Meet Tinker Visiting Professor José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez

José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez is an Autumn 2025 Tinker Visiting Professor, sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. Guevara Bermúdez joins the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights from the Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, where he has worked for the last ten years. 

Guevara Bermúdez was drawn to the Tinker Professorship, because it would allow him to spend time within a well-known U.S. university.

“The amount, quality, and depth of the academic activities is something that you don't have in most parts of the world,” he says.

Guevara Bermúdez has built his academic career alongside decades of work as a human rights defender, public servant, and diplomat. He specializes in gross human rights abuses, combatting impunity, and reparations for victims of those abuses. Guevara Bermúdez is involved in documenting and analyzing large-scale and systematic human rights abuses, particularly in Mexico.

His current work centers around the armed clashes in Mexico in recent years and whether they constitute a non-international armed conflict. Guevara Bermúdez will explore this idea in his lecture on November 6, “No End in Sight: Atrocities and Impunity in Mexico’s War on Drugs.”

Drawing on other disciplines

This quarter, Guevara Bermúdez is teaching the course Impunity and Justice for Atrocity Crimes in Latin America, drawing on his extensive scholarship and experience in the subject matter. Utilizing the Pozen Center’s interdisciplinary approach, Guevara Bermúdez has invited guest speakers from other disciplines to lecture. Historian María de los Ángeles Aguilar taught the history of Guatemala, its military rule, and the genocide committed in the country. Another Tinker Professor, poet Carlos Soto Román, lectured about the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile and the artistic resistance to it.

“For me, it has been fascinating to be able to collaborate with persons from other disciplines, and to collaborate in practice,” Guevara Bermúdez says. “It has been very interesting to listen to a historian, to a poet, to a lawyer … to see the interdisciplinary approaches in the same topic, that is, atrocities and how to deal with them.”

A commitment to promoting human rights

Guevara Bermúdez has devoted many years to promoting human rights within Mexico. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guevara Bermúdez represented the Mexican Government before international human rights bodies. He worked at the Ministry of the Interior, the main federal institution responsible for coordinating human rights policies in the country. Within the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City, Guevara Bermúdez promoted human rights and investigated individual cases of economic, social and cultural right abuses.

In addition to his government work, Guevara Bermúdez has worked for national and international non-governmental organizations. He worked as the head of the Mexican NGO La Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, which specializes in representing victims who have experienced human rights abuses, primarily by the military and law enforcement. With the Coalition for the International Criminal Court in Latin America, Guevara Bermúdez promoted the ratification of the Rome Statue by Latin American countries and the subsequent implementation of law to fulfill human rights obligations.

Guevara Bermúdez has also worked as an independent human rights lawyer and consultant for law firms, international organizations and related agencies within the United Nations. He spent six years as part of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which analyzes cases of arbitrary detention worldwide and issues opinions to the governments to remedy those cases.

“It keeps me going that the challenges never stop—so you have to continue.”

Persevering when change is slow

Across these many experiences, Guevara Bermúdez continues to have a steadfast dedication to the work. He has been part of many legal successes in Mexico, but the changes are often slow. Having spent so many years promoting and protecting human rights, he says that you become trained to be frustrated and not expect quick changes. Guevara Bermúdez finds this mindset to be just as significant now as ever before.

“That training to be frustrated, and training to not expect big changes quickly have made me … resistant and capable to adjust to the situation that we're living in right now.”

A global look at human rights

As Guevara Bermúdez surveys the global state of human rights, he recognizes that the relevant systems and mechanisms are not infallible.

“Every mechanism, national or international, is very weak—but it's what we have,” he says.

Despite these limitations, Guevara Bermúdez sees it as an opportunity to use every human rights mechanism available, both national and international. These mechanisms are insufficient to change reality or to hold perpetrators accountable, he says. However, the documentation and recognition of human rights abuses can help to change the narrative, which can be more challenging for governments to ignore. This process is important to eventual systemic change, but its precarious nature can seem futile from the outside.

“It's very difficult to convey this message with students,” Guevara Bermúdez says. “You do all that work and you only get a paper that says that? But to stop it, you need to use everything that is in your hands to produce the narrative, the information, the evidence that could help you put a stop to those horrible practices.”

Continuing the work

This comprehensive pursuit of accountability and truth-telling is something that he hopes his students will take away from his class. Guevara Bermúdez wants students to learn that gross human rights violations have happened, and are continuing to happen, in countries all over the world. He hopes they identify common factors and systemic issues, but rather than be discouraged by the scale of the work, it spurs them to action.

“It keeps me going that the challenges never stop—so you have to continue,” he says.

To learn more about the Tinker Visiting Professorships, visit the Center for Latin American Studies website.