Intercambio as Methodology for Defiant Solidarity

• In Event: Decolonial Theories and Pedagogies of Liberation: Resistance and Re-Existence

Abstract

This paper presents Intercambio (Morales & Yang, 2021) as a methodology for solidarity and possibility across the margins of empire. It begins by reviewing literature and theory around the system of relations dictated by racial capitalism. Gilmore (2002) articulates racial capitalism as a technology of antirelationality that disjoins or deactivates relations between human beings needed for capitalist expropriation to work (as discussed in Melamed, 2015). Gilmore’s understanding of racial capitalism as a technology of antirelationality is helpful in thinking about how people across political geographies are not only made distinct, but are systematically prevented from relating on their own terms. In defiance of this system of relations, this paper proposes Intercambio as a methodological approach that organizes encounters among people from distinct contexts and geographies where they share place-based experiences, pedagogical practices, and political organizing tactics. The paper outlines Intercambio as a methodology for transnational encounter in defiance of racial capitalism and continues on to trace its inspirations (EZLN, 2016) and commitments. Using this methodology, the study documents the exchange between a group of California-based teachers and various social movements and teacher-activists in central Mexico engaged in alternative autonomous education projects. Disillusioned with superficial enactments of social and racial justice in their institutions across the U.S. (Montaño et al., 2002), the focal participants of this study—California-based preservice and in-service teachers—sought learning and inspiration elsewhere, beyond their normative institutions and seemingly progressive contexts (Shange, 2019; Wynter, 2001). Through this study, this group of teachers traveled to Mexico City, the State of Mexico (EdoMex), and Puebla to meet with representatives of local rural teacher-training colleges and the Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de México (FECSM), a student-run organization found across these colleges. They also met with teacher representatives from la Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (CNTE)—a radical faction of the official national teachers union in Mexico also known as SNTE—and the autonomous education projects that they lead in their various contexts throughout Mexico City, EdoMex, and Puebla. The findings highlight the takeaways, translations, inspirations, and instances of solidarity among teachers as a result of their participation in Intercambio. For instance, a denominator across education movements, schools, and projects that were visited by participants was the work towards autonomy—the ability for each community to determine their own way of carrying out education. This, in turn, inspired California-based participants to shift their own practices in their own contexts in ways they felt were in solidarity and aligned with a principle of autonomy. The paper argues that Intercambio can serve as a methodology for politically-engaged scholarly research (Juris & Khanasbish, 2013) that aims to be in solidarity with liberatory movements and efforts across the margins of empire. Furthermore, it argues that Intercambio, as a methodology for defiant solidarity, can serve as part of a broader strategy to challenge and disrupt modern/colonial systems of knowledge and racialized social structures.

Author

• Davíd Morales, Stanford University