Eva Verbitsky Hunt

Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt (1934–1980) was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic, and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband, Robert Hunt, she conducted innovative regional research in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.

Biography Born on 12 April 1934 in Buenos Aires, Verbitsky was the daughter of the screenwriter Alejandro Verbitsky and the child educator Josefa Plotkin, both Jews whose parents had emigrated from Russia. At the age of 17, she moved with her family to Mexico City, where she developed her skills as a painter. In 1953, after graduating in anthropology from the Universidad Femenina de México, she became a researcher under Roberto Weitlaner at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología, collaborating with him at the Museo Nacional de Antropología. In the 1950s and 1960s, she conducted fieldwork in Oaxaca, first studying the Cuicatec people and later researching in the Mixtec region under Kimball Romney.

Selected publications Hunt's numerous publications include:

1962: Hunt, Muriel Eva Verbitsky. "The Dynamics of the Domestic Group in Tzeltal Villages: A Contrastive Comparison." University of Chicago. 1967: Hunt, Eva; Hunt, Robert. "Education as an Interface Institution in Rural Mexico and the American Inner City." Midway Magazine, 8(2): 99. 1977: Hunt, Eva. The Transformation of the Hummingbird: Cultural Roots of a Zinacantecan Mythical Poem. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1978: Hunt, Eva. "The Provenience and Contents of the Porfirio Diaz and Fernando Lea Codices." American Antiquity, 43: 673.