Gustavo López Mendoza

Gustavo López Mendoza was born in Guelatao de Juárez, a town located in the northern mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. He is Zapotec and holds two bachelor’s degrees: one in communication and another in Comunalidad. He also earned a master’s degree in Communal Education. In 2019, he wrote a book about the meaning of the word Guelatao, the name his community uses to refer to itself. Over the past five years, López Mendoza has written about topics such as shamanism, comunalidad, and the forms of communication practiced by Indigenous communities in Oaxaca.

He currently serves as the coordinator of one of the sixteen communal centers of the Autonomous Communal University of Oaxaca, an institution dedicated to rescuing and strengthening the ancestral knowledge of Indigenous cultures. He is one of the university’s founding members.

Education

• MA, Educación Comunal, Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca
• BA, Communication, Universidad del Mar, Huatulco Oaxaca
• BA, Communication, Universidad del Mar, Huatulco Oaxaca