A Mestizaje Identity: Testimoniando as a Pedagogy of Healing and Recovery

• In Event: Testimonios de Aprendizaje in Aztlán, Gran México: Located-Transnational Decolonial Options of Critical Curricular-Pedagogical Praxis

Abstract

Objectives

This paper focuses on testimonio as a pedagogy toward healing, recovery, and reformation. As a result of my own reflective moments as an educator, student, and researcher, I have reclaimed my identity. Through my interactions and conversations with five graduate Latinx women from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley I have sketched my own autoethnographic experience. Thus, reconciling the other within me has meant writing to record what others erase when I speak (Anzaldúa, 2009). As a springboard for theorizing, drawing from various experiences centers testimonio as a powerful method for feminist research praxis (Latina Feminist Group, 2001).

Theoretical framework

Situated within Anzaldúa’s Siete Pasos de Conocimiento and employing testimonio as a framework, “validates and centers on [the] experiential knowledge of [Women] of Color, recognizing the power of collective memory and knowledge, and guided by larger goals of transformation and empowerment” (Pérez Huber, 2010, p. 83).

Method

Along with the testimonios of the five research participants, my own writings transcend a descriptive discourse to a more performative narrative that engages the personal and collective aspects of identity formation (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga & Carmona, 2012). Thus, testimonios whether written or spoken, help theorize oppression, resistance, and subjectivity (2012).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

Participant interviews broken down by each thematic category will be shared, along with my own reflective journal writing, and field notes will be used as the data sources for this study. Narratives of survival/resistance/resilience enriched by testimonios cultivate a critical consciousness that shakes the foundations of our experiences as women of color (Sosa-Provencio, Sheahan, Desai, & Secatero, 2018, p. 5).

Findings

As a defining moment of my study, I now considered my own experiences, upbringing and education in the formation of my Mestizaje identity. I recognize that because of those in power, (elite Whites, school officials and policymakers), the forms of knowledge, networks, and the cultural wealth of my students, women of color, and of myself are restricted and controlled (Yosso & Buricaga, 2016).

Scholarly Significance

The process of theorizing, constructs new ways of knowing and being, empowering our sense of self. As a woman of color, my pedagogies of the home, healing and solidarity speak from within my body of lived experience. This speaks against the brutalization of my home on the borderlands, and in response to the distorted perspectives of mainstream knowledge that silences my voice.


References

Anzaldúa, G. (2009).Bearing witness; The postmodern Llorona. The Gloria Anzaldúa reader (pp. 277-281). Duke University Press.

Delgado Bernal, D., Burciaga, R., & Flores Carmona, J. (2012). Chicana/Latina testimonios: Mapping the methodological, pedagogical, and political. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45, 363-372.

Latina Feminist Group. (2001). Introduction: Papelitos guardados (pp. 1-24). Telling to live: Latina feminist testimonios. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Pérez Huber, L. (2010). Using Latino critical race theory (LatCrit) and racist nativism to explore the intersectionality in the educational experiences of undocumented Chicana students. Educational Foundations, 24(1-2), 77-95.

Author

• Cecile Michelle Caddel, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley