Healing Images and Narratives: Undocumented Chicana/Latina Pedagogies of Resistance

ABSTRACT

This article draws from a longitudinal study of 38 in-depth testimonio interviews with 10 undocumented Chicanas/Latinas from 2008 to 2014, first as college students and then as professionals. A Chicana feminist theoretical perspective in education was utilized to explore how undocumented Chicana/Latina ways of knowing emerged in the ways they worked with and for immigrant communities as professionals. The study found that participants drew from their multiple identities, social locations, and life experiences as undocumented Chicana/Latina women to engage in pedagogies of resistance—everyday forms of teaching and learning that challenge the subjugation of undocumented communities, and are shaped by personal and collective experiences, knowledge, and identities. The study found that participants utilized mestiza consciousness, convivencia, and bodymindspirit to employ these pedagogies of resistance in their professional work with and for immigrant communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Chicana feminisms
• education
• pedagogies of resistance
• testimonios

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the following people for reviewing drafts of this manuscript and providing their thoughtful insight: Dr. Maria Malagon, Dr. Dolores Delgado Bernal, and Alma Itzé Flores. The author would also like to acknowledge the support of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

Notes

¹ The editors describe that Chicana feminist thought in education is an extension of the work of Chicana feminist scholars in various academic fields. For example, the theorizing of scholars like Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Emma Pérez, and Chela Sandoval (among others) has been critical to the development of Chicana feminist perspectives in education.

² I also do not suggest that these concepts are the only ways undocumented pedagogies of resistance emerge, or that they are uniquely developed by undocumented Chicanas/Latinas. Rather, these concepts were useful to explain the experiences of the participants in the study, as shared through their narratives. I use italics for these concepts throughout to emphasize the non-English pronunciation of “mestiza” and “convivencia.”

³ It is important to note that some scholars have problematized Anzaldúa’s articulation of “mestiza consciousness.” For example, Saldaña-Portillo (2001) critiques Anzaldúa’s use of the term, claiming that her representation fetishizes Mexican indigenous identity and creates a Chicana/o “nostalgia” over indigenous subjectivity that minimizes indigenous people (and communities) as those of the past, and not the present or future (p. 415). However, Saldaña-Portillo does not discount the theoretical contributions of Anzaldúa’s work generally, or the concept of mestiza consciousness specifically. As shown here, the concept has served and continues to serve as an insightful tool to understand Chicana/o Latina/o experiences.

⁴ There are many ways mestiza consciousness has been utilized and interpreted as a theoretical tool; however, the literal meaning of la mestiza is a woman of mixed ancestry, particularly of the indigenous Americas, Europe, and Africa (Delgado Bernal, 2001).

⁵ Similar to Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s (2002) Theory in the Flesh. This theory allows for an explicitly racialized feminist approach to constructing knowledge from the body, lived experience, and Chicana subjectivities. It is a tool that allows a space for theorizing from Chicana/Latina intersectionalities or the “physical realities” inhabited, experiential knowledge, and the Chicana/Latina body as a discursive site of knowledge production, to challenge and (re)inscribe Chicana/Latina experiences into dominant discourses.

⁶ See the early example, Rigoberta Menchú’s (1984) testimonio in her book, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray).

⁷ See Equity and Excellence in Education (2012), volume 45, issue 3, for the multiple ways testimonio is used in education. Within this special issue, Blackmer Reyes and Curry Rodríguez (2012) provide a bibliography of Chicana/Latina testimonio scholarship that is a particularly useful resource.

⁸ I use the term testimonio to refer to the methodological approach that included data collection and analysis. I use the term testimonio interview to describe the type of interview that was conducted within this methodology.

⁹ I followed Charmaz’s (2006) grounded theory coding strategies that included line-by-line, focused, and axial coding that allow for thematic and comparative connections across data.

¹⁰ For further description on the use of testimonio as a methodological approach I have conducted with the participants in this study, see Pérez Huber (2009).