The Expert is a cultural anthropologist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He is an UDLAP alum, and obtained his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2016. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In the Spring 2022 semester, He will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School where he will be working on his project “Dead Letter”: Animal Law, Activism, and Mexican Politics," which is part of a new research on the animal rights movement in urban Mexico.
His research interests can be divided into two overlapping sub-fields. The first sub-field includes the anthropology of migration, particularly the analysis of internal and transnational migrations, gender (masculinity and femininity), indigeneity, kinship, and care. The second sub-field includes multi-species ethnography, legal anthropology and the anthropology of social movements, particularly through the study of activism and animal rights in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands.
LGBTQ; Child abuse; sexual abuse and assault; gender-based violence/domestic violence; child soldiers; forced marriage; trafficking; forced conscription; ex-combatant reintegration; criminal deportees; likelihood of destitution or homelessness; land tenure dispute; ethnic, religious, or tribal discrimination or persecution; torture/risk of political persecution; risk from state actors; risk from non-state actors; risk of retaliation; safe internal relocation; sufficiency of protection; healthcare access/health systems capacity; mental illness; HIV/AIDS; war on drugs/narcoviolence; displacement because of development projects
Book
2022 Oaxaca in Motion: An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration. University of Texas Press.
Edited Volume
2022 (Co-Author with Jennifer Byrnes) The Marginalized in Death: A Forensic
Anthropology of Intersectional Identity in the Modern Era. Lexington Books.
Peer Review
2021 (co-author with Rigoberto Reyes Sánchez) “De jaurías, sufrimientos y rescates:
Violencia y relaciones entre perros y humanos en dos ciudades fronterizas
Mexicanas.” Tabula Rasa
2021 “Ser un “migrante verdadero”: Temporalidad y efimeridad al atravesar México,”
in Ética, política y migración, edited by Luis Ruben Díaz Cepeda, Roberto
Sánchez Benítez and Amy Reed-Sandoval. Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad
Juárez.
2020 “En busca del bienestar animal en Ciudad Juárez: Dos manifestaciones del
animalismo.” Cuadernos Fronterizos 16(48):22-25
2019 ““We came for the Cartilla but we stayed for the Tortilla”: Enlisting in the
Military as a Form of Migration for Zapotec Men.” Journal of Latin American
and Caribbean Anthropology 24(3):617-634.
2017 “Uncertain futures: The Unfinished Houses of Undocumented Migrants in Oaxaca, Mexico.” American Anthropologist 119(2):209-222.
2017 “Navigating the City: Internal Migration of Oaxacan Indigenous Women.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43(5):849-865.
2016 “Understanding Latino Masculinities in the Classroom.” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy.
2016 “Semi-Stray Dogs and Graduated Humanness: The Political Encounters of Dogs
and Humans in Mexico,” in Companion Animals in Everyday Life: Situating
Human-Animal Engagement within Cultures, edited by Michal Pregowski.
Palgrave/Macmillan.
Other Publications
2021 “The Politics of Saving Dogs.” Invited contribution to the Bulletin of the General Anthropology Division 28(1).
2021 “Listening from the Other Side.” Invited contribution to Nevada Humanities Heart to Heart (https://www.nevadahumanities.org/heart-to-heart/2021/3/30/listening-fro…).
2020 “Re-territorializing María Sabina: Huautla, Mushrooms, and Politics.” Editor’s Forum: Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology (https://culanth.org/fieldsights/re-territorializing-mar%C3%ADa-sabina-huautla-mushrooms-and-politics).
2020 “Who doesn’t love a taco? “Taste the Nation” & the problem with neoliberal immigrant rights activism”, with Amy Reed-Sandoval. Salon (https://www.salon.com/2020/06/30/taste-the-nation-and-the-problem-with-
neoliberal-immigrant-rights-activism/)
2020 “Care is not essential”. Latin American Perspectives: Blog (Online: http://laperspectives.blogspot.com/2020/04/care-is-not-essential.html)
2020 “Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Organizes First Colloquium on “Decentering the Anthropos”” (co-written with Paola Velasco Santos). Anthropology News, Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology News Section. (Online: https://www.anthropology-
news.org/index.php/2020/04/28/la-universidad-nacional-autonoma-de-mexico-
organiza-el-primer-coloquio-des-centrar-el-anthropos/)
2019 “What Future for Magic Mushroom?” Public Books (Online: https://www.publicbooks.org/what-future-for-magic-mushrooms/)
2017 “Multi-species Ethnography.” Entry for Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence (encyclopedia), edited by Julie Ubanik and Connie Johnston. ABC-CLIO.
2014 “For the Love of Dogs: Approaching Animal-Human Interactions in Mexico.”
Anthropology News, Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Section.