Meet the Team
Annalisa Butticci
Principal Investigator
Annalisa Butticci (Ph.D) is a socio-anthropologist and scholar of religion at Georgetown University. Her work examines how religion and spirituality become fields of power, healing, and transformation across human and more-than-human worlds. More about me.
Barón Antonio Castañares
Research Assistant -Visual Storyteller
Barón is a photojournalist and researcher whose work sits at the intersection of transborder communities and culture, mobility justice, and entheogenic citizen science. Raised along the US-Mexico border, questions of cultural consciousness and environmental justice have shaped his identity and lens from an early age. After years of volunteer work across the globe, he returned home to earn an Associate Degree in Political Science with an emphasis in Alcohol and Other Drug Studies from Southwestern College. In 2025, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to pursue a Bachelor of Science at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. On this project, Baron brings his visual storytelling practice to the field, using photography to document and amplify the human and ecological dimensions of the research in Huautla
Jesús Eugenio García Martínez
Research Assistant - Community and Logistics Coordinator
Jesús Eugenio is a Mazatec educator and cultural practitioner originating from Huautla de Jiménez, Teotitlán, Oaxaca, Mexico. He pursued his Bachelor's degree in Pedagogy at Centro Universitario Tehuacán in Tehuacán, Puebla, where he later earned a Master's degree in Education. He has worked in various educational institutions across multiple municipalities in the Mazatec region and participated in and promoted various cultural activities focused on the preservation of the Mazatec language, culture, and territory. In addition, he works as a research assistant and community liaison, providing logistical coordination for researchers and institutions conducting research in the territory.
Osiris García Cerqueda
Research Consultant - Historian - Sociologist
Osiris García Cerqueda (Ph.D) is a Mazatec historian and a sociologist. He is originally from Barrio de la Cruz, Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, where his critical engagement with the socio-historical complexities of the Sierra Mazateca began. His research focuses on the historical and social processes through which communities confront colonial afterlives, preserve social memory, and pursue reparation amid the enduring violence of extractivism in its ecological, economic, and cultural forms. He is the founder of Mirador Mazateco (2010–2015), an independent local publication dedicated to research and dissemination of Mazatec culture. He is the author of Huautla: Tierra de Magia, de Hongos y Hippies (2014), short essays, and academic articles. Osiris serves as an academic researcher, consultant, author, and conference speaker. He is currently an affiliated researcher at Georgetown University, USA, Coordinator of the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative (IRI) Program at the Chacruna Institute, and executive director of the newly formed Mirador Mazateco Cultural Research Center.
Margit Silva
Budget Manager
Margit is an experienced administrative professional with more than twenty years of service in university administration. She currently serves as Office and Budget Manager for the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where she oversees departmental operations, financial administration, budgeting, procurement, and human resources processes.
Guadalupe Delgado
Budget Assistant
Founded in 2010, Mirador Mazateco emerged as an independent project dedicated to researching Mazatec culture through the memory and voices of Mazatec people themselves. For five years, the team—composed of Osiris García, Beatriz Cerqueda, and Alfonso García—focused on documenting and publishing a locally distributed magazine that gathered testimonies and data about Mazatec cultural life.
The project was grounded in community-based historical reconstruction, drawing from the stories, memories, and images of the people of Huautla de Jiménez and surrounding areas, in response to the limited access to historical sources on Mazatec heritage.
Today, Mirador Mazateco continues its mission of cultural and historical research for the Mazatec people. It stands as a Center for Cultural Research, offering responsible guidance and support to external projects and helping channel resources toward the biocultural strengthening of Mazatec communities.
As a partner in this project, Mirador Mazateco offers cultural guidance, community-based research experience, and responsible support for work conducted in Mazatec territory.
Contact: mazatecresearch@gmail.com
Guadalupe is the Operations Administrator for the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. She brings extensive experience in administration and operations. In this role, she supports the administrative and financial infrastructure that sustains the project.