Research
My research agenda centers around questions of political participation in under-resourced, crime-ridden, and over-policed communities and how crime and policing affect political participation and the quality of democracy. This has allowed me to engage theory in various subfields, including race and ethnic politics (REP), Latinx politics, Latino studies, Central American politics, urban politics, comparative politics, criminology, and sociology. Methodologically, I employ a mixed-method research approach, using quantitative and qualitative tools for data collection and analysis. I have extensive training and experience in quantitative and qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, and Logistic regression analysis. The UCSB Chicano Studies Institute Research Grant, the UCSB Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, the UCSB Department of Political Science Graduate Research and Training Grant, and the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship have supported my research.
The research projects I have pursued and plan to expand on are projects grounded on personal and work experience. My current dissertation project stemmed from my community organizing experience and my quest to understand political participation in often excluded marginalized communities, focusing on how crime and policing affect political participation. One of the main principles of community organizing that I strive to put into practice in my research is that no one knows the community better than the residents of said communities. This principle aligns with community-based participatory research (CBPR), which is central to my research. Community-based participatory research is a collaborative research approach that includes community members, community organizations, and academics. Under this approach, residents are not just the subjects in the study but play a vital role in knowledge acquisition and production. I also plan to expand my research to explore how crime and policing affect political participation and democratic consolidation in El Salvador. Los Angeles and El Salvador are intricately connected: Los Angeles is home to the largest Salvadoran diasporic community in the U.S. (Migration Policy Institute) and the birthplace of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Both are international criminal gangs that have made El Salvador and other Central American countries some of the most violent countries in the region ((Kinosian 2017). In its quest to curtain gang violence, the Salvadoran government has resorted to a series of “tough on crime” policies, including the most recent declaration of a “State of Exemption” by President Nayib Bukele (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner). While crime levels have drastically been reduced (Vyas and Perez 2023), over 70,000 Salvadorans are in prison awaiting judicial proceedings, and various human rights organizations have criticized the government’s disregard for constitutional protections (Human Rights Watch 2022 Report). In 2015, I conducted an exploratory study of the state of democracy in El Salvador. I conducted semi-structured interviews with government and civic leaders and was an election observer in El Salvador’s 2015 Legislative and local elections. In 2021, I participated in the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador Participa (Participate) project. The main goal of this project was to train youth organizers on topics around democracy and civic participation. I led workshops around civic participation, inclusion and tolerance, freedom of speech, press and misinformation, gender and politics, and critical thinking and democracy. I plan to continue to explore how crime and policing affect political participation and democratic consolidation in El Salvador in future research projects. My research is transnational, mixed-method, grounded in community, interdisciplinary, engaged, salient, inclusive, and applied. I plan to continue this research at Pomona College and hope to include students and provide them with opportunities to be research assistants, carry out their own research, and start an exchange program with local universities in El Salvador. |