Jess Cruz

Jess (she/her) is a PhD Candidate researching how Miami, Florida, has historically functioned as a sanctuary, incubator, and exporter of the Latin American Right throughout the late 20th century (1970s-present). Through the material and cultural expression of the city, she is tracing how exactly Miami has acted as a central node for a vast, multigenerational network of counterrevolution across the hemisphere. In her research, Jess outlines how the everyday acts, discipline, and routines that materialize from decades of transnational anti-communist organizing and the employment of counterinsurgency tactics (state-sponsored/financed and privately funded) have embedded itself across the city and remain a blueprint that the hemispheric Right continues to build upon well into the present. 

 

Jess graduated from Barnard College in 2020 with a double major in History and Spanish + Latin American Cultures. The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library have supported her research. She also works as a fellow within the Graduate Writing Lab and is a Graduate Affiliate through the MacMillan Council of Latin American & Iberian Studies.