Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs
Full-time Faculty
Contact:
Phillips Hall 801 22nd St. NW, Suite 335
Washington, D.C. 20052
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Latin American History and International Affairs at George Washington University. Her work centers on questions of violence, crime, religion, and gender in twentieth and twentieth-first century Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Central America.
Her first monograph, In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press, 2020), examines the uncharted history of lynching during the formative decades of the post-revolutionary period (1930-1960). Based on an array of previously untapped historical sources, the book argues that rather than signaling state absence, lynchings were triggered by the presence of state authorities that were perceived by communities as incapable or unwilling to provide the type of justice people deemed necessary to punish crimes and social transgressions. Written in dialogue with scholars working on violence, crime, and vigilante justice in Latin America and the United States, the book offers key insights into the cultural, political, and historical reasons behind the ongoing presence of lynching in Mexico and several other Latin American countries. In the Vortex of Violence was the recipient of the 2022 Maria Elena Martinez Book Prize Honorable Mention, The Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) and the 2022 Best Book in Social Sciences Honorable Mention by the Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section.
Professor Kloppe-Santamaría is currently working on two new book projects. The first, "In the Name of Christ: Religious Violence and its Legitimacy in Mexico," seeks to examine why and under what historical conditions has religion contributed to legitimate or deter the use of violence across different periods of time in 20th century Mexico. This project has been supported by a 2020 Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award and a 2021 Marie Curie Fellowship at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS). Her second book project, Violence, Citizens and the State in Mexico and Central America (co-authored with David Carey Jr.) analyzes the multiple expressions of violence that have shaped these nation’s institutions, cultures, and societal relations from a comparative, historical, and transnational perspective. Violence, Citizens and the State in Mexico and Central America is under contract with University of New Mexico Press.
Professor Kloppe-Santamaría is a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Mexico Institute and a collaborator and member of Noria Research’s Mexico & Central America Program.
Her popular writing can be found in Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, Open Democracy, the Global Observatory of the International Peace Institute, and ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America.
- Latin America
- Mexico and Central America
- Violence, crime and (in)security
- Religion, gender and culture
2022 Latin American Studies Association, Mexico Section, Best Article in Social Sciences for article "Deadly Rumors: Lynching, Hearsay, and Hierarchies of Credibility in Mexico," in Journal of Social History (Vol. 55, No.1)
2022 Best Book in Social Sciences Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section for In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice and the State in Post- Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press, 2020)
2022 Maria Elena Martinez Book Prize Honorable Mention, The Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) for In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press, 2020)
2021 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award, Institute for Citizens & Scholars
2021 Sujack Family Award for Excellence in Faculty Research, Loyola University Chicago
2021 Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), Harvard University (declined)
2021 Latin American Studies Association, Mexico Section, Best Article in the Humanities Award, for article “The Lynching of the Impious: Violence, Politics, and Religion in Postrevolutionary Mexico (1930s–1950s)”
2020 The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Research Grant for the project “In the Name of Christ: Religious Violence and its Legitimacy in Mexico (1920-2020)”
2020 NECLAS Best Article Award, New England Council of Latin American Studies, for the article “Lynching and the Politics of State Formation in Post-Revolutionary Puebla.”
- Religious violence and the politics of secularism in Mexico
- Violence, State, and citizens in Mexico and Central America
Ph.D. New School for Social Research, 2016
- Violence, crime, and drugs in Latin America
- Colonial Latin America
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
- "Regionalizando La Larga Guerra Fría En México: Violencia Y Anticomunismo En Puebla, 1930-1979». Estudios De Historia Moderna Y Contemporánea De México, n.º 65 (diciembre):179-210.
- “Martyrs, Fanatics, and Pious Militants: Religious Violence and the Secular State in 1930s Mexico,” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, Special Issue: Forging a Catholic Nation amidst a Secular State, The Americas, Volume 79, Issue 2, April 2022 , pp. 197 - 227
- “Deadly Rumors: Lynching, Hearsay, and Hierarchies of Credibility in Mexico,” Journal of Social History, Special Section: Interpretative Challenges in the Archive: Rumor, Forgery, and Denunciation in Latin America and the Caribbean , Journal of Social History (vol. 55, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 85–104.
- “Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American History, published online August 31, 2021.
- “Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” Working Paper Series, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, No. 444, May 2021.
- “The Lynching of the Impious: Violence, Politics, and Religion in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (1930s-1950s),” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History (Vol. 77, no. 1, 2020), pp. 101-28.
- “Lynching and the Politics of State Formation in Post-Revolutionary Puebla (1930s-1950s),” Journal of Latin American Studies (Vol. 51, no. 3, 2019), pp. 499-521.
- “Determinants of Support for Extralegal Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean,” with José Miguel Cruz, Latin American Research Review (vol. 54, no. 1, 2019), pp. 50-68.
- “Maras y pandillas: límites de su transnacionalidad,” Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior No. 81, Las Fronteras de México. July- October, 2007.
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters:
- “Representation, Refusal and Remembrance: Lynching and Extralegal Violence in Mexico and the United States (1890s-1930s),” in Sonia Hernández and John Morán González (eds), Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on Borderlands History (University of Texas Press, 2021).
- “‘The darkest and most shameful page in the university’s history’: Mobs, Riots, and Student Violence in 1960s-1970s Puebla,” in Jaime M. Pensado and Enrique C. Ochoa (eds.) México Beyond 1968 Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression During the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies (University of Arizona Press, September 2018), pp. 215-235.
- “Lynching, Religion and Politics in Twentieth-Century Puebla,” in Michael Pfeifer (ed.) Global Lynching and Collective Violence. Volume II (University of Illinois Press, Fall 2017).
- “Legitimating Lynching: Public Opinion and Extralegal Violence in Mexico,” in Gema Santamaría and David Carey Jr. (eds.) Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics (University of Oklahoma Press, Spring 2017).
- “Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Criminal Violence in U.S. – Latin American Relations,” in Jorge Dominguez and Rafael Fernández de Castro, Contemporary U.S. Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century?, Routledge, 2016.
- “Lynching, Criminality and Racialized Subjects in Mexico,” in Luz Huertas, Bonnie Lucero, and Gregory J. Swedbert (eds.) Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America (University of Arizona Press, 2016).
- “Authorizing Death: Memory Politics and States of Exception in Contemporary El Salvador” in Yifat Gutman, Amy Sodaro y Adam Brown (eds.), Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society, Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 2010.
Edited Volumes
- Human Security and Chronic Violence in Mexico: New Perspectives and Proposals from Below, edited with Alexandra Abello-Colak (Editorial Porrúa, México, 2019)
- Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics, edited with David Carey Jr. (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017).
- Published in Spanish as: Violencia y crimen en América Latina (Spanish Edition), edited with David Carey Jr. (Libreria CIDE, 2021)