Colloquium: “‘Un Secreto a Voces’: The Open Secret of Guatemalan Migration and Grassroots Mobilizations” by Julio Orellana
Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series
Monday, March 2, 2026
1:00-2:00 p.m.
CHASS INTN 3023
This presentation demonstrates how a migrant community made up of indigenous Maya and mixed “race” mestizo/ladino people play an essential social and economic role in the greater Los Angeles region, and in Guatemala. Despite their indispensability, they are exploited for their care work without any government representation or economic democracy, treated as a flexible workforce due to their lack of legal status. Nevertheless, grassroots organizations in Guatemala and abroad have continued to organize in the face of authoritarianism, state violence, and policing across multiple borders. I argue that given the historical context and development of capitalism, Guatemalans as a social class of forcefully displaced migrants engage in politics at the local, national, and transnational level in distinct ways.
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Dr. Julio Orellana is Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Scripps College, and he was a 2023-2025 UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His primary areas of specialization are Latino Studies, Latin American Studies, and Central American Studies. His research examines the political economy of forced international migration from Guatemala and migrant politics in the southern California. His book in progress documents the rise of indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalan migrants and the social conditions that have generated their civil society organizations. |