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Mayra Lizette Avila

Mayra Lizette Avila

Mayra Lizette Avila received her bachelor’s in history and minor in communication from ֦Ƶ in 2010. During her time as a CSDH student she was involved with Phi Alpha Theta and McNair. Through the guidance of McNair and advisors such as Dr. Laura Talamante and Dr. Marisela Chavez, she was accepted to University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) as a Doctoral student.

At UTEP, Mayra studied immigration, labor, and gender. She completed her master's in history in 2013 and her doctorate in borderlands in 2018. Her dissertation "La Pena Negra: Mexican Women, Gender, And Labor During The Bracero Program, 1942-1964" historicizes the negotiation of empowerment and disempowerment of women in Mexican society during the Bracero Program. She began teaching at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in the Fall of 2015, where she currently teaches. As a teaching faculty Mayra continues to find ways to make history fun and exciting to learn for her students.

Mayra continues conducting research. Her current research focuses on how Latiné immigrants living in the United States plan for retirement. She has co-authored two articles with fellow Toro alums Jose Luis Collazo (2010) and Helen Kiso (2010) on the subject “From the Mind to the Bond: Latiné Retired Immigrants Remitting Back Home” (2025) and “‘Mi Familia Quiere Que Regrese’: Retired Latiné Immigrants’ Families’ Expectations to Return to Their Country of Origin” (2024)