Bio


Dr. Hector M. Callejas is an IDEAL Provostial Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an interdisciplinary and critical scholar of race, Indigeneity, politics, and culture, with a focus on Central America. His research and teaching cover comparative ethnic studies, sociocultural anthropology, and Latin American studies. He is interested in understanding the histories, structures, and discourses of racial inequality in the everyday lives of ordinary people, and the possibilities for resistance, decolonization, and justice. He investigates the interplay between collective identities, social relations, political processes, and cultural practices within particular contexts and scales of governance. He uses ethnography and other qualitative methods to bridge critical theory and empirical evidence. He has two projects in El Salvador. His current project is on the commemoration of Indigenous peoples. His next project is on the securitization of the environment.

Academic Appointments


  • Lecturer, Anthropology

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


Callejas' current project examines the commemoration of Indigenous peoples in El Salvador. During the 2010s, Salvadoran governments established a neoliberal regime of multicultural state recognition of "pueblos Indígenas" within the Salvadoran nation. Indigenous organizations, state institutions, and ordinary citizens organized public ceremonies, parades, and festivals that articulated discourses of Indigenous existence, belonging, and resistance within local and national communities and racialized some community members as Indigenous. These commemorative practices challenged the state’s historical disavowal of race and racism through the logic of mestizaje, or racial mixture. They revealed entrenched structures of settler colonialism and White supremacy. The practices also exposed limited political possibilities for Indigenous subject formation to decolonize state and society. This project shows how the cultural politics of Indigeneity and memory remake the state categorization and governance of nation, citizenship, and race. It draws on ethnographic research in the capital city of San Salvador and the neighboring municipalities of Izalco and Nahuizalco in the western highlands. Callejas entered these distinct social worlds through the Red Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas "El Jaguar Sonriente," an influential activist network in the Salvadoran Indigenous movement. He accessed the network through the Consejo de Pueblos Originarios Náhuat Pipil de Nahuizalco, a grassroots Indigenous organization. In addition to developing a book proposal, he is writing related articles on the following topics for scholarly journals: 1) Indigenous heritage tourism, 2) testimonios of Indigenous genocide, 3) international Indigenism, 4) collaborative research with Indigenous communities, and 5) sacred site protection.

His next project will examine the securitization of the environment in El Salvador. In recent years, the Bukele government has responded to endemic gang violence throughout the national territory with the suspension of due process rights and the mass imprisonment of alleged gang members. This ongoing régimen de excepción, or state of exception, has received popular support on public safety and criticism for authoritarianism. Employing ethnographic methods, Callejas will explore the roles of race and Indigeneity in the production of safe space under this new governmental regime, and the effects of this process on how ordinary people perceive and interact with their environments. The project will focus on Indigenous peoples, citizens, diaspora, and tourists.

2023-24 Courses