Ambar Varela Mattute is a Mexican cultural sociologist and anthropologist of material culture whose work sits at the intersection of the Strong Program of Cultural Sociology, indigenous studies, and the anthropology of objects and memory. Her research — developed across fieldwork in Chiapas, an academic residence at Yale University, and extensive archival and visual analysis — examines how Zapatista and other indigenous communities of Abya Yala objectify collective suffering, construct iconic meanings, and forge alternative civil spheres through textiles, craft objects, and performative practices. Her forthcoming book, Tattooed Histories: Zapatista Iconography and the Material Memory of Resistance, traces how craft objects produced by Zapatista women function as sites of iconic consciousness, cultural trauma processing, and symbolic reparation — proposing a new framework for understanding material culture as political and mnemonic archive. She is a recognized member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI, Candidate Level, 2026–2029).
Currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City.