Decolonial Activist and Scholar Fernando David Márquez Duarte Joins GloPhi to Research Cucapáh Thought

Dr. Fernando David Márquez Duarte is joining the Center for Advanced Studies “Philosophizing in a Globalized World” as a Short-Term Fellow from March to July 2026. A Mexican decolonial activist and scholar from Mexicali, Mexico, Márquez Duarte works at the intersection of decoloniality, Indigenous studies, and environmental justice, with a regional focus on Latin America / Abya Yala. He philosophizes in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

Márquez Duarte holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Riverside. His work combines scholarly research with decolonial, community-based, and activist commitments. For more than four years, he has worked with the Cucapáh Indigenous group in Baja California, Mexico, engaging questions of Indigenous rights, political participation, language preservation, environmental justice, and self-determination. His research is shaped by a strong concern for the ways in which Indigenous communities articulate knowledge, memory, political agency, and ecological responsibility through their own languages, oral traditions, and situated practices.

During his fellowship at GloPhi, Márquez Duarte will investigate Cucapáh philosophical thought through the community’s language, cosmovision, and oral stories, as well as through their ongoing struggles for environmental justice and self-determination. His project contributes directly to GloPhi’s broader aim of pluralizing the histories, sources, and practices of philosophy by foregrounding forms of philosophizing that emerge from Indigenous languages, community knowledge, and decolonial political practice.