Maria Elena Martinez
María Elena Martínez-Lopez (2 December 1966, in Pascuales, Durango, Mexico – 16 November 2014, in Los Angeles CA) was a historian of colonial Mexico. Her landmark book, "Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico" garnered significant academic recognition. Life. Martínez was born in northern Mexico in 1966 and moved with her family to Chicago in the 1970s. She earned a B.A. at Northwestern University in 1988, and entered the doctoral program in History at University of Chicago, studying with Friedrich Katz. She taught at University of Southern California until her death of adrenal  cancer in 2014. While teaching at USC, she inaugurated the Colonial Latin America seminar at the USC-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute. She gave large number of academic presentations, one of which at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was videotaped in May 2004. Martínez was lesbian and was the partner of academic Sarah Gualtieri for many years.