The University of Arizona Press

April 23, 2026

In Indigenous Genres of the Human: Locating the Intersections of Indigeneity and Latinidad, scholar Gabriela Raquel Ríos considers how Latina/o/x communities engage in the ethical reclamation of indigeneity. Through case studies that include testimonios and other Indigenous storytelling practices, Ríos reveals how cultural logics of colonization continue to shape—and often constrain—understandings of indigeneity across Latin America and in the United States. Addressing different genres of human and what contemporary indigeneity and reclaiming indigeneity looks like across Latin American contexts, chapters in this work examine digital bruja poetry, Aymara women’s Lucha Libre in Bolivia, Raramuri dance in Mexico, and Indigenous Khipu in the Andes. The author weaves her own story of being from southern Texas and traveling to Mexico throughout the book.

Bridging Sylvia Wynter’s theory of “genres of the human” with critical Latinx indigeneity studies, Chicana/o/x studies, decolonial theory, and rhetorical new materialisms, this book challenges readers to rethink what it means to be human, Indigenous, and Chicanx in the wake of colonial violence. Rather than reinforcing binaries defined by settler colonialism, Ríos proposes a framework that centers community knowledge and grounded practices. Her work opens space for dialogue, listening, and healing, emphasizing that reclaiming indigeneity requires attention to the stories, movements, and rhetorical practices that emerge from within communities themselves. Read an excerpt from the book’s Preface below.

This book suggests that to address the problem of how we reclaim our Indigeneity we need to listen to what stories emerge as we read and engage with each other across rhetoric and composition studies, Indigenous studies, Chicanx studies, decolonial critiques of racialized humanism, and knowledge created “on the ground” to better account for the breadth of colonial violence that Sylvia Wynter (2003) calls “the coloniality of being.” Why do I include “academia” in this process? Because we cannot deny that much of our Indigenous history and objects have been stolen and then housed or archived in academic institutions. However, I do not privilege academia as the arbiter of this history and knowledge—in
fact, I have had to unlearn a lot of what I have been taught in academia about Indigeneity and my own relationship to it. Still, there is important work being done in academia and by academics in this area. I am especially excited by folks who are coming back for what was stolen and who are taking education into their own hands, struggling as we all do, with how to do that work in the wake of ongoing colonization, shifting racial dynamics, and contending with racial and power dynamics that we have ignored for far too long. That is, I am doing this work in the wake of MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #PoderPrieto, issues of “ethnic fraud,” and dehumanizing immigration policy, all of which do not necessarily highlight anything new as much as they shed new light and perspective on issues that we sometimes take for granted.

This book takes you on my journey as I listen across and through these very spaces, hoping to better understand the current ethics of Indigenous reclamation for Chicanx folks in particular. As I moved through these spaces, some of my own preconceived beliefs and ideas about Indigeneity were challenged. At times I cried, at times I was angry, at times I felt defensive, at times I felt erased, and probably most importantly, at times I was truly humbled—basically, I moved through all the feels in typical Pisces moon fashion. But I ultimately tried to be accountable to what I was finding—even
when it challenged my own beliefs—and to come to some opening space for reconciliation across internal differences. “Internal” here takes on two layers of meaning in that I am talking about my personal experiences and my own internal processes, but, following testimonio storytelling practice, I am also speaking to and with the “we”—the internal collective that makes up the Chicanx community (primarily academics), who make up my target audience. But I am also speaking to and with the various Indigenous and Native American communities both in the United States and across the border in Latin America (primarily academics); we have all been separated by these ongoing colonial logics, structures, and practices.

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Gabriela Raquel Ríos is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and the English Department at the University of Colorado. As a Chicana rhetorician, her work focuses on rebuilding and reclaiming Indigenous Chicana/o/x rhetorics. Her work has appeared in Rhetoric Review and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, as well as several book collections.

April 20, 2026

Focusing on the Chavez Cave collections in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Collaboration in Practice: Transforming Community-Based Research in the Southwest by Fumiyasu Arakawa, Octavius Seowtewa, and Dylan Retzinger presents a study of the partnership between New Mexico State University and the Zuni Cultural Resource Advisory Team (ZCRAT). Rather than centering on artifact analysis, the authors emphasize the collaborative process itself—visiting the site, curating an exhibition, and co-authoring this volume—as a model for ethical and respectful research. Ultimately, this work charts a path forward for community-based research that centers Indigenous voices and values. It advocates for an archaeology that is not only more inclusive but also more meaningful to the communities whose histories are being studied. A vital resource for scholars, students, and practitioners, this work seeks to engage in ethical, reciprocal, and culturally grounded research in the Southwest and beyond.
 
The book situates this collaboration within the broader historical and political context of archaeology and museology. It critically explores how museums and academic institutions can shift from extractive practices to ones that prioritize Indigenous sovereignty, knowledge systems, and cultural continuity. Through personal narratives, historical context, and methodological insights, the authors highlight the challenges and transformative potential of working collaboratively. They show how true collaboration requires humility, mutual respect, and a commitment to shared authority in both research and representation. Read an excerpt from the book’s Foreword below.

A buzzard feather. A drum beater. A wind instrument. A fortunate rock. “This is considered a good omen to find something like this. You take this as a good blessing for you and your family,” comments Octavius Seowtewa, a Zuni elder and Native scholar. A paintbrush. A needle. Bee pod pigment paint or what the Zuni call na:he’le. Medicinal soap. A reed cigarette.

Thousands of years ago, the ancestors of Seowtewa left stories for their descendants at Chavez Cave, located in the Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks (OMDP) National Monument (Figure 0.1). It is regarded as an ancestral home. “[W]hat we are doing [entering the cave],” says Seowtewa, “is asking permission from them [our ancestors] to be here. Once we do the offering and do the smoke and everything like that . . . now we can have an opportunity to talk about this place.”

The aforementioned artifacts, catalog numbers 1976.14.106, 1976.14.39, 1976.14.19, 1967.11.42, 1976.14.97, 1976.14.88, 1976.14.20, 1974.14.100, 1974.14.43, and others, were taken from Chavez Cave by collectors and obtained by the New Mexico State University Museum (hereafter NMSU Museum) in 1974 and 1976. They were wrapped in protective plastic by museum personnel and stored in boxes on shelves in a basement, along with adjacent collections of Native American artifacts (Figure 0.2).

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This law required federally funded museums and institutions like the NMSU Museum to return ancestral remains and belongings to lineal descendant groups. NAGPRA has since evolved to regulate how archaeologists treat and study cultural items by mandating deferential consultation with culturally affiliated tribal groups.

These significant legal victories were part of a larger Indigenous-led movement, later turned academic, to “decolonize” and challenge how the cultural heritage and stories of Native American people have been
displayed and told by non-Indigenous scholars and institutions without consent or consultation. The actualization of NAGPRA regulations and decolonial theory presented a variety of challenges; institutions had to do an inventory and return sensitive artifacts (in some cases tens of thousands of years old) to lineal descendant groups that had since migrated and/or been relocated by the U.S. government; archaeologists had to rethink the theory and practice of studying Native American culture as a collaborative and culturally sensitive practice; and Indigenous nation and scholars had to learn how to work with non-Indigenous institutions and scholars that were historically instruments of colonialism.

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Fumi Arakawa is an associate professor of anthropology and the associate director of research at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Before joining Indiana University Bloomington, he served as director of the University Museum and professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. In 2022, he published Correlative Archaeology, which introduced a new theoretical framework for interpreting archaeological data from multiple perspectives.

Octavius Seowtewa is the head medicine man for the Newekwe/Galazy medicine society and also a member of the Eagle Down medicine society. He is a supervisor for the Zuni Cultural Resources Advisory Team (ZCRAT). Seowtewa has been involved with numerous museum projects not only in the United States but also in Japan and the Netherlands. He has reviewed an innumerable amount of Zuni cultural remains at museums for more than twenty years.

Dylan Retzinger is an associate professor at New Mexico State University (NMSU). He earned a bachelor of arts in anthropology with a minor in Native American studies from Humboldt State University. He earned an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry and PhD in rhetoric and professional communication with a minor in anthropology from NMSU.

April 15, 2026

Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past brings together a diverse group of scholars and tribal cultural resource professionals to showcase how Indigenous knowledge is transforming archaeological practice. Edited by Chris Loendorf, this volume features twelve case studies that highlight the power of partnership between Native American communities and archaeologists. These collaborations not only enrich our understanding of the past but also affirm Indigenous cultural continuity. From the establishment of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices to tribally led research initiatives, the book illustrates how Native voices are reshaping the field.
 
This timely collection bridges disciplinary divides between archaeology, history, and traditional knowledge, challenging outdated narratives that separate “prehistory” from living Indigenous communities. Contributors demonstrate how ethical, community-based research can lead to more accurate and respectful interpretations of the past. Collaborative Archaeology is essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners committed to scientific understanding and cultural preservation. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

Collaborative archaeology as defined here is a research approach that involves archaeologists working together with Indigenous groups in order to better understand cultural heritage (also see Hill 2019:163; Silliman 2008). In this approach, the importance of traditional knowledge is recognized, and this information is used to foster an improved understanding of both local environments and peoples (Silliman 2008). The twelve chapters in this book provide examples of collaborative archaeology in action, and they are split into two parts. Part I includes this introduction and five additional chapters on a variety of subjects, while Part II focuses on collaborative archaeology research undertaken by the Gila River Indian Community in southern Arizona.

Although this volume is focused on the Southwest, the approaches described here are directly relevant to other regions, and chapter 1, by Jennifer Bess, provides two examples of positive outcomes for collaborative archaeology in the Pacific Northwest. Chapter 2, by Skylar Begay, William Doelle, Shannon Cowell, Stephen E. Nash, and Anastasia Walhovd, describes how Archaeology Southwest, a nonprofit research organization, has shifted toward a focus on collaboration with Tribal communities over the last thirty-five years. Chapter 3, by Karl Hoerig, Anabel Galindo, and Thomas E. Sheridan, summarizes how Tribal staff, community elders, and consultants have worked together to document Hiak (Yaqui) history across the Southwestern US and Northwest Mexico landscape. This and chapter 4, by Aaron M. Wright, have important implications for issues of cultural patrimony across a broad region. In this case, the complicated settlement history of the Piipaash (also spelled Pee Posh) in southern Arizona is described. The final chapter in Part 1 describes the process of collaboration undertaken between museum officials and local Native Americans in renaming an archaeological site that is managed by the City of Phoenix.

Part II begins with a discussion of Tribal heritage management programs by M. Kyle Woodson. Chapter 7 by Teresa Rodrigues and Han-nah Chavez describes the benefits of formally documenting Traditional Cultural Properties, regardless of their eligibility status for the National Register of Historic Places. Chapter 8 by Barnaby V. Lewis, Chris Loendorf, and Glen E. Rice uses Akimel O’Odham knowledge to provide additional insights about the nature of prehistoric vapaki, Classic period (ca. AD 1150–1500) features archaeologists call “platform mounds.” The discussion in chapter 9 was contributed by Linda Morgan, Chris Loendorf, M. Kyle Woodson, and Katrina M. Soke. This chapter describes the analytical process of identifying Protohistoric/Historic period ceramics in the Phoenix Basin, where comparatively little is known about Indigenous cultural remains from this period, in part because they are highly concentrated within the Gila River Indian Community. Chapter 10, by Brian Medchill, Reylynne Williams, Chris Loendorf, and Teresa Rodrigues, shows how the modern perspectives of members of Indigenous communities can be used to better understand prehistoric practices—in this case, sports—that leave little evidence in the archaeological record. Chapter 11 by Chris Loendorf, Robert Ciaccio, and Eloise Pedro outlines a communication design collaboration with members of the O’Odham communities in the American Southwest. The last contribution is by Teresa Rodrigues, Hoski Schaafsma, and Eloise Pedro and it explores the potential health and environment benefits of traditionally cultivated and wild foodstuffs that are available in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Finally, I offer some conclusions.

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Chris Loendorf is the senior project manager for Gila River Indian Community—Cultural Resource Management Program (GRIC-CRMP). He has worked on archaeological projects from the Northern Plains to the Southwest since 1981. He is the author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. He has also published multiple chapters in edited volumes, as well as technical reports. His research expertise includes projectile point design, rock art analysis, mortuary studies, and x-ray florescence analysis. His most recent book is Vapaki: Ancestral O’Odham Platform Mounds of the Sonoran Desert.

April 14, 2026

Chicane Mental Health, Second Edition by Yvette G. Flores offers an intersectional and developmental framework for understanding and addressing the mental health needs of Chicane communities. Drawing on over four decades of clinical and academic experience, Yvette G. Flores addresses the entire lifespan from children and youth to emerging adults, adults, and elders.

This new edition expands on Flores’s influential work by integrating Indigenous healing practices, decolonial theory, and liberatory models of care. It challenges dominant Western paradigms and calls for culturally affirming, community-engaged approaches to mental health. With a focus on issues such as depression, substance use, intimate partner violence, and intergenerational trauma, the book provides practical tools for scholars, clinicians, and students committed to social justice and healing in Chicane and Latine communities. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

Since the publication of Chicana and Chicano Mental Health in 2013, we have experienced a global pandemic that disproportionately affected minoritized communities in the United States and globally. In the United States, the pandemic visibilized the health disparities affecting Latine and Chicane communities (Flores 2023; McCormack 2021; OMH 2025b). Moreover, the pandemic also elucidated the resilience of Latine individuals, families, and communities and the protective factors that emerge from cultural practices and strengths (Flores 2023). The last presidential election and the resulting slew of executive orders have resulted in an immediate erosion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts nationwide in colleges, government offices, libraries, and service delivery systems. Likewise, executive orders targeting immigrants of color have resulted in mass deportations without due process, and an increase in fear among those living in mixed-status families and those threatened with the attack on birthright citizenship (Kuang 2025). The impact of Trump’s new policies will be discussed further in chapter 8, “Mental Health in the Twenty-First Century: Improving Access, Policies, and Service Delivery.”

In the last decade, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) scholars also have argued for the importance of decolonizing psychology and centering the experiences of minoritized populations (see Adames and Chavez-Dueñas 2017; Bryant-Davis and Comas-Díaz 2016). Their writings also began to promote widely the training of psychologists and the practice of mental health, especially among community practitioners. For Chicane and Latine, such decolonizing includes an acknowledgment of our Indigenous and African roots and the inclusion of spirituality and indigeneity in our healing practices. Likewise, it is critical to recognize the potential impact of historical and intergenerational trauma on BIPOC mental health.

Mainstream scholars and practitioners have embraced new theories that center Latine and Chicane experiences and narratives, for example mujerista and liberation psychologies. The importance of recognizing the indigeneity of Chicane also has influenced the practice of psychology, promoting Indigenous ways of healings for detribalized Mexican-origin individuals and others who identify as Chicane, regardless of Latine background (see Escamilla et al. 2023; Institute of Chicana/o/x Psychology, n.d.).

Furthermore, new developments in neuroscience have demonstrated the impact of childhood adversities on the psychological and physical well-being of adults (Fonzo 2018; Perry et al. 1995; Parra et al. 2016; van der Kolk 2005). Likewise, the long-term impact of racism and all forms of oppression on mental health have been documented, including the impact of intergenerational and historical trauma rooted in colonization, racism, and legacies of oppression (Hardy 2013).

The second edition of Chicane Mental Health expands on the earlier publication, foregrounding advances in neuroscience; the impact of the pandemic on the emotional well-being of adults, youth, and children; and the increased integration of Chicane Indigenous spirituality and ways of healing. The book also provides readers with epidemiological information regarding the major mental health challenges facing these groups: depression, anxiety disorders (including post-traumatic stress disorder), substance abuse, and intimate partner violence. Furthermore, utilizing a life-cycle perspective and intersectionality models, the chapters examine the mental health issues affecting children and adolescents, adults, and elderly Chicane. The book also offers suggestions for healing historical traumas and, using case studies, examines the importance of understanding cultural values, socioeconomic status, and the gender and sexual roles and expectations that Chicane negotiate. Likewise, I argue for the importance of considering the legacies of migration, transculturation, multiculturality, and intergenerational and historical trauma.

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Yvette G. Flores is a distinguished emerita professor at University of California, Davis, Department of Chicanx Studies.

April 2, 2026

Within just two generations, communities in the Peruvian Andes experienced conquest by the Indigenous Inka Empire (1450–1532 CE) and the European Spanish (1532–1821 CE), leading to three centuries of colonial subjugation. Reinvention and History Making in Huarochirí: A Local Narrative of Colonialism in the Peruvian Andes by Carla Hernández Garavito is an archaeological and historical rendering of the experience of the people of Huarochirí (Lima, Peru) and their interactions with successive waves of colonialism. This exciting new work moves the field of Andean archaeology into conversations with decolonial and decolonizing methodologies and shows how Indigenous communities captured and made sense of their long history, reframing colonialism as a local experience.
 
Using archaeological and historical datasets and spatial modeling, this book centers on local memory and experience throughout colonized landscapes as the thread that connects the long history of Indigenous engagement with expanding colonial empires and the emergent Peruvian nation. The author builds on Andean epistemological frameworks to argue that in the face of drastic sociopolitical changes, the people of Huarochirí turned to their own history. They created analogies and shared spaces between local and Inka landscapes and materiality and incorporated written representations and ideas of settled lives to validate their claims. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

The investigation of colonialism in archaeology has deep roots, and much has been written about its engagement with world-systems theory and postcolonial approaches (Gosden 2004; Stein 2005) and its more modern engagement with issues of hybridity (Dean and Leibsohn 2003; Silliman 2015), syncretism (Nutini 1976), negotiation (Wernke 2013), and resistance (González-Ruibal 2014; Liebmann and Murphy 2011). Learning about the exciting ways in which anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians engaged with colonialism, however, was a stark contrast to the archaeology I had first learned and in the way in which I had integrated the Spanish invasion of the Americas and my own country in the sixteenth century.

The monumental materiality of the Inka Empire and the detailed descriptions left by the Spanish colonizers that met or heard firsthand of the Inka inspired the early development of the archaeology of Cusco, the Inka capital, and eventually other significant provincial centers throughout the Peruvian Andes. It was through this archaeological work that the empire came to be understood in a more diverse and less paternalistic view, with an emphasis on negotiation with local leaders and detailed analyses of the selective transformations in each different region during the Inka period (Earle 1987; Morris et al. 2011; Murra 1980). This body of research, rich in details and empirical data, still favored an emphasis on investigating the changes brought about by the empire; the history of different Andean communities was tied to what happened when they met the Inka and processes of alliance, incorporation, or coercion.

At the same time, besides some initial explorations—particularly those carried out in Lima by the Seminario de Arqueología de la PUCP (Arrieta Introduction 7 1974; Cárdenas 1970, 1971; Vargas Correa 2016)—the Spanish invasion and colonial era were not a substantial part of archaeological inquiry until the twenty-first century. To that point, as an undergraduate student in the early 2000s, I took a series of classes on Peruvian archaeology (levels 1 to 6, covering six semesters), ending with the Inka Empire. Spanish colonialism remained in the realm of historians. While this has changed, it was only in the past 20 years that the archaeology of the colonial Andes has experienced sustained scholarly focus. This break, however, is not only an imaginary boundary but also a useless one, as these communities’ material culture and written words jointly constitute critical domains of their lives and histories. Moreover, the investigation of colonialism itself was also tied to the Spanish invasion. The Inka period, somewhat hidden under the designation of “empire,” seemed to not fully engage with the same complex issues of identity, resistance, and diversity that were implied in European colonial processes.

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Carla Hernández Garavito is a Peruvian archaeologist and an assistant professor in the anthropology department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research centers on the study of colonialism in the Peruvian Andes. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Latin American Antiquity, the Journal of Social Archaeology, and Ethnohistory. The National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, among others, have funded her research.

March 31, 2026

Border Afterlives: Migrant Deaths, Forensic Investigations, and the Politics of Haunting by Gabriella Soto begins with the undocumented individuals who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—deaths that are both preventable and politically produced. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic, participatory, and community-engaged research, author Gabriella Soto examines the postmortem journeys of these migrants through the fragmented infrastructure of medicolegal death investigation in the U.S. Southwest. She reveals how the state’s deterrence-based border policies not only generate death but also fail to provide adequate care for the dead. Soto argues that these deaths should be understood as structural homicides and that the forensic neglect they face is a form of ongoing violence.
 
Moving between the practical and the philosophical, Soto asks what it means to care for the dead and what society owes to those who die in its name. Through the lens of haunting, she explores how the dead continue to shape the living, not as objects of horror but as moral agents whose presence demands justice. Border Afterlives offers a border-scale comparative account of forensic practices, critiques the limits of “best practices” in under-resourced systems, and calls for a reimagining of forensic humanitarianism grounded in reciprocity and dignity, beyond human rights. This is a book that insists on remembering the dead. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

I don’t know them, but sometimes I feel that, because of the intimacy of my knowledge, we verge on a kind of kinship. Their faces are burned into my memory, along with the photos they carried, their belongings, and their hands. I’ve spent so much time thinking about their hands—fingerprints can sometimes be the link that reunites the unnamed dead with their families.

I’ve struggled to tell these stories. But they are not my stories to tell. The official records and interviews I have reviewed associated with death investigations only insinuate intimate knowledge, which is not at all the same as knowing someone—even as I can peer almost voyeuristically into their most vulnerable and private states of final repose. Here, I can only tell you about their afterlives.

I have been studying undocumented migrant border crossing deaths in the U.S. Southwest for over a decade, immersed in research about official and less official processes that determine how their remains are found (often by happenstance), recovered (often without much effort to search the scene for disarticulated bones or belongings), investigated forensically (sometimes haphazardly, often just going through the motions), buried or cremated or returned home. I’ve learned how long so many wait in limbo in between these stages and how often this period of waiting is the result of bureaucratic apathy, constraint, or inefficiency—many times a combination.

I write this book because I want these deaths to haunt you too. I don’t necessarily need you to know the details of what happened in each case. I refuse to draw your attention to bodies as objects of horror. This dehumanizes the dead, and it is the opposite of justice (Goldsmith 2022; Latham et al. 2023; Sontag 2003). In so many ways, the fact that deaths continue to occur along the border is already evidence of injustice, because these deaths are preventable. Instead, I focus on the journeys of deceased migrants through the infrastructure of medicolegal death investigation across the U.S. Southwest. My focus on their postmortem journeys is partially what I mean with the title of this book, “border afterlives.”

The subject of death investigation in the United States takes on particular relevance for the vulnerable population of undocumented people and their families, but it also sheds light on how the United States treats its dead. The notion that we are all equal in death is false (Crossland 2022). The inadequacies of U.S. death investigation and forensic infrastructure mean that racism and social vulnerability experienced in life accompany far too many beyond the grave (cf. Byrne and Sandoval-Cervantes 2022; Rosenblatt 2024).

Following the postmortem itineraries of undocumented people who die in transit in the borderlands reflects what’s going wrong with the treatment of the dead in the United States beyond the border. It is not a border problem that everything seems to be disjointed and dysfunctional, but it is a border-specific issue that deaths of racialized, criminalized, and vulnerable people are concentrated here. It is a border-specific concern that the cases of these particularly vulnerable individuals require special care: It’s harder to identify a person who may lack direct local ties and whose remains have been long exposed to the elements. It’s impossible to identify someone when there is no effort made to do so, as is often the case here.

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Gabriella Soto is an associate teaching professor and honors faculty fellow at Arizona State University’s Barrett, the Honors College. She is affiliated faculty with the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona. Soto studies death investigation for undocumented people on the U.S.-Mexico border and the contemporary archaeology of militarized borders. She earned her PhD in anthropology from the University of Arizona and MA in twentieth-century conflict archaeology from the University of Bristol.

March 12, 2026

Central American Women in Diaspora, edited by Karina Alma and Ester E. Hernández, centers Central American women’s voices within the growing narrative of the Central American diaspora. It provides a tapestry of testimonios—from grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and sisters—who explore what it means to be Central American women in the United States. An intervention that centers gendered experiences and challenges oppressive structures, this volume celebrates the solidarity, cultural memory, and healing found within transnational ties.
 
Through the practice of testimonio, contributors create intergenerational dialogues between mothers and daughters, engage with Indigenous oral traditions, and reflect on the violent histories of war in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The volume is organized around five themes: political histories, migration, gender and sexuality, navigating institutions, and healing. Within each theme contributors tackle a range of issues, including Central American political histories, healing, grief, Indigenous knowledge, memory, trauma, post-traumatic growth, organizing, creativity, and agency. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

In the globally precarious time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I (Karina Alma) convened a group in the fall of 2021 to discuss a book project focused on diverse women from the Central American diasporas, specifically, to compile an anthology by women for women. Given the labor such a project would require, however, was the timing right? The world was dealing with loss, grief, illness, family, and other responsibilities caused or heightened by the pandemic. Academics’ responsibilities included transitioning to remote teaching, supporting the varied needs of students that arose because of the virus while continuing forth with research. We were cognizant that our Central American communities, comprising naturalized, legal residents and undocumented individuals (including TPS and DACA recipients), were essential workers in service, domestic, agricultural, and manufacturing fields as well as in health-care occupations (Alvarado et al. 2017; Kerwin et al. 2020; Peri and Wiltshire 2020).

We were living a social trauma exacerbated by a presidential administration that targeted Latinxs people and immigrants, especially those from Central America, a situation worsened if Indigenous, transgender or otherwise LGBTQ, unaccompanied, a woman, or a child. As in the 1990s, young men were being targeted and deported to countries in Central America where their persecution by the police state continued regardless of gang affiliations (Osuna 2020; U.S. DOJ 2020; Zilberg Introduction Central American Testimonio and U.S. Diaspora 2011). While young men are historically targeted by U.S. and Central American presidential administrations, families were also being persecuted. Xenophobic punitive acts targeting mixed-status families such as the CARES Act, which denied rebates if at least one person on a joint tax return provided a tax identification number rather than a social security number. Additionally, the administration eliminated protections for asylum on account of gender-based violence, which made it more difficult to obtain protection for women and LGBTQ people (Foxen 2021). Although the courts and the Biden administration reinstated these protections in 2021, asylum claims remained a fraction of total migration flows for the most likely applicants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Zero tolerance policies implemented by the Trump administration caused mestiza/o/e, Afro-Indigenous, and Indigenous children from Central America to be torn from their parents or perish at the U.S./Mexico border (Abrego and Hernández 2021; Cattan 2019; Chiedi 2019; U.S. CBP 2020–21). Added to the social trauma in the United States was the brutally racist treatment of Black people by the police. U.S. cities filled with protestors seeking justice for the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many others.

Some of us hesitated with this project for other, more practical reasons; the experience of the 2017 anthology U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance taught us a few lessons. Coeditors have overly demanding jobs. As Central American scholars and as women of color in the academy most carry extra labor, though faculty from the California State University system can apply for compensation for “cultural taxation” (established through the CBA, collective bargaining agreement). Regardless of how much labor coeditors invest, we learned that contributors may pull out of the project at any moment. We understood that the final manuscript might not turn out exactly as first envisioned. For example, four editors became two midway through the trajectory of this book. Additionally, academic review boards do not value the coediting of book anthologies, which they consider more in line with service, something for especially junior faculty to be concerned about. Regardless, the work needed to get done. We needed to create the book that we wished for: the one that would tell our multiple stories as Central American women so that others could be inspired and see ourselves reflected in one another. We needed to create a platform for our communities to listen to our women’s voices, healing voices. We needed this book to assign to our students, as they saw themselves in our multigenerational testimonios. Perhaps if we yearned for such a book, others did too.

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Karina Alma is an assistant professor in the Chicano/a and Central American Studies Department at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research includes U.S. Central American and Latinx interrelations, labor, race-gender diversities, feminisms, cultural memory and making, creative agency, and social death. She is a published poet and a co-editor of U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance.

Ester E. Hernández is a professor of anthropology at California State University Los Angeles. She is co-editor of the anthology U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance about 1.5- and second-generation Centroamericanas/os and U.S. Central Americans. Her current research is linked to immigrant rights and cultures of memory among children of immigrants. She is involved in community radio and other immigrant advocacy initiatives.

January 20, 2026

In Commod Bods, Kasey Jernigan shares her ongoing collaborative research with Choctaw women and describes the ways that shifting patterns of participation in food and nutrition assistance programs (commodity foods) have shaped foodways; how these foodways are linked to bodies and health, particularly “obesity” and related conditions; and how foodways and bodies are intertwined with settler colonialism and experiences of structural violence, identity making, and heritage in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

The term “commod bod” is used with humor and affection. It also offers a critical way to describe bodies shaped by long-term reliance on U.S. federal commodity food programs. Food is critical to cultural survival and affirmation. For Choctaw people, the intentional demise of traditional foodways and dependence on federal food programs are specific experiences that inform part of what it means to be Choctaw today. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

“Commod bod,” a term used to link large bodies with high-calorie, high-fat food commodities, is used humorously and is an example of in-group teasing about fat bodies. Across social media, there are a variety of “commod bod” cultural examples, including T-shirts and online forums for sharing pictures, stories, and memes about “commod bods.” There is even a comic series: Super Indian, about a superhero who got his power from eating tainted government cheese, and his trusty sidekick Mega Bear, who is notorious for his “commod bod” (Starr 2012). Further, while the “commod bod” originates in relation to government-issued commodity foods, its usage has expanded to describe broader patterns of embodiment shaped by the consumption of calorie-dense, high-fat foods—whether or not they come from official commodity programs. For example, one woman I interviewed was eating a large roast beef sandwich from Arby’s, the sauce running down her hand as we talked about foods, obesity, and identity. She laughed, pointed to the sandwich (even licked off the dripping sauce!) and commented that she was “working on her ‘commod bod.’”

Notably, the term “commod bod” is used playfully and as a signifier for obesity, but it also does another kind of work: “Commod bod”—the term itself and the ways it is used—links present experiences of loss of food sovereignty, fat bodies, poverty, and disenfranchisement with the past by actively calling on specific material culture (i.e., commodity foods and “commod bods”) produced in response to past injustices. It reflects the reality of shifting food sovereignty from self-sufficiency to lack of control over food systems; this links historical trauma with contemporary forms of violence. The use of this term alters inquiries surrounding large bodies away from medical and public health discourses to social and cultural discourses. Moreover, it serves as a marker for Indianness by linking commodities and poor food environments with large bodies. Darla, a woman I interviewed during my exploratory fieldwork, shared this sentiment with me when describing a connectedness between obesity and Indianness: “When I’m around other Indians, the really traditional Indians, and we’re all overweight, I feel like it’s okay to be fat. I feel more Indian.” She went on to describe how she felt a connection with other Natives from across dozens of different tribal nations because they shared a sense of relatedness through embodied colonialism—through the “commod bods” that are physical manifestations of a shared past and current contemporary violences.

The use of the term “commod bod” then, evokes a past in ways that acknowledge collective suffering while at the same time wrestling back a sense of control. “Commod bods” come from a shared Indian experience of land and livelihood disenfranchisement, but they are symbolic of resistance and accepted as part of the collective in particular ways. Through the use of the term, people are interacting with the past while staying rooted in the present (Loulanski 2006). They are creating heritage by attributing meaning and value and even selecting what is to become remembered (Smith 2006).

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Kasey Jernigan is an assistant professor of American studies and anthropology at the University of Virginia, where she also co-directs the Black and Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute. She received her doctorate in medical anthropology and a graduate certificate in Native American Indigenous studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s in public health from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the USDA, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.