Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a Chicana/fronteriza historian and writer who was born and raised on the border. She is of Rarámuri descent and honors her grandmother Canuta Ruacho. She is the Director of the Institute of Oral History and Associate Professor in the Department of History. She is also the lead historian for the first-ever Bracero Museum (funded by the Mellon Foundation) slated to open in Socorro, Texas in 2024. She has spent her life listening to and now documenting the lives of people who live on la frontera. Professor Leyva specializes in border history, public history, and Chicana history. She is co-founder of Museo Urbano, a museum of the streets that highlights fronterizo/a history by taking it where people are – from museums to the
actual streets of El Paso.
A borderlands historian reflects on the work of border artists to understand how their art activates memory in a place where the educational system, media, popular culture, and the political system work vigorously to suppresses memories and history.
