David Carrasco is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at
Harvard University.
Carrasco descends from several generations of Mexican American teachers. His grandfather
set up the ASARCO Smelter School in El Paso, Texas for Mexicans to learn the trades of
carpentry, plumbing, electrician and painting. His father was heavily involved at the national
level for Mexico’s athletic teams. Carrasco has carried this pride of family into a series of
scholarly and cultural projects aimed at honoring and interpreting the various ways Mexican
and other Latin peoples have struggled with and contributed to the discourse on democracy
in the United States.
Carrasco’s cultural impact on both Latin American and Mesoamerican cultures has been
immense. Working with the belief that Mexican scholars should always have the primary role
in collaborative investigations of Mexican antiquities, Carrasco co-organized a series of
conferences (between 1979-2003) that focuses on an evolving research agenda that included
the themes of sacred space, ritual violence, cosmogony and temple, center and periphery,
ritual burials and the gods.
In 1984, Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma established the Moses Mesoamerican
Archive at the University of Colorado to store and study photographs and scholarly
publications on the origins, history and significance of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan.
Carrasco has designed courses on Latin American and Mesoamerican cultures that take
account of the human and cultural diasporas from Mexico in the US, created lectures on
artists and scholars who negotiate US-Mexican histories, and co-produced the Alambrista
Project, a film designed to raise cultural and political issues of illegal Mexican immigration.
The most culturally significant result of Carrasco’s collaboration with Mexican scholars was
the stunning 1992 exhibition “Aztec: The World of Moctezuma” at the Denver Museum of
Natural History, which was viewed by over 800,000 people.
In 2003, Carrasco was selected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2005 he was awarded the “Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle,” the highest decoration
the Mexican Government gives to non-citizens in recognition of their extraordinary
contributions to understanding Mexican history and culture.