Ismael Pardo

Ismael earned his B.A. in both History and Religious Studies from Oregon State University, where he focused primarily on religious histories of Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean. He earned his M.A. in History at the University of Michigan, where he has continued his studies of Colonial New Spain, Indigenous Histories, and Afro-indigenous Histories.

Ismael is a historian of colonial Mexico. Primarily, he investigates the histories of the diverse peoples and non-human entities that inhabited the region we currently know as the Huasteca. His dissertation explores the roles that Indigenous Americans, Afro-descendants, and Hispanics, as well as cattle and the land itself, played in the early colonial history of the region, specifically its transformation from a mythical land of "food and flowers" into a Spanish slaving ground and eventually a cattle-land.