James Mestaz, Ph.D

James Mestaz is a Postdoctoral Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor of History. He specializes in modern Latin American history, specifically the ethnohistory and environmental history of Mexico. His research traces the tactics of resistance, adaptation, and collaboration of indigenous people of Northwestern Mexico in the face of changing access to their natural resources. His forthcoming article Sweetness and Water Power: El SICAE Sugarcane Cooperative and Mayo Struggles for Water, 1938 to 1956 uses oral histories and archival documents to examine how the Mayo people’s hydrological mobilization in relation to a sugarcane cooperative’s control of the Fuerte River altered the social, political, ecological, and ethnic dynamics within two indigenous villages.