Javier Porras Madero

Javier is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying borders in and between Mexico and Guatemala. His dissertation examines how Mexican and Guatemalan revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements seeped across those nations’ shared border between 1931 and 1984. In those years, against state efforts to consolidate national territory and rein the margins inward, border communities used the line as a strategic site to make demands on, or reject the influence of, the state. His work investigates how, from the margins, border residents—Mayas, peasants, and ladinos—negotiated the meaning of national belonging and state power leading to national and transnational reverberations. In short, his dissertation explores the centrality of the border for both Mexican and Guatemalan nation-state-making in the twentieth century. 

 

By doing this, the dissertation examines the historical transformation of the Mexico-Guatemala border line across the twentieth century and the precursors to border violence in the region today. His current research is a continuation of his MA thesis completed at UCLA in Latin American studies. He holds a BA in Latin American studies and economics from New York University.