Alicia Re Cruz

Alicia Re Cruz

Department of Anthropology
University of North Texas
Denton, TX
USA
arecruz@unt.edu

Dr. Re Cruz got her PhD in Anthropology at the University of New York, Albany. She has a Bachelor Degree in Geography and History, specialized in American Ethnology and Anthropology by the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. She is a Professor and Chair of the department of anthropology at the University of North Texas.

Dr. Re Cruz works in the area of migration since 1986 when she started her research with the Maya peasants who become poletariats for the tourist industry in Cancun. Later, she will start her work focused on the Latino inmigrants who cross the Mexico/USA border into Texas. She is the autor of , starting The Two Milpas of Chan Kom (1996) and the video producer of an ethnographic documentary, (2006), which analyzes the political, socio-economic and cukltural effects of Maya migration to Cancun. When she starts her carrer as profesor of Anthropology at the Unviersity of North Texas, Dr. Re Cruz initiates her research focused on the transnational migration, particularly in reference to the Latino inmigrantes in north Texas.

Among the anthropological studies related to transnational migration, Dr. Re Cruz is the author of Migrant Women Crossing Borders (1998), Taquerías, Laundromats and Protestant Churches, the Landmarks of the Hispanic Barrios in Denton (2005), When Immigrants Root and Transnational Communities Grow (2005). On 1999, she started the Immigration Resource Council for Conflict Resolution a program aiming at dealing and solving issues and problems emerging from cultural clashes and misunderstandings. She was the director of this program until 2002.This was one of her first exercises in the area of Applied Anthropology. She has continued her profesional career weaving anthropological theory and praxis. Dr. Re Cruz has participated as a profesor in a Bilingual Education program, teaching public school teachers how to utilize basic anthropological concepts and methods in their classrooms. In addition, she has worked in the legal Anthropology arena, assisting local NGOs in their VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) programs, particularly with cases involving undocumented Latino women, victims of domestic violence.

Dr. Re Cruz’s participation in Estrategias de Participación Social y Prevención de Racismo en las Escuelas aims at promoting the trans-atlatic conversation and understanding of culturak processes involving global migration thorugh the ethnographic prism of the education system. To reach this goal, it is critical to exercise multi-sited ethnography, involving the ethnographic case and the anthropological analysis of the latino migration in north Texas.