Álvaro M. Huerta

Dr. Álvaro Huerta is Professor of Ethnic & Women’s Studies and Urban & Regional Planning. During 2021 to 2024, Dr. Huerta was a Religion and Public Life Organizing Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught and mentored graduate students on the intersection between religion and organizing. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, Jardineros: Cultivating Los Angeles’ Green Landscapes with Rugged Brown Hands, Migrant Networks and Technology (The MIT Press). Among other publications, he’s also the author of the award-winning book Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Reframing the Latino Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm (San Diego State University Press, 2013).

Prior to becoming a highly recognized scholar-activist, Dr. Huerta was an accomplished community activist. As an activist, he was a co-leader in organizing Latino immigrant gardeners in the City of Los Angeles, successfully challenging the City against criminalizing gardeners for their labor. He was also a leader in defeating a major power plant project in South Gate, CA., preventing the construction of another source of pollution in Southeast Los Angeles.

Born in Sacramento, California (U.S.), he spent his early years in Tijuana, Baja California (Mexico)—la frontera/the borderland—where he experienced abject poverty in an informal settlement. He spent his formative years in East Los Angeles’ notorious Ramona Gardens public housing project (or Big Hazard projects), where he experienced/witnessed abject poverty, systemic violence and a state of hopelessness. As a first-generation graduate and Ford Foundation Fellow (predoctoral), he earned a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley--one of the first Chicanas/os to do so. He also earned an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA, graduating top of his class. Moreover, he earned a B.A. in History from UCLA, initially majoring in mathematics.