Community-Based Organizations as Empowering Spaces for Yucatec-Maya Youth

• In Event: Creating Equitable Learning Contexts for Indigenous Mexican Communities: Cultural Knowledge, Networks, Practices, and Empowerment

Abstract

Objective
This study examines the influence of informal community-based, transnational cultural learning practices on Yucatec-Maya youth empowerment.

Introduction
Indigenous Mexican children in U.S. schools possess assets that originate from their Indigenous cultural practices (Author, 2019), but educators are often unaware of such assets. There is a lack of research examining the specific roles community-based cultural organizations take in cultural learning and how this impacts youth identity development. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities (CLI), which centers on the transnational lived experiences of Indigenous persons (Blackwell, Boj Lopez, & Urrieta, 2017), this study explores how community-based, transnational cultural organizations in the U.S. and Mexico acknowledge and foster cultural knowledge (Yosso, 2005) as an asset for Mexican Indigenous children. I examine how these organizations blur geographical and cultural borders of Indigeneity, while providing positive learning experiences for Indigenous youth.

Method
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Yucatec-Maya youth: 10 (seven males) living in the U.S., and 20 (11 males) living in Mexico. Interviews were also conducted with two youth program coordinators and the director of migration services in the Mexican community organization, and three program coordinators in California. Ethnographic observations were conducted at the two organizations in the U.S. and Mexico. Grounded theory open-coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994) analysis was conducted with the interviews and observation field-notes.

Results
Both community-based organizations promoted a strengths-based approach combined with resources for the youth to develop healthy identities in the various contexts of their lived experiences. U.S. students reclaimed cultural knowledge and Indigenous pride in the American context through cultural and transnational networks. The students had a keen awareness of the agency they had to define their Maya identities as transnational through the links made within the organizations, by being part of dance groups or Maya language classes and participating in a yearly cross-generational celebration. The same type of celebration occurred in the Yucatec-Maya towns, blurring the borders between the U.S. and Mexico and creating a collective sense of cultural knowledge (Blackwell, Boj Lopez, & Urrieta, 2017). The importance of community-based cultural organizations was triangulated with the staff interviews. In the U.S., staff were concerned in particular with the young Maya men’s unique intersectional experiences with being discriminated at higher rates than the women (Author, 2011). The organization planned to address this issue with the formation of young men advising groups. The Mexican-based organization was trying to expand language classes in rural towns; connect with Maya youth through technology; and create leadership groups run by Maya youth. In particular, the Mexican organization coordinators wanted to focus on the inequity and explicit sexism faced by young Maya women.

Significance
These findings show how community-based organizations serve as vehicles for cultural knowledge mobilization across generations of Indigenous youth and their families. This knowledge sharing centers on the youth voices and on developing community networks. The youth develop agency, feel empowered, and gain leadership skills which are assets they can transfer to their learning in other contexts such as school.

Author

• Saskias Casanova, UC Santa Cruz