Gabriel Vergara

B.A. (Cornell University)

I am a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My areas of interest are the history of political thought, the political theory of empire, and Latin America political thought.

More specifically, I am interested in Latin American Marxism. My research examines how Latin American Marxists – such as José Carlos Mariátegui, René Zavaleta Mercado, and Fausto Reinaga – engaged with and represented Indigeneity, and how these representations impacted their respective theorizations of Marxist developmentalism and progress.

I received my undergraduate degree in Government from Cornell University, where I was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a recipient of the Stephen H. Weiss ’57 Memorial Scholarship. My undergraduate honors thesis examined Antonio Gramsci’s political thought to better understand political mobilization and the maintenance of group alliances. To elucidate my analysis, I turned to Fidel Castro as a historical example.