Nuestro Grupo and Academia Cuauhtli: A Social Architecture for Authentic Cariño in the Trumpian Moment

• In Event: Academia Cuauhtli: Crafting an Architecture of Authentic Cariño

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes
Our intent is to highlight the important role that social architecture plays in Austin, Texas through a Latino-led community-based organization (CBO), Nuestro Grupo, and our collective response to the challenging and pivotal moment that Donald Trump became President of the United States. Running a bilingual revitalization program for fourth graders and their families, Nuestro Grupo collaborates with multiple institutional partners while remaining its own independent entity; this grants the majority Latino organizers liberty to center epistemological resistance, personal narratives, and professional mentorship in their projects– fostering an environment where practices that lead to authentic cariño can thrive.

Theoretical perspective:
We develop the argument that resurrection and renewal are consciously engineered via a new social architecture that Nuestro Grupo and Academia Cuauhtli have created. Building off a theory of authentic carino, which privileges the intersection of interpersonal and institutional relationships, we have intentionally created a social network that ties in familial caring, institutional caring and critical caring (Curry, 2016). Through this process, social capital is shared and leveraged to promote educational resistance and healing (Valenzuela, 2016) amidst political struggle.

Methods
We used participatory ethnographic methods to examine how Nuestro Grupo built a CBO which engaged a collective of authentic carino. As part of the ethnography, we collected field notes as we participated in the weekly meetings of Nuestro Grupo, weekly classes of Academia Cuauhtli, two conferences and roughly a dozen community events that Nuestro Grupo sponsored. From 2016-2018, we also conducted and transcribed formal interviews ranging from 30 minutes to three hours with a purposive sample of ten core members.

Data Sources:
Participants included ten core members who consistently led and attended Nuestro Grupo events– three university professors, three doctoral candidates, two master’s students and two community elders. We also drew on primary documents for reference, such as Nuestro Grupo meeting minutes and agendas, grant proposals, and members’ past publications.

Conclusion
Through a partnership that allows us to anchor ourselves in a local community institution, our strength is the relative autonomy that Nuestro Grupo enjoys. The scholar-activists employ their organizer and academic backgrounds to engage with school, state boards, parents and teachers. Nuestro Grupo's cohesion arises from an intentionally fluid meeting structure which centers a sacred sharing of motivations, hopes, and dreams. A powerful network has blossomed, as a consequence, with trust and caring relationships translating into mentorship and sponsorship, helping members thrive both personally and professionally.

Scholarly Significance
This analysis concludes that Nuestro Grupo has built a powerful network for Latino education professionals through practices of authentic cariño which include an intentional building of trust in the CBO’s social architecture. A strong relational foundation helps the collective in navigating relationships and activist movements at local, state and institutional levels. In each of these categories, members channel their sense of political agency to further their initiatives, enhancing Nuestro Grupo participants with a sense of efficacy that has contributed directly to significant victories in the area of Ethnic Studies policy.

Authors

• Angela Valenzuela, The University of Texas at Austin

• Irene Gómez, Intercultural Development Research Association