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Alexandra Tuggle, PhD Candidate and Graduate Teaching Associate in the Department of Anthropology, recently conducted pre-dissertation field research in Sonora, Mexico, with support from a 2020 Tinker Field Research Grant awarded by CLAS.
This funding, provided by the Tinker Foundation in support of its mission to promote the development of an equitable, sustainable, and productive society in Latin America, enabled Alexandra to conduct preliminary ethnographic fieldwork among the Comcáac community in Punta Chueca.
Driven by a desire to break the cycle of exploitative research the Comcáac and other Indigenous communities often experience, Alexandra sought to identify the social, environmental, and economic factors shaping health and well-being among this community in a way that provided immediate benefit to the community and allowed residents to maintain local control over resources.
After two months of participant observation in local public health clinics, interviews with healthcare staff and community leaders, focus groups with Comcáac women, and a community census, Alexa identified both water and food insecurity as key stressors. While Alexa was unable to identify a temporary solution for water insecurity, she did work with community members to organize weekly delivery of fresh food from a nearby foodbank and collaborated with outside donors to address medicine shortages.
Please join us in congratulating Alexandra on her exceptional work and wishing her luck with the remainder of her time in the field preparing her dissertation!
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