Beth Baker-Cristales, Associate Director of the Latin American Studies Program, is a faculty member of the Department of Anthropology. She has an M.A. and the Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She has studied Salvadoran migration to Southern California and is author of Salvadoran Migration to Southern California: Redefining El Hermano Lejano (University Press of Florida, 2004). She also has studied female participation in hometown associations, hometown associations and economic development, globalization and the transnationalization of state politics, globalization and labor rights, and ethnic identity and ethnic relations in Los Angeles.