Hector Peralta

Hola, Saludos! My name is Hector Peralta Martinez and I am a PhD candidate in the American Studies program within Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Broadly, I research, write, and teach about U.S. formations of race and ethnicity; the history and culture of the U.S.-Mexico border region; and racial geographies in southern California. As an interdisciplinary scholar of race and ethnicity, I am committed to uplifting grassroots community-led education initiatives aimed at expanding access to, and enhancing the quality of, public schools, historical memory, and civic engagement. 

In my dissertation, “Kumeyaay Valleys, Mexican Opportunities: Race, Territory, and Belonging in East County San Diego,” I demonstrate how ideas related to “Mexicanness” have been imposed on, and productively appropriated by, Indigenous members of the Kumeyaay nation. I define Mexicanness as the alleged racial and cultural practices associated with the categorical classification of “Mexican.” As my primary sources, I use oral histories of and by Kumeyaay tribal members; personal fieldnotes collected from ethnographic participant observation; and, textual analyses of archival records such as newspapers, official U.S. government reports, and personal correspondences found in tribal, federal, and local archival collections. I argue that notions of racial and ethnic Mexican “identity” directly informed how Kumeyaay people reacted to, reformed, and revised four distinct yet interconnected processes. The four processes I delineate are: 1) the creation and transformation of the reservation system in San Diego County during the late 19th- and early-20th century, with special attention given to the region known as East County; 2) the development of San Diego County’s inland communities, between the Great Depression and World War II; 3) the emergence and diversification of casino-based reservation tourism beginning in the 1980s; and, 4) the establishment of two Kumeyaay-led educational organizations in the 1990s and early 2000s: the Viejas Community Services Department (VCSD) and the Kumeyaay Community College (KCC), respectively. 

My journey into “the PhD” officially began during my undergraduate years at Brown University, where I earned a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and a second B.A. in Education Studies.  The Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program as well as the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) were fundamental to this journey. While at Yale, I have graciously received fellowships from the American Studies Department; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM);  the Office for Graduate Student Development & Diversity (OGSDD); and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.