María Aguilar Velasquez

María de los Ángeles Aguilar is Maya-K’iche’ from Guatemala. She holds a graduate degree in History from Tulane University. Her research centers on state-sponsored violence, security forces and police criminalization in Guatemala during the second half of the 20^th century. Her dissertation examined the relationship between the Guatemalan National Police and the citizens it was expected to serve and protect, to learn how that day-to-day element of community protection led the police to create its own criminal subject and its own notion of the internal enemy beyond the political subversive. Her work also provides an ethnographic overview of how the social, economic, and cultural condition of the country affected police ranks. Dr. Aguilar received her bachelor’s degree in History and Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. In Guatemala she has worked in projects centered on historical memory, collecting testimony from indigenous communities and genocide survivors.  Dr. Aguilar also has a weekly column in Guatemala’s newspaper elPeriodico, where she writes about the country’s current social and political issues and denounces repressive policies that affect the Maya population.