Xochitl Leyva-Solano is a researcher and activist, member of alternative and anti-systemic networks as well as those promoting decolonizing and depatriarchalizing research. Her theoretical work is the outcome of her experience accompanying Indigenous women and young people since 1985. Currently, she lives and works in the North of Chiapas where she co-coordinates a grassroots collective effort called “Agroecovisual Autonomies for a Dignified Life”. This initiative is organized with Maya-Tseltal authorities and communities as part of their struggle for autonomy and self-determination. She is also a researcher and professor at the Center for Higher Research of Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Chiapas, México. She has worked since 1987 in Chiapas. She has done fieldwork in London, Berlin and Barcelona as much in Yucatán, Michoacán and Chiapas (in México).

Among her books are: Poder y Desarrollo Regional (Power and Regional Development) published in Mexico in 1993, and Lancandonia al filo del agua (Lacandonia at the edge of the water) which was co-authored with Gabriel Ascencio in Mexico in 1996. As well as: Encuentros Antropológicos: Power, Identity and Mobility In Mexican Society, edited with Valentina Napolitano and published in London in 1998; Gobernar en la diversidad: experiencias indígenas desde América Latina (Governing in Diversity: indigenous experiences in Latin America) co-edited with Araceli Burguete and Shannon Speed in Mexico in 2008 and in the same year she co-edited with Shannon Speed and Pedro Pitarch, Human Rights in the Mayan Region published by Duke University Press.