Research

My research focuses on social movements, race and indigeneity, labor, and migration between the United States and Mexico. In my current book project, I examine how Indigenous migrants from Oaxaca made an important transnational impact during the late twentieth century that shapes how we think about migrant politics, indigeneity, and racial capitalism today. Broadly, I am interested in Indigenous struggles by migrant workers and peasant communities in the hemisphere which will be the main focus of my second book project.

My work has led me to conversations with groups, organizers, individuals, and scholars, and in search of archives and oral histories throughout the migrant trail traveled by Indigenous migrants. These places include the Mixteca Oaxaqueña, Oaxaca City, Mexico City, Tepozatlán, San Luis Potosí, the San Quintín Valley (Baja California, Mexico), the state of Oregon, Albany (New York), Indiana, Tijuana, San Diego County (CA), Los Angeles (CA), and elsewhere in California, specifically the Central Valley, the Central Coast, and Sonoma County.

Presentations

“The Radical Currents of Indigenous Mexican Los Angeles,” Western History Association (WHA), Los Angeles, CA, October 26-29, 2023.

“Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers and the Opposition to INS and Police Collaboration in the San Joaquin Valley of California,” Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), Rutgers University, New Jersey, May 18-20, 2023.

“What the History of Triqui Sovereignty and Migration from Oaxaca, Mexico Teaches Us About Global Indigeneity” Archives and Knowledge Keepers: Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and the Art of History,” Boston, MA, May 4, 2023.

“Lightning Round: Indigenous and Immigration History in Conversation,” Organization of American Historians (OAH) Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, California, March 30-April 2, 2023.

“The Modern Grassroots Social Movements by Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers,” for the Reimagining Hemispheric Labor and Migration Symposium, Indiana University Bloomington, Institute for Advance Studies, January 26, 2023 (Invited speaker).

“We Fight to Maintain Our Culture: The Grassroots Mobilization of the Indigenous Comité Cívico Popular Mixteco (CCPM) in San Diego, CA,” New England Consortium for Latina/o Studies (NECLS), Brown University, October 21, 2022.

“How Indigenous Mexican Migration Changed the Meaning of Indigeneity,” Guest Lecturer, Introduction to Latinx Studies Class, Department of Foreign Languages, Ball State University, September 16, 2022 (Invited speaker).

“We Preferred an Association that Reflected Our Own Culture”: Indigenous Communal Politics and Self Determination in California’s Central Valley,” 115th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (PCB-AHA), Portland State University, Oregon, August 10-12, 2022.

“Roundtable: Latinx and Indigenous Migrant Farmworkers and the Case for Abolition” Latinx Studies Association Conference (LSA), University of Norte Dame, South Bend, IN, July 11-14, 2022.

“Tracing Oaxacan Radicalism: Indigenous Political Currents on the Pacific Coast,” Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Congress, Virtual Congress, May 5 – 8, 2022.

A Conversation with Nick Estes, Roth/RMS Symposium, Consortium for Studies of Race, Migration, and Sexuality, Dartmouth College, April 29, 2022 (Invited discussant).

“Latinx Studies Faculty Initiative Present: Migration and Labor,” James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, Emory University, April 21, 2022 (Invited panelist).