Loyola Marymount University is a top-ranked national university by U.S. News and World Report, which places LMU among the top six Jesuit universities in the country and in the top six private universities in California. Founded in 1911, LMU is a Catholic, Jesuit, and Marymount university with more than 7,100 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate and law students. LMU offers 56 undergraduate majors and 56 minor programs, along with 46 master’s degree programs, three doctorate programs and 12 credential/authorization programs. LMU’s intercollegiate athletics teams compete in the West Coast Conference with 14 Division I varsity sports.

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BCLA, Loyola Marymount University, 2025-2026

Daum Mid-Career Faculty Research Award

Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Grupo de Estudios Sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas (GEMELA), 2022.

Best Collaborative Book Award (for Cacicas: The Female Indigenous Leaders of Spanish America, 1492-1825)

Editorial Board, Ethnohistory

Advisory Board, Atlantic Crossings Series, University of Alabama Press

American Historical Association

American Society for Ethnohistory

Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies

Grupo de Estudios Sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas (GEMELA)

'Por faltar a sus obligaciones': Matrimonio, género y autoridad entre la población indígena de la ciudad de México colonial, siglos XVIII y XIX.

Illicit Relations in a Multi-Ethnic City: Emotions, Fidelity, and Economic Obligations in Colonial Mexico

Cacicas feature far and wide in the history of Spanish America, as female governors and tribute collectors and as relatives of ruling caciques—or their destitute widows. They played a crucial role in the establishment and success of Spanish rule, but were also instrumental in colonial natives’ resistance and self-definition.

Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492-1825

Courtship, Marriage and Marriage Breakdown: Approaches from the History of Emotion (Routledge Research in Gender and History)

This volume, the first of its genre in English, brings together the pioneering work of scholars of urban Indians of colonial Latin America. An important, but understudied segment of colonial society, urban Indians composed a majority of the population of Spanish Americas most important cities. The geographic range, chronological scope, and thematic content of urban native studies is addressed by examining such topics as the role of natives in settling frontier regions, interethnic relations, notaries and chroniclers, and the continuation of indigenous governance. In spanning the entirety of the colonial period, the persistence and the creation of urban Indian identities and their contributions to colonial society is brought to the fore. Scholarly contributions include chapters by Susan Schroeder, Whither Tenochtitlan? Chimalpahin and Mexico City, 1593-1631 and David Cahill, "Urban Mosaic: Indigenous Ethnicities in Colonial Cuzco". The volume opens with commentary by John K Chance, pioneer scholar of urban Indians in Latin America and author of the highly praised Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca and is summed up in Concluding Remarks by Kevin Terraciano, author of the widely acclaimed The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Nudzahui History. The diverse themes, time periods, and geographic regions discussed herein make this illustrated book essential reading for all those engaged in  colonial and indigenous studies.

City Indians in Spain's American Empire: Urban Indigenous Society in Colonial Mesoamerica and Andean South America, 1530–1810 (First Nations and the Colonial Encounter)

First Year Seminar:  History of Race and Gender

Colonial Latin America

Modern Latin America

Modern Mexico

Women in Colonial Latin America

Race in Colonial Latin America

Latin American Revolutions in Film

Seminar:  The Mexican Inquisition

Seminar:  Social Justice in Latin America

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.

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