I am an anthropologist and political ecologist currently working as a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.
I specialize in urban political ecology and critical development studies, with a focus on land politics and the urban-rural interface. I am interested in how struggles over land shape different dimensions of human experience, from material needs like food, water, and housing to more abstract ideas about property, sovereignty, and self-determination.
My first book project, tentatively titled Forests of Speculation: Land, Power, and the Birth of Urban Extractivism in El Salvador, explores the relationship between real estate markets and environmental conflict in Nuevo Cuscatlán, a coffee-producing town undergoing rapid urbanization. Moving beyond narratives about local corruption, the book examines the state policies that transformed the coffee forest into a global urban frontier, giving way to environmental dispossession and the rise of real estate populism.
My work has been published in academic journals such as Antipode, City & Society, and The Journal of Peasant Studies. I have also written for Central American newspapers like El Faro, Focos, and MalaYerba.
CONTACT
Email: jgutierrez2084@gmail.com
Photo by Parag Saikia