Mujeres truchas: urban girls redefining smartness in a dystopic global south

Abstract

Set against colonial narratives of border women and neoliberal ideologies increasingly permeating school systems around the world, this article maps out ways in which a group of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico embody and reconstruct notions of smartness. I draw on Chicana feminist theory to introduce the concept of mujeres truchas, a set of intelligences that stem from a life at the margins and a struggle for survival and hope. Further, they challenge Cartesian dualisms about knowledge by incorporating the rational and critical thought but also the physical and spiritual knowledges generated by everyday life in the barrio. This form of smartness also counters the individualism in post-feminist discourse by emphasizing decolonizing, healing, and collective goals.

Keywords:

• Smartness
• border women
• urban education
• Chicana feminist/mujerista perspectives
• alternative ways of knowing

Notes

1. I use the terms ‘girls’ and ‘young women’ interchangeably throughout the article for several reasons. The term ‘young women’ reflects the participants’ social position as women, which is in direct contrast to prevalent white, middle class, US conceptions of girlhood as an infantilized, innocent and protected life stage to which these participants have no access. However, the current literature on adolescent and young women often refers to this group as ‘girls.’ Moreover, the participants in the study referred to themselves and each other as both ‘chicas,’ which more accurately translates into ‘girls,’ and as ‘mujeres’ or ‘women’.

2. Maquiladoras are factories owned by multinational corporations in free trade zones that manufacture, process or assemble products using imported material and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis. Usually, the finished products are then exported back to the raw materials' country of origin. Maquiladoras offer duty free trade and cheap Mexican labor to foreign owned corporations, while providing jobs to the local communities.

3. The Massacre of Tlatelolco occurred in Mexico during a student movement, killing thousands of people, and is often excluded from history textbooks.