Ortega, Emmanuel
Description
In pop culture, Emmanuel Ortega is recognized as Babelito from Latinos Who Lunch, a podcast that he co-hosts with Justin Favela AKA FavyFav. Academically, he is known as Dr. Ortega, PhD, Marilynn Thomas Scholar in Art of the Spanish Americas at University of Illinois Chicago.
In 1982, Ortega was born to Maria Clementina and Jose A. Ortega in California. He was raised in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, until his father took a job in El Paso and moved the family. “That was a traumatic experience. We went from one of the busiest and most violent cities in Mexico to one of the boring cities in the United States,” he says. By 1998, the family had moved to Las Vegas, where jobs were plentiful and his father joined the union.
In addition to his work with the Latinos Who Lunch podcast series and being a curator and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Babelito lectures nationally and internationally on the topics of images of autos-de-fe, nineteenth century Mexican landscape painting, and visual representations of the New Mexico Pueblo peoples in Novohispanic Franciscans martyr paintings.
He graduated from Silverado High School; received his master’s degree and doctorate from the University of New Mexico. He previously taught at UNLV. His husband is Emmanuel Ramas-Barajas, a video producer.
