Beth Baker-Cristales is a cultural anthropologist with over thirty years of experience documenting the life conditions of people forced to flee Central America, particularly to the U.S .She taught anthropology and Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles for over 20 years and is currently a visiting instructor in the University of California Washington Program (UCDC). Dr. Baker-Cristales worked with immigrant rights organizations in Los Angeles, including El Rescate, CARECEN, and CHIRLA, and she continues immigrant rights work in the Washington metro area, volunteering with CASA and local immigrant mutual aid groups. She has worked in the legal departments of some of these nonprofit organizations, helping people complete applications for asylum and citizenship, and she has written expert testimony for asylum cases involving people forced to flee for their political work and for domestic or gender-based violence.
Corruption & Impunity
Climate-Related Issues
Gang-Related Violence/Non-State Actors
Gender-Based Violence/Domestic Violence /GBV
Government/State Actor Persecution, LGBTQ
Political Persecution
Risk of Return
In the late 1980s, I worked with Central American orgs to help dozens of people apply for asylum. The numbers of applicants declined after the creation of TPS/DED in 1990. I interviewed applicants from Central American countries, most El Salvador, and helped them craft a narrative for their asylum application. I provided interpretation in asylum hearings for people who were not confident speaking English. After the early 1990s, I concentrated on writing expert testimony for a few cases of asylum applicants fleeing Central America. Most of the cases were women from El Salvador fleeing either political persecution of domestic abuse.
While I have not written testimony for indigenous refugees from Guatemala, I have worked closely with indigenous communities here and have read widely about their experiences and I would be able to write testimony for these cases, too.
June 2019 “Gendering deportation, policy violence and Latino/a family precarity,” Latino Studies 17(2): 207-224. Co-authored with Alejandra Marchevsky.
April 2017 “Defining Central American Studies,” Latino Studies 15(1):86-90. co-authored with Ester Hernandez. This is an introduction to a section I edited that includes commentaries I solicited from 6 leading scholars of Central American Studies.
2017 “When is a Refugee a Refugee?” in Maintaining Refuge: Anthropological Reflections in Uncertain Times. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
2017 Op-Ed: “Immigration Agents Came for Our Student,” Los Angeles Times. Co-authored with Alejandra Marchevsky.
2016 “Impacts of Deportation: Perspectives from Latin America and the United States,” Practicing
Anthropology (38)1:34-5.
2014 “Why has President Obama Deported More Immigrants than Any President in US History?,” The Nation, March 31. Co-authored with Alejandra Marchevsky.
2004 Salvadoran Migration to Los Angeles: Redefining El Hermano Lejano, University Press of Florida.
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