Multimodal Literacies, Pedagogy, and the Construction of Identity-Based Social Movements: The Case of Espina y Jugo in Mexico

Abstract

This article looks closely at how the process of artmaking linked to social critique unfolds in one community-based educational setting in Latin America. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork with a community-based popular education organization in the northern desert of Mexico, the article examines the pedagogical uses of poetry, music, and other modalities to disrupt dominant discourses about what it means, in this case, to be “Mexican.” At the center of the paper is an analysis of the “espina y jugo” (thorn and juice) metaphor, which refers to the outside and inside of the desert cactus. I argue that the processes of meaning-making and signification underlying the enactment of this metaphor represent a pedagogy that is oriented toward collective identity-building and social action. The enactment of such collective identities, forged in and through acts of multiliterate and multimodal engagement, can be interpreted as a pedagogy of the “new social movements of grassroots orientation” (Escobar, 1992b, p. 421).

Notes

1. Since the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920 and, more importantly, the establishment of the Partido Revolucionario Nacional (PRI) in 1929, Mexico has been a highly centralized state, with a great deal of power concentrated in the institution of the Presidency. Presidents have six-year terms, during which they exert significant control over the bureaucratic apparatus of the state through appointments, removals, and discretionary spending. One example of Mexico's centralization in education is the presence of a national curriculum and federally-mandated textbooks that must be used in all public schools throughout the country.