Advancing Testimonio Traditions in Educational Research: A Synoptic Rendering

ABSTRACT

Through our understanding of decolonizing Hispanophone curriculum, our synoptic rendering seeks to better situate US-based research on testimonio within Latin American literary traditions. Specifically, we provide a synoptic rendering that outlines the testimonio tradition’s literary criticism and an analysis of key testimonio texts. Of particular emphasis in our analysis, we provide representations from Latin American testimonio traditions’ sociological, journalistic, fictionalized, and poetic dimensions. Our synoptic rendering concludes with implications for the advancement of testimonio traditions in education research with emphasis on testimonio resources for Latin@ graduate students.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural identity
• decolonizing Hispanophone curriculum
• Latino students
• testimonio

Notes

¹ Titles and quotes in English that appear on the reference page in Spanish have been translated by the authors from Spanish into English.

² We understand the political battles over bilingual education in California in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the more recent struggle over Chican@ critical curriculum in the public schools of Arizona as temporary questions of a much larger intercultural and historical trend in which mestiz@ indigenous populations reorganize formerly “lost” territories in the South, Southwest, and West and change the face of public institutions. We think that broad notions of decolonizing Hispanophone curriculum that encompass both critical-Chican@ directions and other historical traditions in Latin America, too many to mention here, are crucial resources in the critical education of young people.

³ In a previous draft of this manuscript, we highlighted Rigoberta Menchú and Elizabeth Burgos’ I, Rigoberta Menchú (1985). Although we will not remove Menchú and Burgo’s testimonio from the references, we can no longer highlight this testimonio as part of our synoptic rendering since Menchú’s remunerated support of the Mexican government’s fraudulent official elections and Menchú’s aid in the cover-up of the missing students of Ayotzinapa, as outlined in the following links: Menchú receives rebuke in service of Mexican IFE: http://www.informador.com.mx/mexico/2015/594967/6/joven-cuestiona-a-rigoberta-menchu-sobre-pedir-el-voto-en-guerrero.htm; Menchú is paid $10,000 USD to support Mexican IFE: http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/francisco-garfias/2015/05/28/1026416; Menchú’s words help Mexican government cover up missing students in Ayotzinapa: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/06/13/oja-menchu.html

⁴ Although official figures of the death toll were at 30, eyewitnesses reported seeing hundreds of cadavers. There were over 1,300 arrests made.