books


Richard Hansen is the author of a United States Senate bill that would provide $60 million for security and tourism development across 1.6 million acres of historic sites in Northern Guatemala and Southern Mexico. (Jenna Peterson | Daily Trojan)

The Los Angeles Police Department arrested one person after a protest broke out against archaeologist Richard Hansen in the final hour of the L.A. Times Festival of Books Sunday afternoon at the L.A. Times en Español stage. 

Hansen is the author of United States Senate Bill 3131, which would provide $60 million for security and tourism development across 1.6 million acres of historic sites in Northern Guatemala and Southern Mexico. Hansen was at the festival to discuss L.A. Times en Español Editorial Director Alejandro Maciel’s recent column about the development. 

Protesters began storming the stage — located near Mudd Hall of Philosophy and Exposition Boulevard not long into the talk and began shouting “Los mayas no fueron descubiertos, ya existíamos,” translated to “The Mayans were not discovered, we already existed.” The group revealed a large white banner with red, green and black writing that read “Gringo colonizer fuera del Mirador.”

In a video obtained by the Daily Trojan, a protester yelled at Hansen, “Fucking colonizer, go back to Europe,” while giving him the middle finger. Protesters started ripping up a book that Hansen wrote the introduction for — “People of the Clouds: The Highland Maya of Guatemala” by Charles Bieber — with pages left on the stage well after the event’s end. 

LAPD arrested one of the organizers of the protest — the Daily Trojan could not verify their identity at time of publication — on suspicion of battery, the Department of Public Safety said. In a video of the incident posted to Citizen Sunday afternoon, protesters chanted “Let him go, let him go” after the suspect was arrested. 

In another video obtained by the Daily Trojan, one protester repeatedly punched a stage crew member’s head, who appeared in a later video with a bloody nose.

Once LAPD officers intervened, protesters started yelling at them in opposition of their response. Festival organizers escorted Hansen to a tent while police formed a line in front of the stage. 

A few moments after the violence, a coordinator for the festival took to the stage and encouraged the crowd to act in a peaceful manner. The crowd eventually obliged and discussed their concerns about Hansen’s bill without additional physical violence — instead passing out pamphlets and burning incense. 

“HANDS OFF EL MIRADOR RICHARD HANSEN,” the pamphlet read, which was a condensed version of an open letter against the development. “NO LAND GRABS NO WHITE SAVIORS.”

An anonymous witness interviewed by the Daily Trojan said they were generally pleased with LAPD’s response. 

“People started chanting like ‘You guys are the aggressors,’” one witness said. “They backed off completely and they went to go stand in front of the stage. And I also thought it was pretty cool that they didn’t get immediately kicked out and they were able to practice their protest on campus.”

Veronica Alvarado, organizer of Festival of Books programming, told the L.A. Times that although everyone has the right to protest, the use of violence to do so is “not right or fair.”

The protesters’ pamphlet further detailed that Hansen’s plans include building a privately managed, U.S.-funded park in the village of Carmelita — located near El Mirador, a historic, remote Maya settlement in northern Guatemala that is part of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. 

“Hansen’s bill is an attack on land rights, and disregards local communities who have been caring for the land very successfully for hundreds of years,” the pamphlet read. 

According to the North American Congress on Latin America, Hansen has claimed that El Mirador’s forests face threats such as deforestation, illegal logging and drug trafficking, and that these developments would help to protect the area. 

“We’re trying to give the poor campesinos [peasants] more than they have now,” Hansen said in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine. “There is a model that will work, and is far more lucrative economically, and has far better conservation results than anything in place now. It will need to be done right. If the area is declared a roadless wilderness, then tourists will be obligated to travel to the local communities rather than fly or drive directly to the sites … The economic pie would get spread among the communities.”

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. and former Nevada Rep. Ruben Kihuen visited El Mirador in 2018 and met with former Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales to discuss the development. 

“They have a lot of resources in their country. It is a very rich little country. But it has not really explored too many possibilities,” Gonzalez told Global Conservation at the time. “[El Mirador] is an amazingly beautiful region that has billions of potential tourism dollars. I think we need to find some investment for that region so we can create employment and security. I think they have the resources. They just need to work a little harder with a better method.”

Protesters criticized Hansen for receiving the Orden Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural in 2005 from Oscar Berger — the former president of Guatemala who was involved in social cleansing operations and numerous executions, according to a 2010 Human Rights Watch world report. Hansen also received the highest award from the Guatemalan government — the Gran Cruz of the Order of Quetzal — in 2017 for his work in El Mirador.

In 2008, he earned the recognition of Environmentalist of the Year by the Latin Trade Bravo Business Association, which is endorsed by companies with historically substantial negative environmental impacts — such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil. The archeologist also worked as a primary consultant for Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” (2006), which inaccurately presents the Maya people as “violent savages.” 

Hansen did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication, but told the L.A. Times that he believed the protesters were “profoundly influenced by lies and distortions.”

“We denounce your imperialist and colonial impulse, your grotesque desire to amass wealth at our expense,” the pamphlet read. “You are just another imperialist and colonizing gringo who, like the Criollo-mestizo and Ladino elites of Guatemala, have a long tradition of dispossession, looting, and extractivism.”