After emigrating to the United States in 1977, he went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving a BFA in 1984, and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. While studying political economy at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Chagoya created political cartoons for local student-run newspapers and was an active participant in student and worker protests in Mexico City during the early 1970s. He was encouraged to be an artist from an early age by his father, who worked at the national bank of Mexico by day and was himself an artist by night. Enrique Chagoya was born in Mexico City in 1953.
