Former graduate student Dr. Verónica Gutiérrez is a featured speaker at Azusa Pacific University’s upcoming TEDx event. The event takes place Tuesday, March 28, from 12:30pm to 4pm. She is scheduled to speak at 1:15pm. She will be discussing Mexico’s rich cultural history using material that she researched while she was a graduate student at UCLA.

Her talk can be live streamed on the day of the event at: apu.edu/live and also viewed at http://www.tedxazusapacificuniversity.com/ within a day or two of the event.

Verónica A. Gutiérrez, MFA, Ph.D, spent a year researching indigenous-Christianity in Cholula, Puebla, México. During that time she resided in a former Franciscan convento (friary), built upon the remains of a pre-hispanic teocalli (“god-house”). Each time it rained, ancient pottery and obsidian shards would be unearthed in the backyard, examples of the richly-layered history of the area, the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the Americas.

Currently, Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor of Latin American History and the Director of Undergraduate Research at Azusa Pacific University. APU’s first Latin American specialist, she is passionate about challenging myths pervading native peoples of the Americas, ensuring her students understand that complex indigenous cultures did not disappear upon European arrival, but rather adapted and continue to thrive. Cholula, which witnessed several conquests and shifts in the dominant spirituality, today fashions itself as La Ciudad Sagrada, the Sacred City.