Documenting the Undocumented: Testimonios as a Humanizing Pedagogy

• In Event: 53.081 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 53.081-5 - Radical Storytelling and Creative Resistance: Exploring Testimonio as Theory and Praxis

Abstract

The United States continues to be a home for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants (Sterling, 2011). The undocumented immigrant community is complex, but at its core are people with families, hopes and dreams. Like all citizens, they live in neighborhoods, attend schools, work in different places; but still in the shadows of “illegality” (Marquardt, 2011). Certainly, much has been said and written about immigration within the political, social and academic realm of the American context. A good part of the literature on immigration focuses on the problems that cause and are caused by this phenomenon. Missing still is the human drama experienced by those who cross borders in search of new opportunities—the untold stories of the real people whose lives are impacted every day by unjust immigration policies and a larger anti-immigrant context. This paper brings voice to this experience.

Everyone has a story. Todos tenemos una historia. Every person you meet or come across - the server taking your order, the counter staff tendering change, the driver in the car next to you, your best friend, the mailman – they all have stories. Even those “sin papeles” have stories. In fact, an undocumented person is not undocumented at all. They may not have certain pieces of paper, but they have documents: family photos, love letters, birth certificates, awards, bills, passports, child’s drawings. An undocumented immigrant is much more than their legal status, ethnicity, gender or role. They are people living in our midst con tradiciones, memorias y historias. They carry within them a rich historic, cultural and spiritual background that has shaped their identity and defined their lived experiences.

This paper includes inspiring and untold stories of four undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. I refer to their stories, oral histories, and lived experiences as testimonios. Testimonios provide a personal account that offer an individual’s story reflecting a whole community and significance/meaning of daily life. I use their testimonios to construct knowledge, which challenge the mainstream, dominant discourse of immigration. Through testimonio, I am able to reveal the collectives of immigrants formed by common experiences of oppression, resistance and marginalization. Hence, these testimonios provide a different view of “illegality” and offer truthful accounts of those living “sin papeles” in the United States. This paper intends to disrupt mainstream discourse, raise consciousness, and reclaim their humanity.

Author

• Laura Ochoa, University of San Francisco