About
My name is Ernesto Daniel Martínez and I am a first-generation Xicanx graduate student. I received my undergraduate degree in 2012 from San Francisco State University, double-majoring in Spanish and Latina/o Studies. There I fostered an academic and practical focus which melded my in-class education with community activism, organizing with student groups like el Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlán (MEChA). After graduating, I spent two years as a Teaching Assistant in both the Spanish and Latina/o Studies departments at SF State, and worked for a youth-of-color literacy program across Bay Area schools.
My current research is focused on exploring the relation between infrastructure, ecology and conservation at the turn of the 20th century in Mexico. I analyze both Nahuatl and Spanish texts and cultural objects as well as official state archival documents to interrogate how conservation practices become a site of struggle between developmentalist nation-building entities and local Indigenous people resisting dispossession, and how (resistance to) infrastructure projects are intrinsic to these processes.
