Julio Gutiérrez is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is originally from El Salvador. His research interest focuses on the political ecology of financialization, particularly the relationship between speculative urbanism and resource grabbing in Central America. His dissertation project explores the process of gentrification in Cordillera del Bálsamo, a coastal sierra located in central El Salvador. This work examines the territorial dynamics surrounding the transformation of farmland into high-end real estate. Through a look at the histories of rural communities in the area, the project sheds light on the modes of symbolic and material appropriation of the sierra and the ways rural dwellers respond to growing ecological pressures caused by land cover change and water grabbing.
Gutierrez’s work has received funding from institutions like the National Science Foundation, the Institute for the Study of the Americas, and the Land Deal Politics Initiative. His texts have been published in academic spaces like the Journal of Peasant Studies and Cultural Anthropology: Hot Spots Series as well as non-academic media such as elfaro.net. He also holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
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CASAS
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.