Leonardo Vilchis-Zarate

PhD Candidate, UCLA Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies ; Graduate Student Researcher, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy; Community Organizer, Union de Vecinos East Side Local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

Leonardo Vilchis-Zarate is a tenant organizer and researcher. He is interested in the role of the autonomous tenants’ movement within the conjuncture of a seemingly progressive dominance by the landholding political class legitimized by democratic socialist and abolitionist state actors and nonprofit organizations. His research looks at the legacy of late 20th century neoliberalism, namely the demolition of public housing, and its relationship to the present crisis for housed and unhoused tenants. He is a PhD student in the Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies Program at UCLA and an organizer with Union de Vecinos, the Eastside Local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

University of California, Los Angeles: Masters of Arts in Chicana/o & Central American Studies

University of California, Riverside: Bachelor of Arts in the History of Art

Union de Vecinos: Challenging the Largest Displacement in 20th Century Boyle Heights

2019-2024 Cota Robles Fellowship

2023 Mellon Mays Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant Recipient

2021 Mellon Mays Predoctoral Research Development Grant

2017 Catherine Lee Causey Memorial Award in Art History

2016-2019 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow

Fresh Air and Sunshine for Whom? Post 1960s Los Angeles

Cluster 60: American in the Sixties

CCAS 100XP Barrio Organizing and Service Learning

CCAS 101 Chicana/o and Central American Studies: Theories and Concepts

CCAS 10B Introduction to Chicana/o Studies: Social Structure and Contemporary Conditions

CCAS10A Introduction to Chicana/o Studies: History and Culture Designing the Ideal Community: Gentrification and Urban Development in Los Angeles and Latin America