Center for Latin American Studies
Overview
Established in 1968, the University of Chicago Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) brings together faculty and students across the University in interdisciplinary and interdivisional research, teaching, scholarly events, and public engagement related to this vital region of the world.
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies:
- works closely with faculty to support their teaching and research, actively sponsors programs for visiting academics, and maintains a quarterly list of courses related to Latin America and the Caribbean
- administers academic programs, including BA major and minor programs and a graduate certificate for students across MA and PhD programs
- funds study/research and provides teaching opportunities for graduate students across divisions and programs
- promotes interdisciplinary research, education, discussion, and debate around myriad topics relevant to Latin America, through scholarly and public engagement programs.
A full description of CLACS programming is available at the Center’s website.
Graduate Certificate/Option in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
The University of Chicago is a premier institution for research, teaching, and graduate study in the histories, cultures, politics, economies, and languages of Latin America and the Caribbean. Our faculty’s research helps shape the disciplines of history, anthropology, literary criticism, political science, and art history, as well as interdisciplinary fields such as human rights, migration, and Latinx studies. More than 50 faculty members from throughout the graduate divisions and professional schools of the University focus their teaching and/or research on Latin America and the Caribbean, offering a wide range of disciplinary and regional coverage.
The Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at the University of Chicago offers a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS), open to all graduate students within the University. The LACS certificate provides proof of area studies specialization and will be noted on the transcript. Through this certificate we aim to work closely with a diverse range of students, helping them to make the most of our rich curriculum in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, forge close ties with faculty, participate in our many conferences and events, and plan and conduct their research in the region.
Eligibility and Requirements
All students who are enrolled full time in a graduate degree program at the University of Chicago are eligible to apply for the LACS certificate. * Students should submit a certificate application upon completion of the requirements. This certificate provides proof of area studies specialization; all courses may be double counted toward both degree requirements and the LACS certificate. All coursework completed for the certificate must be taken for a quality grade.
A certificate will be granted when an applicant has fulfilled all course requirements in their degree program and the certificate requirements, explained in detail on the Center's website. The requirements include:
• Coursework in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• Demonstrated regional language proficiency
• A major research paper (typically a seminar paper, MA thesis, or doctoral dissertation) on a theme or topic related to Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or their global diaspora
• Presentation of academic work at a LACS workshop or other CLACS-approved event
* Due to the structure of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH), students in that program complete a LACS specialization, instead of a certificate. The requirements for the option are the same; the option is also noted on the transcript.
Advising, Documentation, Evaluation
Interested students are strongly encouraged to meet with the CLACS program adviser as soon as they decide to pursue the certificate so that CLACS can provide guidance on requirements and monitor progress toward the certificate. Each MA certificate applicant will meet with the LACS program adviser to discuss their plan for completion of certificate requirements, cultivate their research interests, and identify relevant faculty contacts and/or advisers. At any point before, during, or after the completion of certificate requirements, master’s and doctoral students are welcome to meet with the CLACS faculty director or the LACS program adviser to discuss their goals and the relevance of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies certificate to their research.
The LACS program adviser will verify that a student has satisfied the requirements for the certificate and will notify the student’s Dean of Students, who will then ask the Registrar to include the certificate on the student’s official transcript.
CLACS will engage in ongoing assessment of certificate aims and outcomes. CLACS will promote the certificate program widely on campus; monitor applications, progress, and completion; and conduct alumni surveys to assess professional outcomes of LACS certificate holders. CLAS will report on certificate outcomes each year in its annual report.
The LACS certificate will allow students who participate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies courses and the CLACS community to receive proof of interdisciplinary area studies specialization on their transcripts – evidence that will enhance the attractiveness of those students in competitive academic and non-academic job markets. The completion requirements allow students to demonstrate engagement in the field without overburdening them with many extra-departmental activities, making the certificate a feasible option for students across graduate divisions and professional schools. Importantly, students will be able to articulate the significance of their regional expertise and the relevant skillsets they have honed in pursuit of the LACS Certificate. Students’ interests span a broad spectrum, but we expect that our individualized training will give them a strong, balanced Latin American and Caribbean Studies foundation that will enhance their work in education, public policy, NGOs, business, research, and the arts.
CLAS Staff
Diana Schwartz Francisco | Assistant Instructional Professor, LACS Program Adviser
email: dischwartz@uchicago.edu
phone: 773.702.0707
Juan Vicente Nuño | Assistant Director
email: jnuno@uchicago.edu
phone: 773.702.8420
Annie Diamond | Student Affairs Administrator
email: anniediamond@uchicago.edu
phone: 773.702.8032
CLAS Website
http://clacs.uchicago.edu/
Affiliated Faculty
https://clacs.uchicago.edu/about/people/affiliated-faculty
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Michael Albertus, Department of Political Science
Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela
Political conditions under which governments implement egalitarian reforms; political regime transitions and stability; politics under dictatorship; clientelism; civil conflictFernando Alvarez, Department of Economics
Argentina
Dynamic general equilibrium models applied to asset pricing, search and insuranceJessica Swanston Baker, Department of Music
Caribbean
Contemporary popular music of and in the Circum-Caribbean; tempo and aesthetics; coloniality, decolonization; race/gender and respectabilityMaria Angélica Bautista, Harris School of Public Policy
Chile
Political, economic, and social consequences of state-led repressionN. Tulio Bermúdez, Department of Linguistics
Latin America, Caribbean
Documentation and description of grammatical, historical, and typological aspects of indigenous languages of Latin America and the Caribbean, esp. Naso (Chibchan, Panama); verbal art (linguistic forms that are interpreted as salient, e.g., ideophones, puns, poetic couplets); multilingual expressions and experiences of Latinx and queer identitiesChristopher Blattman, Harris School of Public Policy
Colombia, Africa
Poverty, political engagement, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countriesDain Borges, Department of History
Brazil, Caribbean
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American culture and ideas; intellectual history; history of the familyNeil Brenner, Department of Sociology
Latin America (collaborations with colleagues in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia)
Cities and urbanization within the social sciences; environmental humanities; design disciplines and environmental studies; theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of urban questions; challenges of reinventing our approach to urbanization in relation to the crises, contradictions, and struggles of our timeLarissa Brewer-García, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Caribbean, Andes
Colonial Latin American studies; cultural productions of the Caribbean and Andes and the African diaspora in the Iberian empire; relationship between literature and law; genealogies of race and racism; humanism and Catholicism in the early modern Atlantic; translation studiesClaudia Brittenham, Department of Art History
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras
Art and identity in ancient Mesoamerica; intercultural interaction; materiality of art; the politics of styleChad Broughton, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Mexico, US
Labor studies and trade and immigration policy; crime, justice and policing, and desistance from crime, with a particular interest in ChicagoLeonardo Bursztyn, Department of Economics
Brazil
Role of social pressure and social norms in shaping important economic decisions; educational, labor market, financial, consumption, and political decisions in developing and developed countriesShannon Dawdy, Department of Anthropology
Cuba, Mexico
How landscapes and material objects mediate human relationships and how shared cultural experiences affect our perceptions of time (past, present, future); death, disaster, sensuality, and histories of colonialism and capitalism; piratesFrederick De Armas, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Spain, Cuba
Literature of the Spanish Golden Age (Cervantes, Calderón, Claramonte, Lope de Vega), from a comparative perspective; has published two novels about Cuba, set before Castro and in 1960Sergio Delgado Moya, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Latin America, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies
Latin American and Latinx literatures and cultures during 20th and 21st centuries, art history of the Americas, consumer culture, media studies, migration, border studies, the literature and art of Greater Mexico, Brazilian literature and art, Chilean contemporary art and literature, experimental poetry, critical theory, conceptual art in Latin America, violence and sensationalism.Oeindrila Dube, Harris School of Public Policy
Latin America, Africa
Political economy of development; links between poverty and conflict; how institutions affect health service delivery and the spread of epidemics; how economic shocks affect violent conflict; whether the gender identity of leaders determines their tendency to engage in warBrodwyn Fischer, Department of History
Brazil, Latin America
Inequality and its persistence; informality, cities, citizenship, law, migration, race, slaveryRené D. Flores, Department of Sociology
US, Latin America
International migration, race and ethnicity, social stratification; social consequences of subnational restrictionist immigration policies in the US; determinants of perceived immigrant illegality; effect of non-ethnic factors on ethnoracial identity in Latin America; adaptation of Latino and Asian immigrants in the US using social media dataChiara Galli, Department of Comparative Human Development
US, Mexico
International migration, refugee studies, childhood, the life-course, law and policyRachel Galvin, Department of English
US, Latin America
Twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry and poetics in English, Spanish, and French; comparative modernisms; hemispheric studies; US Latinx literature; wartime literature; multilingual poetics; the Oulipo; translation theory and practicAngela S. García, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, And Practice
US, Spain
International migration; law and society; race and ethnicity; urban sociology; social policy; consequences of socio-legal inclusion and exclusion for undocumented immigrants across the United States, Mexico, and SpainEdgar Garcia, Department of English
The Americas
Hemispheric literatures and cultures of the Americas, principally of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; indigenous, Latinx, and Chicanx studies; American poetics; environmental criticism; theory of law; intersection of poetry and anthropologySusan Gzesh, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador
Inter-relationship between human rights and migration policy; the domestic application of international human rights norms; Mexico-US relationsJames Heckman, Department of Economics
Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Brazil
Inequality; social mobility; discrimination; skill formation and regulationMary Hicks, Department of History
Brazil, Black Atlantic
Slavery and Emancipation; the Atlantic world; early modern capitalism; colonialism, race, gender, and sexualityDwight N. Hopkins, Divinity School
Cuba
Contemporary models of theology; various forms of liberation theologies (especially black and other third-world manifestations); multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religious thought, especially cultural, political, economic, and interpretiveRyan Cecil Jobson, Department of Anthropology
Caribbean
Energy and extractive resource development; technology and infrastructure; states and sovereignty; histories of racial capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial Americas; relationship between modern energy regimes (e.g., plantation slavery, carbon-based fuels) and the modern political ideal of sovereigntyRashauna Johnson, Department of History
Atlantic World
Atlantic slavery and emancipation; nineteenth-century African diaspora; US South; urban and regional history; race, gender, and sexualityRobert Kendrick, Department of Music
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua
Latin American music; historical anthropology; visual artsAlan L. Kolata, Department of Anthropology
Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala
Agroecological systems; human-environment interactions; the human dimension of global change; agricultural and rural development; archaeology and ethnohistory, particularly in the Andean regionEmilio Kourí, Department of History
Mexico
Modern Mexico; agrarian studies; social and economic history of Latin America; the history of ideas; Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean; US Latino/a historyBenjamin Lessing, Department of Political Science
Mexico, Colombia, Brazil
"Criminal conflict" (organized armed violence involving non-state actors who are not trying to topple the state); prison gangs' effect on state authority; how paramilitary groups use territorial control to influence electoral outcomesAna Maria Lima, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Brazil
Portuguese language; language pedagogy; Brazilian cultureVictor Lima, Department of Economics
Chile
Monetary economics; social effects; unemployment effects of labor regulationNené Lozada, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Peru, Mexico
Spanish language; South American bio-archaeology; human osteologyJohn Lucy, Department of Comparative Human Development
Mesoamerican Culture and Languages
Linguistic anthropology, Psychological anthropology, Mesoamerican culture and language forms; Social science theory and methodAgnes Lugo-Ortiz, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Caribbean, Latin America
Nineteenth-century Latin American literature; nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean cultural history; relationships between cultural production and the formation of modern socio-political identitiesDeirdre Lyons, Department of History
French Caribbean
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean history; French colonialism and empire; Atlantic worlds; history of slavery and emancipation in the Americas; post-abolition citizenship; cultural and social history; history of the family, gender, and sexualityJuan Diego Mariategui, Romance Languages and Literatures
Hispanic Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Cuba
Relationship between literary representation, politics, and space; theoretical connections between ecocriticism, critical disaster studies, and biopolitics; and the links between the Hispanic Caribbean and Latin AmericaLuis Martinez, Harris School of Public Policy
Colombia
Political economy of development, particularly the relationship between taxation, accountability, and governanceMiguel Martínez, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Latin America
Cultural and literary histories of early modern Iberia and colonial Latin America; the ways in which early modern historical processes such as the printing and military revolutions, or the first globalization, contributed to a partial democratization of literary practicesAmy Leia Mclachlan, Global Studies
Colombia
Politics of plant life in the Colombian Amazon; extractive botanical economies (rubber, cocaine, pharmaceuticals); ethnobotany and curing in the Uitoto diaspora; displacement, world-making, trauma, genderAlicia Menendez, Harris School of Public Policy
Argentina, Latin America
Development economics; education and health; labor markets; household behaviorEduardo Montero, Harris School of Public Policy
Central America
How institutions and culture affect development and development policy in Central America and Central Africa; development economics, political economy, economic history, and the intersections between these interrelated topicsSalikoko Mufwene, Department of Linguistics
Caribbean, Atlantic World
Evolutionary linguistics (including the emergence of Creoles, the indigenization of European colonial languages, language vitality); Bantu linguistics; language contact in Africa and the CaribbeanSarah Newman, Department of Anthropology
Mesoamerica
Archaeology and ethnohistory; waste, refuse, and reuse; zooarchaeology; human-animal relationships; landscape archaeology; human-environment interactionsStephan Palmié, Department of Anthropology
Cuba
Ethnography and history of Afro-Caribbean cultures, with an emphasis on Afro-Cuban religious formations; practices of historical representation and knowledge production; systems of slavery and unfree labor; constructions of race and ethnicity; conceptions of embodiment and moral personhood; medical anthropology; anthropology of food and cuisineKaneesha Parsard, Department of English
Caribbean (British West Indies)
Legacies of slavery and emancipation in the Americas, and particularly concerns how gender and sexuality structure race, labor, and capital; Black feminisms, transnational feminisms, and materialist feminisms; Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora, African American, and feminist and queer visual cultures; archives; property and inheritance; and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worldsMercedes Pascual, Department of Ecology and Evolution
Latin America
Theoretical ecology; infectious disease dynamics; ecological networks; spatio-temporal dynamics of infectious diseases in large cities of the developing worldPablo Peña, Department of Economics
Mexico
Empirical economics and human capital theory; use of large data sets to test economic theories of behaviorFrançois G. Richard , Department of Anthropology
Mexico, West Africa, France
Material histories of French colonialism and imperialism; French colonial presence in Mexico and its legacies in the presentJames Robinson, Harris School of Public Policy
Haiti, Colombia, Latin America
Political and economic development; root causes of conflict; relationship between poverty and the institutions of a society; how institutions emerge out of political conflictsDanielle Roper, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Peru, Colombia, Jamaica
Contemporary racial and queer performance, racial formation, feminist activism, and visual culture in the Hemispheric AmericasMario Santana, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Latin America
Twentieth-century Latin American literature, narrative, and film; literary historiography; literary theory (hermeneutics and reception, narratology, systemic and institutional approaches to literature); cultural studiesVictoria Saramago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Brazil, Latin America
Twentieth- and twenty-first century Latin American literature, with a focus on Brazil; ecocriticism and fiction theory; theoretical approaches to the representation of forest and rural areas in Latin American fictionDiana Schwartz Francisco, Center for Latin American Studies/Department of History
Mexico, Latin America
Indigenous politics; the nexus between economic development and environmental change in Latin America; the history and politics of social science; race in the AmericasPaul Sereno, Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
Argentina, Mexico, Chile
Paeleontology; evolution; fossil record in ArgentinaSalomé Aguilera Skvirsky, Department of Cinema and Media Studies
Latin America
Latin American cinema and media; nonfiction cinema and media; Third Cinema; cinema and labor; race and representation; useful cinemaSusan Stokes, Department of Political Science
Latin America
Democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies; distributive politics; comparative political behaviorMegan Sullivan, Department of Art History
Brazil, Argentina
Modern and contemporary Latin American art; abstraction; modernism in a global context; the relationship of aesthetic modernism and social and economic modernization outside of the North Atlantic; artistic and intellectual exchanges between Latin America and other regions over course of the twentieth centuryChristopher Taylor, Department of English
Americas, British West Indies
Hemispheric Americas in the nineteenth century; how the British West Indies were linked to worlds beyond the boundaries of the British EmpireMauricio Tenorio, Department of History
Mexico
Political and cultural histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesKris Trujillo, Department of Comparative Literature
US
Christian mystical tradition; modern citations of the medieval; Latinx literature; queer of color critiqueGerdine Ulysse, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Haiti
French and Haitian Creole language; language variation and language attitudes and factors influencing multilingualism and literacy development in Creolophone communitiesAustin L. Wright, Harris School of Public Policy
Colombia
Political economy of conflict and crime in Afghanistan, Colombia, Indonesia, and IraqAlan Zarychta, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, And Practice
Central and South America
Politics of social services; public health and environmental policy; sources and effects of institutional reforms aiming to improve local service deliverySj Zhang, Department of English
Caribbean
Seventeenth- through nineteenth-century archives of slavery and marronage in the United States and Caribbean; how resistance practices and flight from enslavement by Black and Native individuals in the Caribbean and North America shaped textual and visual production in the colonial period; constructions of gender, race, and forms of bondage before 1850Erik Zyman, Department of Linguistics
Mexico
Theoretical syntactician, research languages have included P'urhepecha and Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec
Appendix
Relevant Courses for the Certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS)
Selected List of Elective LACS Courses
Note: This list of courses is updated regularly, and we will post cross-listed courses each quarter on the CLACS website. In order to count courses that are not included on CLACS’s list toward the certificate, the student must file a petition, which will be reviewed and decided upon by the LACS certificate adviser. As a general rule, approved courses must either focus at least 1/3 of their content on Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or their global diaspora or allow students to complete a substantial research paper on the region.
LACS 30012 The Work of the Past: Colonialism, Slavery, Institutions – KJ Hickerson
LACS 30603 Image and Text in Mesoamerican Codices – Claudia Brittenham
LACS 31205 From the Non-Object to the End of Art: The South American 1960s – Megan Sullivan
LACS 31302 Mexican Modernisms – Megan Sullivan
LACS 31325 Deter, Detain, and Deport: U.S. Immigration Enforcement in Historical Perspective – Ramón Garibaldo Valdéz
LACS 31650 Histories from the Margins – Deirdre Lyons
LACS 31804 Latin American Documentary – Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky
LACS 32810 Traducción y piratería en el mundo colonial – Larissa Brewer-García
LACS 33025 Vidas Infames: Sujetos heterodoxos en el mundo hispánico (1500-1800) – Miguel Martinez
LACS 33517 Music of the Caribbean – Jessica Swanston Baker
LACS 33710 Text/Image/Territory in Nineteenth-Century Latin America – Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
LACS 34255 Postcolumbian: The Ancient Americas in Modern and Contemporary Art – Claudia Brittenham
LACS 34500 Afro-Brazilian Literature – Victoria Saramago Padua
LACS 34550 Blackness in Latin America: Popular Culture, Performance and Visual Art, and Discourses of Mestizaje – Danielle Roper
LACS 35005 The Amazon: Literature, Culture, Environment – Victoria Saramago Padua
LACS 35500 The Anthropology of Development – Alan Kolata
LACS 35501 New Directions in Afro-Latin Performance – Danielle Roper
LACS 35570 Radical Readings: Latin American/Latinx – Sergio Delgado Moya
LACS 35660 US Imperialism and Cultural Practice in Latin America – Danielle Roper
LACS 35731 Gender Before Gender: Constructing Bodies in Ancient American Art – Claudia Brittenham
LACS 35810 Global Abstraction – Megan Sullivan
LACS 36106 Tropical Commodities in Latin America – Emilio Kourí
LACS 36212 Witches, Sinners, and Saints – Larissa Brewer-García
LACS 36220 Brazil: Another American History – Brodwyn Fischer
LACS 36380 Indigenous Politics in Latin America – Diana Schwartz Francisco
LACS 36382 Development and Environment in Latin America – Diana Schwartz Francisco
LACS 36386 Greater Latin America – Diana Schwartz Francisco
LACS 36409 Revolution, Dictatorship, & Violence in Modern Latin America – Brodwyn Fischer
LACS 36411 Literature and History in the Ibero and Ibero-American World – Mauricio Tenorio Trillo
LACS 36500 History of Mexico, 1876 to Present – Emilio Kourí
LACS 36509 Law and Citizenship in Latin America – Brodwyn Fischer
LACS 36510 Cities from Scratch: The History of Urban Latin America – Brodwyn Fischer
LACS 37660 Chilean Art and Literature During the Dictatorship – Sergio Delgado Moya
LACS 38400 Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology: Approaches to the Past – María Cecilia Lozada Cerna
LACS 38802 Problemas críticos y teóricos en el estudio de las culturas ibéricas y latinoamericanas – Miguel Miguel Martinez
LACS 38810 Empire, Slavery & Salvation: Writing Difference in the Colonial Americas – Larissa Brewer-García
LACS 38900 The U.S. - Mexico Borderlands – Diana Schwartz Francisco
LACS 39002 The Age of Emancipation – Mary Hicks
LACS 39106 Gendering Slavery – Mary Hicks
LACS 39117 Theater and Performance in Latin America – Danielle Roper
LACS 39750 Politics and Public Policy in Latin America – Maria Angélica Bautista
LACS 39943 Exhibiting the Art of the Ancient Americas – Claudia Brittenham
LACS 40305 The Inca and Aztec States – Alan Kolata
LACS 41031 The South American 1970s – Megan Sullivan
LACS 41100 The Avant-Gardes: Latin American/Latinx – Sergio Delgado Moya
LACS 41203 Political Regimes and Transitions – Michael Albertus
LACS 42103 Hemispheric Studies – Rachel Galvin
LACS 43000 Imperialismo, Nación y Cultura en el Caribe Hispánico (el siglo XX) – Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
LACS 43300 Ficciones Abolicionistas del Caribe Hispánico – Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
LACS 43900 Queerness and Disablility in Latin American Literature and Culture, 1880-1930 – Carlos Halaburda
LACS 44000 Cultura visual y esclavitud en Iberoamérica – Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
LACS 45000 Latin American Environmental Humanities – Victoria Saramago Padua
LACS 46000 A Nervous Archive: Sensationalism and the Arts in the Americas – Sergio Delgado Moya
LACS 48700 Crime, Conflict and the State – Benjamin Lessing
LACS 48700 Criminal Conflict, Criminal Governance – Benjamin Lessing
LACS 59500 Colloquium: Topics in Mexican History – Emilio Kourí
LACS 59900 Colloquium: Histories of Inequality in Latin America – Brodwyn Fischer
LACS 60000 Colloquium: Latin American Historiography, 19th-21st Century – Mauricio Tenorio Trillo
LACS 62705 Colloquium: Approaches to Atlantic Slavery Studies – Rashauna Johnson
LACS 64400 Latinx and Spanish Language for Social Workers – Verónica Moraga Guerra