Revolucionista Ethic of Care: Four Mexicana Educators Complicate, Reframe Social Justice Education for Mexican/Mexican American Youth

• In Event: A Nuanced Portrait of the Demographic Divide: Resisting Monolithic Representations of Teachers of Color

Abstract

This qualitative Testimonio reveals an ethic of care particular to Mexican/Mexican-American (Mexicana/o) youth through the pedagogy and Testimonios of four Mexicana female educators along the U.S./Mexico Border. This study is informed by the scholarship surrounding segregated African-American/Black communities in the Jim Crow South where Black and mostly female educators enacted critical ethic(s) of care with feminist epistemologies of home and community connectedness (Foster, 1993, 1998; Henry, 2006; Siddle Walker, 2000, 2001). Herein, teaching as the practice of freedom applied knowledge for social transformation and uplift for marginalized Black folks at diverse intersections of race, class, and gender (Cross, 1998; hooks, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 1994). Within Spanish-speaking Mexican and Mexican-American communities, the history of public education is starkly different. With few exceptions (Donato, 1999; Gonzales-Berry, 1994; Maestas, 2011), Mexicana/o children were placed in colonial schools where implanted White educators enforced tracking, corporal punishment, and linguistic erasure (Gonzales-Berry, 2000; Milk, 1980; San Miguel, 2003; Author & colleague, in press) while Mexicana/o adults were systematically barred as educators. This paper explores the ethic of care embodied by Mexicana educators who today teach Mexicana/o students and the ways in which their pedagogy takes root in community histories and intergenerational epistemologies.

Research questions included:
1) How is a Revolucionista Ethic of Care revealed in the Testimonios of four Mexicana female educators of Mexicana/o children?
2) How does their ethic of care manifest within curriculum and pedagogy?
3) How do their Testimonios, pedagogical manifestations, and underlying epistemologies reveal the wisdom and workings of a Revolucionista Ethic of Care?

Over the course of one year, Testimonios—narratives of navigating race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality, circumscribed foreignness, (im)migration, language, colonialism, transnationalism, and Catholicism (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012; Diaz Soto et al., 2009)—were collected through multiple methods. These included: 1) two 60/90-minute individual semi-structured interviews per participant; 2) five 90/120-minute focus group interviews; 3) four 5-hour field observations per week per participant; 4) reflective researcher journal; 5) photographic elicitation (Diaz Soto et al., 2009); and 6) participants’ reflections of consciousness/conocimiento (Anzaldúa, 1987).

Findings reveal a Revolucionista Ethic of Care as culturally specific critical feminist ethic of care which reframes notions of revolution, resistance, and social justice advocacy for Mexicana/o students through: 1) an identity bound in a connection to land, corn, and ancestors; 2) the urgency to dismantle oppression coupled with knowledge that doing so can still bring harm; 3) an ancestral, elusive multiplicity; and 4) unseen pedagogical weaponry fighting for and feeding students’ dignity and intellectual capacity. This paper expands upon previous work (Author, 2018) to detail their intergenerational pedagogies of planting and harvesting as resistance through critical collectivity, subversive humor, and utilizing body as a pedagogical device of spiritual nourishment and belonging. As these Mexicana educators buffer racism and foster resilience and hope in ways that are surprising and undetected, they urge complex, nuanced understandings of the work of diverse Mexicana/o educators and the value they can hold in school spaces toward community connectedness, educational attainment, and critical love for Mexicana/o youth.

Author

• Mia Sosa-Provencio, The University of New Mexico