Jesús Nazario/ Nahua, Alto Balsas (he/they) is a Nahua scholar from Northwest Houston, Texas with ancestral roots in a Nahua town in Guerrero, Mexico. Jesús received a Master’s of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and most recently a Master’s of Arts in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Currently, Jehj is a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow, Office of Graduate Diversity Community and Diversity Fellow, and Graduate Student Fellow for the Berkeley Food Institute. As someone who learned their Indigenous language, Nahuatl, later in life, they are passionate about all forms of Indigenous language revitalization and food/land justice across the Americas.
Jesús is researching the various intersections of food and political Indigenous sovereignty, through a focus on Indigenous maize farming in Mexico. Their methods include ethnography, photography, semi-structured interviews, and archival research.