Abuelita Epistemologies: Counteracting Subtractive Schools in American Education

Abstract

This autoethnographic inquiry examines the intersection of elder epistemology and subtractive education, exploring how one abuelita countered her granddaughter’s divestment of Mexican-ness. I demonstrate how the grandmother used abuelita epistemologies to navigate this tension and resist the assimilative pressures felt by her granddaughter from school by consistently modeling, at home, a love for Mexican language and culture. I argue that grandmothers play a vital role in rooting young people to their linguistic and cultural assets, a sacred function that many Mexican elders have preserved and brought forward from the precontact era in the Americas to the contemporary era.

Key words:

• abuelita epistemology
• elder epistemology
• grandmothers as educators
• Mexican elders
• Mexicans and education
• subtractive schooling
• Indigenous autoethnography
• critical pedagogy

Notes

¹ Grandmother.

² A diminutive form of “grandmother,” akin to “grandma.”

³ A form of Mexican folk music.

⁴ Aunt.

⁵ A shout, sometimes used as a musical accompaniment or enhancement.

⁶ Dances.

⁷ Ballads.

⁸ A diminutive form of ranchera.

⁹ Another form of Mexican folk music.

¹⁰ Ghost.

¹¹ A flat pan used to warm tortillas.

¹² “Mmm … how yummy!”

¹³ Witchcraft.

¹⁴ Healers.