She obtained a license in ethnology in 1985 from the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico.

[3] She obtained adoctorate in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science in the same year.

[citation needed] Lourdes is Chair of Anthropology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has been director of the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares and secretary of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

Between 1994 and 1998, she was Adjunct Director of UNESCO in Culture, president of the World Congress on the Status of the Artist, and president of the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development, which took place in Stockholm, Sweden in 1998.

She presided over the Board of Directors of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva.