Carlos A. Batista

I am a sociocultural anthropologist. My current research examines Indigenous resistance to infrastructural displacement across Mexico, focusing on the construction of the Inter-Oceanic Railway in the Tehuantepec Isthmus and the touristic Mayan Train in the Yucatan Peninsula. 

I have previously conducted research on the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the politics of infrastructure in Mexico City, and ethnic and racial discrimination in Mexico at large. 

Before coming to Columbia, I did an MSc in Nature and Society at the University of Oxford (2020) and a BA in International Relations at the College of Mexico (2018). I have also worked as a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation's program "100 Resilient Cities" and as a project manager for the College of Mexico's project on "Ethnic and Racial Discrimination," which was funded by Oxfam and the Kellogg Foundation. 

• Review of Mareike Winchell, After Servitude: Elusive Property and the Ethics of Kinship in Bolivia, Oakland: University of California Press, 2022, in Political and Legal Anthropology Review 13 (2023), https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/plar.12527. 
• "Taking over Indigeneity: Sovereignty as Negotiation in Mexico", Theory & Event 28 (2025), forthcoming.