Decolonizing the Classroom Through Critical Consciousness: Navigating Solidarity en la Lucha for Mexican American Studies

Abstract

In this article, college students and faculty narrate their co-constructed journey across differences, through intersecting identities and intertwining paths in an effort to stand in solidarity with students, teachers, and community members resisting the removal of the Mexican-American Studies (MAS) program in the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona, USA, in 2012. They used critical personal narratives (CPNs) as a decolonizing methodology and transformed their academic spaces to create conditions for critical consciousness cultivation through embracing the MAS's foundational elements of Tezkatlipoka. They assert that academic spaces can and should be used as centers for self-reflection, relationship-building, global and local change-making, and development of the critical hope necessary to continue the efforts to engage in la lucha—the struggle—for broadened and more diverse approaches to education everywhere.

Key words:

• critical consciousness
• critical personal narratives
• decolonizing theory
• ethnic studies
• TUSD Mexican-American Studies Program