Margarita R. Ochoa, Ph.D.

Margarita R. Ochoa is an award-winning author and historian whose research foregrounds Indigenous voices and examines the intersections of race, gender, class, and the law in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. She is Associate Professor of History and Director for Scholarly and Creative Practice in LMU’s Center for Faculty Development. Since joining LMU in 2011, she has developed a robust Latin American curriculum spanning colonial and modern topics, including Indigenous civilizations, comparative conquest and rule, law and justice, gender and race relations, state formation, revolutions and civil war, organized crime, migration, and population displacement. She is co-editor of Cacicas: The Female Indigenous Leaders of Spanish America, 1492–1825 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021) and City Indians in Spain’s American Empire (Sussex Academic Press, 2012), and author of multiple book chapters and articles on gender, law, and the history of emotions in Latin America.

Her research agenda focuses on recovering Indigenous voices in urban, legal, and cultural histories of Latin America. She is currently completing a monograph, Indigenous Mexico City, 1700–1825, which draws on archival sources in Spanish and Nahuatl to examine how Indigenous residents navigated law, community, and identity in the late colonial capital, as well as the article “Indigenous Women in Colonial Latin America” for Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. Future projects include an article on the Lenten bread pudding capirotada, which explores how colonial foodways functioned as a form of “soft conquest” and continue to serve as sites of cultural memory, and a textbook, Women in Colonial Latin America, which will integrate themes of gender, law, and Indigenous persistence for the classroom.

Dr. Ochoa has a record of consequential service at the department, college, and university levels, as well as in her profession. At LMU, she has served as Associate Chair of the History Department and on committees such as the Academic Planning and Review Committee and the Committee on the Status of Women. She has also provided university-wide leadership by co-chairing the Becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution Task Force and helping shape the Inclusive History and Images Project. Beyond LMU, she contributes to the field as an advisory board member for the Atlantic Crossings book series (University of Alabama Press) and as a former editorial board member for Ethnohistory.