School of Humanities and Sciences
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Hector Miguel Callejas
Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsIndigenous cultural development
In 2014, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved a constitutional reform establishing state recognition of Indigenous peoples as culturally distinctive citizens. This emerging regime of national multiculturalism centered on the state development of Indigenous identity and culture, with a focus on Indigenous peoples' spiritual relationship to land, territory, and natural resources. Hector's current project examines how the Salvadoran state created Indigenous identity and culture through national Indigenous policymaking during the 2010s. He shows how national and local authorities articulated and used "Indigenous culture" as a relatively new and increasingly important discourse for governing mestizo, or mixed race, communities with internal racialized class divisions. He traces diverse forms, practices, and effects of Indigenous cultural development between state institutions, Indigenous organizations, and ordinary people in the capital city of San Salvador and the neighboring municipalities of Izalco and Nahuizalco in the western highlands of the national territory. Hector entered these distinct social worlds through the Red Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas, "El Jaguar Sonriente," an influential network of Indigenous organizations within the Salvadoran Indigenous movement coordinated by the state institution responsible for Indigenous policy, the Ministerio de Cultura. He accessed the network through the Consejo de Pueblos Originarios Náhuat Pipil de Nahuizalco, a grassroots Indigenous organization. Hector conducted ethnographic research between January of 2019 and March of 2020, during the transition period in national politics between the outgoing FMLN and incoming Bukele administrations.
Environmental justice activism
Hector has begun pilot research on environmental justice activism in the Sacramento Valley of California. He entered this emerging field of public policy through his mother's participation as a community leader in the Sacramento Environmental Justice Coalition, a grassroots organization.
