Adela Cedillo

This profile was current as of 2020, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Adela Cedillo studies social and revolutionary movements, counterinsurgency warfare, drug wars, human rights, and female activism in Latin America. 

While at Kellogg, she will research the intersection between Mexico’s Dirty War and the war on drugs in the country’s northwest from 1965 to 1985. Her project will address the interplay among guerillas, drug traffickers, and counterinsurgency agents in the Golden Quadrilateral region. 

Cedillo has published several book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on guerrilla organizations, anti-drug operations, and human rights in Mexico. She is the author of the book El Fuego y El Silencio, Historia de las FLN (2008) and co-editor, with Fernando Herrera Calderón, of Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964-1982 (Routledge, 2012). 

She holds a PhD  in Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and  a BA in history and an MA in Latin American studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.