Juan Martínez Benavides

I’m a Salvadoran, Central American scholar and PhD student in Religion and Society at Drew University Theological School. I was born and raised in the ancestral lands of the Nahua people of Kuskatan, in what is now San Salvador.

My work is shaped by years in pastoral ministry and by ongoing questions around collective memory, war, and the role of religion in shaping national and cultural identities. After migrating to the U.S. in 2017 to pursue theological education, I’ve been exploring how theology, ethics, and history intersect in communities marked by trauma, migration, and resistance.

My academic interests are still evolving, but they are grounded in commitments to social ethics, decolonial thought, and the study of religious discourse in the Central American isthmus. I’m especially interested in how religious imaginaries have contributed to both the erasure and resilience of Indigenous identities, through anti-Indigenous narratives, mestizaje, and missionary modernizing ideologies. My second master’s thesis was titled “Collective Trauma and Religious Language: Constructing Solidarity with the El Mozote Massacre Victims.”

I currently live in Washington, D.C., on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway and Anacostan peoples. My doctoral studies take place in Madison, New Jersey, on the lands of the Munsee Lenape and Mohican peoples. I share life there with my partner, Sandy, and our two cats, Luna and Paquita.