Mercedes Prieto

This profile was current as of 2015, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Mercedes Prieto, an anthropologist whose research addresses the interaction of race, gender, and social control as a historical process in the Andes, will be a fall 2015 visiting fellow. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, History, and Humanities at FLACSO (Facultad Lationamericana de Ciencias Sociales) in Ecuador.

At Kellogg, Prieto will work on a book project that considers the relationship of indigenous women and the state in the development process in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, exploring the deployment of the ILO-sponsored Andean Indigenous Program during the post-war era.The project expands on earlier research appearing in Estado y colonialidad. Mujeres y familias quichuas de la Sierra del Ecuador, 1925-1975 [State and Coloniality: Women and Kichwa Families in the Ecuadorian Highlands, 1925–1975] (FLACSO, 2015).

Prieto has been actively involved with contemporary indigenous women intellectuals. Among the most recent of her many publications is “The State and Indigenous Women in Ecuador, 1925–1975,” in Christopher Krupa and David Nugent, eds., Off-Centered States: Political Formation and Deformation in the Andes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

In addition to her PhD, Prieto holds a master’s in urban studies from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.