Dr. Sandra I. Enríquez is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Public History Emphasis at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, where she teaches classes on Latinx and urban history, social movements, and public and local history. She is a native of Ciudad Juárez and grew up on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Enríquez received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Texas at El Paso and earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Houston.
Enríquez is particularly interested in connecting people to their local and regional histories. Her forthcoming first book, ¡El Barrio No Se Vende!: Grassroots Activism and Revitalization in El Paso, examines civil rights activism in her hometown by exploring how Mexican American tenants organized to save their border neighborhood. At UMKC, she trains future Public Historians and cultivates public-facing student research projects about Missouri and the Midwest. Enríquez has curated and collaborated on several projects highlighting the histories of Kansas City’s Latinx communities, including the Guadalupe Centers Centennial projects and her ongoing oral history project, LatinxKC. Enríquez’s forthcoming first book, ¡El Barrio No Se Vende!: Grassroots Activism and Revitalization in El Paso, examines how Mexican American tenants organized to save their border neighborhood from the bulldozer in the 1970s.
