La Facultad en el Valle: Rural Latinx Youth Resisting Deficit Depictions of Their College-Goingness

• In Event: Making Mundo Nuevo: Advancing an Anzaldúan Theorization of Latinx Resistance in Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives
The emerging research on rural Latinx students and communities has portrayed their college-goingness from a deficit perspective. This deficit-centered research ignores how youth from these communities understand and resist barriers to higher education access for themselves and future generations. This paper focuses on the voices, aspirations, and visions of rural Latinx high school students from California’s San Joaquin Valley. Youth viewed GIS (geographic information systems) maps created by the author using secondary quantitative educational data from the U.S. Census and were engaged in a plática (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) about the maps. Rural Latinx youth argued that the maps, particularly the quantitative secondary data, depicted their communities from a deficit lens and ignored the transformation yet to come through their pursuit of college degrees and the changes they hoped to make in their rural communities.

Theoretical Framework
This paper draws on Anzaldúa’s (2002) theorization of “la facultad” to explain rural Latinx college-going youth’s deep understanding of structural and spatial inequities in their communities that impact their higher education access. Anzaldúa defined la facultad as “the ability to shift attention and see through the surface of things and situations” (p. 125). I apply and extend la facultad to rural Latinx students’ awareness and resistance towards systems of oppression manifesting in their communities that limit their college opportunities.

Methods and Data Sources
This paper focuses on a plática conducted with rural Latinx students that centered on their reactions and responses to the GIS maps created by the author. In showing the maps to the students, the maps were “ground-truthed” (Vélez & Solórzano, 2017). Ground-truthing is a verification process employed by critical race spatial scholars in educational research to ensure that quantitative secondary data and GIS maps reflect the lived experiences and resistance strategies of institutionally marginalized communities.

Findings
When youth were shown the GIS maps that visualized a lack of higher education access and attainment in the Valley among rural Latinxs, students argued that the maps lacked sociopolitical context and nuance. Using their facultad, rural Latinx youth argued that the lack of higher education opportunities in the Valley was intentional. If students like them were barred from accessing higher education, the Valley’s economic system would continue profiting off rural Latinx youth who entered the agricultural fields rather than higher education. Rural Latinx youth also mentioned that despite navigating structural inequities in pursuing higher education, youth were enrolling in college. Rural Latinx youth hoped to transform the lack of higher education access and attainment in their communities by graduating from college and returning to their rural communities to improve inequitable conditions.

Significance
Without the pláticas, the GIS maps would have perpetuated a deficit-centered view of rural Latinx communities and their “low levels” of educational attainment. The youth resisted this deficit depiction of their communities, arguing that the maps needed to be updated to reflect their current higher education pursuits and how they planned to resist and alter their communities’ inequitable experiences through their educational accomplishments.

Author

• Mayra Puente, University of California - Santa Barbara