Aspirational Capital and the Mexican Voice: Tracing Community Cultural Wealth Through a Youth Newsletter in Los Angeles, 1938–1941

• In Event: 18.022 - Dimensions of Community Cultural Wealth Across Time and Place: Chicana/o Efforts for Educational Equity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical ways Mexican youth used their voice to nurture Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) during a time when they were rendered silent and labeled criminal. Specifically, this paper uniquely situates The Mexican Voice, an educational newsletter created by Mexican youth in 1938 to analyze the ways youth cultivated aspirational capital by fostering a culture of hope for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers. This paper is an effort to highlight the historical dimensions of Community Cultural Wealth within a Mexican youth newsletter during the late 1930s, a time dominant discourse portrayed Mexican youth as unintelligent, criminal and lazy.

This work is guided by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and in education (Solórzano, 1998) and Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth framework. CRT allows to centralize race and racism as a means to help identify and reveal injustices in the educational histories of students of color. Community Cultural Wealth offers six forms of capitals that exist within Communities of Color that highlight an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus on illustrating aspirational capital within The Mexican Voice newsletter. Yosso defines aspirational capital as ‘The resiliency to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances, often without the objective means to attain those goals.’ (Yosso, 2005, p. 78).

Grounded in archival research methods, the author hones in on a collection of a newsmagazine by Mexican youth called The Mexican Voice, published from 1938 to 1941. Published quarterly, the newsletters richly illustrate the various forms of Community Cultural Wealth activated by youth throughout Southern California. Illustrative of the collectivity was the editorial board, with Felix Gutierrez, a native from Monrovia, as editor and Jesse Aguirre, the appointed business manager from Watts. The set of stories included in the newsletter activated the six forms of capitals and challenged dominant frames used to define their community.

This paper illuminates the ways youth engaged their aspirational capital through print media. In addition, the historical dimensions of Community Cultural Wealth have yet to be explored and The Mexican Voice is a primary source ripe for this analysis. Specific findings of this study suggest Mexican youth offered critical perspectives that challenged culturally deficit perspectives about Mexican youth and nurtured aspirational capital. An exemplar of this is the section used to highlight the accomplishments of Mexican youth in sports, art, and scholarship. The editor writes: “Just realize – a Mexican did all this, a Mexican like you and me, a Mexican with the same kind of blood as you and I. You can too! You can do all these things all of these young fellows have done. All you need is encouragement, help…Never think of what is wrong about us. Think what is good about us.” The Mexican Voice, offered a counternarrative that demonstrated how urban youth defined, negotiated and contested deficit perspectives by highlighting their cultural wealth.

Author

• Lluliana Alonso, University of California - Los Angeles