Florencia Ruiz Mendoza
American history and its foundational myths will only be completed if we include Indigenous history in our historical and foundational narrative. The Wupatki pueblos of Arizona tell us a fascinating story of humans dwelling in the area, about people who walked across it and reached the Grand Canyon. Places and spaces are axial in human life experience. Places are repositories of memories, individuals, collectives, ancestral, and those from immemorial times. Voices from Wupatki is a compilation of Indigenous narratives and stories on the meaning of Wupatki as an ancient place, individually and collectively. Voices from Wupatki is a container of Hopi, Navajo-Diné, and Zuni peoples ‘sense of place, where the ancestors, the ancient ones, never left; on the contrary, they influence the present and everyday life. It is a journey of decolonizing and Indigenization of our own understanding of the world.
RUIZ-MENDOZA-THESIS-2024.docxFlorencia Ruiz Mendoza is from Mexico City. She has been and advocate against forced disappearance for almost twenty years. She initiated her career documenting state crimes for the Historical Report Qué no Vuelva a Suceder, acknowledged as Patrimony of Memory.
She collaborated for the Historical Memory Project at John Jay College/CUNY, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Latin American Network at the International Sites of Conscience.
Her literary work has been featured in Los Acentos Review and Restless Immigrants Workshop Blog. She is a reader of color for The Masters Review. She holds a BA in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and was a Columbia University Human Rights Advocate in 2009 and an OHMA Summer Fellow in 2010.
As an OHMA alumnus and Oral Historian, she lectures in Mexico on Oral History and Human Rights.