Rompiendo Silencios: A Youth Participatory Approach to Archiving and Reclaiming Suburban Histories

• In Event: Archives as Resistance: Understanding Archive as Curriculum and Decolonial Praxis

Abstract

Purpose

Historical narratives profoundly shape our present (Trouillot, 1995; Hall, 1997), yet traditional archival practices have marginalized communities by excluding them from both the archives and the process of constructing history (Hartman, 2018; Caswell, 2021). What transformative possibilities emerge when historically marginalized communities are empowered to shape their own narratives and determine their legacy? How can we create opportunities for them to develop historical agency and co-construct community histories?

This paper examines a youth-led, participatory oral history project in a suburb that in recent decades has evolved into a Latine diasporic community. Despite increasing calls to examine suburban demographic shifts (Diamond & Posey-Maddox, 2020; Lewis-McCoy et al., 2023), the myth of the white, middle-class suburb has hindered research centering marginalized communities. The author, a local educator, collaborated with Latine youth to develop a community-based digital archive of photographs, written narratives, and oral testimonios (Delgado Bernal, 2012) in Spanish. Grounded in a liberatory educational praxis, this project extended curriculum beyond the classroom, positioning students and the Latine community as both knowledge holders and co-creators of their community's history.

Framework:
This paper draws on critical archival studies (Caswell, 2021), Latino critical race theory (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001), and Black and Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies (hooks, 1994; Delgado-Bernal, 1998, 2012) to theorize how a teacher and her students analyzed mainstream local archives,identifying the harmful erasure of their Latine community history. In response, they initiated a classroom-based community archive, collecting counter-narratives that were ultimately integrated into both local archival records and a broader school-community project. Drawing from youth participatory action research epistemology, this participatory archive was founded on the belief that young people from historically marginalized communities have the "right to research" (Appadurai, 2008), empowering students to to address archival erasure by centralizing community knowledge in a public-facing archive, countering what is considered “official knowledge” within schools .
Methods/Data Source:
Through historical methods, students collected artifacts such as photographs and oral histories from Latine community members in Spanish, capturing "papelitos guardados" (hidden stories) and transforming them into counter-narratives that conveyed personal, political, and social realities (Delgado-Bernal, 2012). The photographs and oral histories unearthed the silenced experiences of the Latine community, revealing their struggles against discrimination in a formerly white suburb, their efforts to celebrate their culture, their establishment of successful businesses, and their creation of community hubs to support fellow migrants.
Findings
Findings highlight how this youth-led, participatory archive project fostered students critical consciousness, historical agency, and pride in Latine ethnicity and their community. By actively shaping collective memory within their hometown, the project facilitated a deeper understanding of the suburb's evolving identity and fostered a sense of shared ownership over its historical narrative.

Significance
By engaging Latine youth in archival practices and community storytelling, I witnessed their transformative reclamation of historical agency and resistance to erasure. This project not only disrupts traditional power dynamics within educational and archival institutions but also invites a broader scholarly conversation about the democratization of knowledge production and the role of marginalized communities in shaping their own histories.

Author

• Michelle R. Ochoa, Graduate Center - CUNY