The Multigenerational Impact of American Empire on Teacher Identity

• In Event: Studying the Multidimensionality of Education Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Central Americans now make up the third largest Latinx population in the United States, behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Still, despite this growing population, little research has focused on the experiences of Central Americans and how their history, often tied to the United States, provides an important focal point for understanding U.S. foreign policy and migration. This paper attends to this intersection and explores not only the lasting and multi-generational effects of American imperial violence in Central America, but specifically how American empire has affected Central American educators and their practice.

This paper draws from a narrative and participatory action research project with six Central American educators, all of whose families migrated to the U.S during the civil wars of the 1980’s. The study was intentionally grounded in Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies given its emergence from decolonial/anticolonial thought. In addition to collectively reading testimonios created by Central American migrant youth, we also shared and listened to each other's testimonios about our own family’s migration journeys. Further, we engaged with pláticas and encuentros, to challenge traditional research paradigms, which silence and distort the experiences of people of color.

Using both Chicana/Latina epistemological methods and then applying a LatCrit theoretical lens revealed how American empire and imperialism in Central America have had long-lasting and far-reaching implications for Central Americans living both within and outside of the Isthmus. A common thread across all of the co-creators in this study is the omnipresence of American empire in their lives, even decades after war, migration and displacement. They each described “silences” and “erasures” they experienced in their upbringing that have affected their identity formation, both as Central Americans and their perceived roles as educators to this next wave of Central American youth. These silences manifested in one of two ways. Firstly, in the home as a result of intergenerational trauma caused by civil war, migration and displacement supported by the United States and secondly, in school as a result of both eurocentric curriculum and xenophobic interpersonal interactions with their teachers and peers. These silences and erasures of their cultural backgrounds, an intentional consequence of imperial violence, created fragile connections to their ethnic identity that contribute to the maintenance of white supremacy by forcefully erasing the cultural identity of non-white immigrants and facilitate the assimilation into white and western practices. The results from this study expands the Latinx tripartite of Mexican, Puertro Rican and Cuban research that currently dominates our understanding of the Latinx American-American experience. It also offers suggestions for how to teach these histories and experiences, those wrapped up in American empire and migration, to young people.

Author

• Martha Y. Blanco, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author