Mexican/Latinx Teachers Formando Alianzas: Testimonios From Chicago Barrio Classrooms

• In Event: "When a Conjuncture Unrolls, There Is No Going Back": Education and Social Crisis in Chicago

Abstract

Chicago is considered a “city on the make” (Algren, 2011), where various communities have found a way to “marcar presencia” (Oboler, 2005), and call this home. Despite deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and practices, racially and economically marginalized groups have persisted to claim space within a political landscape that has often been used to deny their full belonging (Arredondo, 2008; Betancur & Gills, 2000; De Genova & Ramos-Zayas, 2003; Fernandez, 2012). For over a century, Black and Latinx residents in Chicago have been treated as the out-groups, and even as they now constitute two-thirds of the city’s total population, they continue to fight in order to survive and thrive. This presentation documents the testimonios of Mexican/Latinx teachers working in Chicago barrio schools. At this particular moment of social crisis, where new social imaginaries are needed to push towards a more socially just future, what is it that we can learn from teachers' words about what is worth keeping, what is possible to transform, and what is imperative to destroy?

Chicago’s urban renewal efforts have historically included a strategic move to characterize the city as a ‘city of immigrants’. In the wake of the reinvigorated nativism pushed by Trump since 2016, city officials doubled down on their claims of Chicago providing ‘sanctuary’ for immigrant communities. This framework is problematic as it obscures the devastating conditions that immigrants continue to navigate, ignores African Americans—particularly their continued experiences of excessive punishment, police brutality, and large-scale incarceration—and positions their community needs against one another. An oppositional racial framework is not new to the city; however, more than 35 years ago a grassroots multi-racial social movement organized for the election of Harold Washington—Chicago’s first Black mayor. The multi-racial coalition was able to resist divisive racial strategies, and for a brief period supported a city transformational agenda that was centered on “Neighborhoods First” (Wiewel & Clavel, 1991). Currently, there is again, the need for racial alliance building that can collectively (re)imagine a more just Chicago. Using a LatCrit lens, I examine the ways Mexican/Latinx teachers make meaning of the current social conjuncture in Chicago, specifically, how they promote an educational agenda that legitimately addresses the needs of a growing Latinx student body, and at the same time begin to create the possibilities of radical racial solidarity across the city.

For this presentation four teacher testimonios, from a larger study of 23, were selected based on their extensive reflection of inter-racial city dynamics and how they impact their students’ city experiences. Testimonio methodology was used as a way to “carve a space within academia to recognize sources of knowledge that are often ignored and delegitimized” (Perez Huber, 2009, p. 640). Moreover, this work was grounded in the understanding that teachers words and reflections are critically important because, “stories remind us that we cannot depend on statistical data to illuminate experience and compel change, but rather, it is also in the crafting of narrative and sharing stories that social transformation happens” (Flores Carmona & Luschen, 2014, p. 2).

Author

• Ramona Alcalá, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author