Irma Juan Carlos was born on 19 July 1977 in
Santiago Jocotepec, in the
Papaloapan region of the state of Oaxaca. A member of the
Chinantec Indigenous people, she holds a degree in biology from the Instituto Tecnológico de la Cuenca del Papaloapan in
Tuxtepec (2002) and a master's in tropical forest management and conservation from the
Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza in
Costa Rica (2005). Her political activism began in 2000 when she worked for the
2000 presidential campaign of
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (PRD). She was later a national delegate of the PRD in Oaxaca and a member of the party's state council. By 2012 she had switched allegiance to Morena; in 2013–2018 she was one of the party's state council members, including a period as the council's president in 2016–2018. and she was re-elected to subsequent terms in the
2021 mid-terms and the
2024 general election. During her 2018–2021 and 2021–2024 periods in
Congress, she chaired the lower house's Committee on Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples. She also represented the lower house on the board of the
National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) in 2020. but ultimately lost to
Salomón Jara Cruz, who went on to win the 5 June 2022 election. In April 2025, she was among a group of Morena deputies who demanded the dismissal of
Secretary of Welfare Ariadna Montiel Reyes on account of her "despotic attitude" and alleged acts of corruption within her department. ==Notes==