The Land Speaks: A Borderland’s Currere para Sanar La Herida

• In Event: Teaching in the Ruins, Learning from the Land: Grounding Curriculum in Place and Possibility

Abstract

Utilizing Pinar's (2023) currere methodology, this study explores the borderlands as a
sentient, traumatized landscape of colonial violence. By integrating Anzaldúa's (1999)
conceptualization of the border as a "1,950 mile long open wound" (p. 24), this research
examines how institutional practices perpetuate systemic displacement and epistemic erasure.
Through informal conversations, oral histories, and environmental data analysis, the study
reveals land, body, and language as interconnected sites of generational trauma. The research
challenges settler-colonial narratives by recentering indigenous life and ancestral wisdom.
Findings demonstrate how colonial legacies continue to shape curricular landscapes, proposing
a transformative framework that listens to the land's memory to imagine an integration of geoonto-
epistemic reconstruction to heal.

Authors

• Miguel Mendoza, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

• Dalia Mendoza, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

• Laura M. Jewett, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley