I’m a researcher, professor, and ethnographer

I'm an activist scholar, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, and professor specializing in music, dance, festival, migration, and performance across Latin America and its diasporas. My research explores how sound, visual culture, and embodied practices reflect —and shape—histories of displacement, resistance, and belonging.

Drawing from extensive fieldwork with Indigenous and migrant communities across southern Mexico and the United States, I approach research as a reciprocal practice grounded in what I call sincere collaborative intention, a commitment to transparency, accountability, and genuine partnership with the communities I work alongside. This is not simply a methodology but an ethos and political stance: scholarship should give back to communities, not simply take from them.

Central to my practice is acompañamiento, accompaniment. Rather than positioning myself as an outside observer, I walk with communities over time, building relationships of trust and mutual care. Listening, for me, is both a method and an ethic: a way of understanding memory, space, and the resilience that Indigenous and migrant communities sustain across borders.

As a curator, I work to ensure that the cultural practices of Latino and Indigenous communities are preserved and represented with accuracy and dignity. My curatorial work centers community members as collaborators and knowledge-holders, not subjects of study.

As a professor and mentor, I guide students in cultural studies, ethnomusicology, and community-engaged research. I teach through embodied practice and collaborative methods, fostering critical inquiry rooted in respect for, and responsibility to, the communities we learn from and alongside.