Learning from a Family’s Translingual Prayer and Civic Protest through Danza Azteca

• In Event: Decolonizing Literacy Pedagogies Built From Border-Crossers’ Civic Saberes

Abstract

Objectives: Latinx parents and families continue to be absent from greater discourses in education, including their diverse forms of participation across schools and communities (Baquedano-López, 2021; Barillas Chón et al., 2021; Urrieta, 2013). This paper explores one family’s intergenerational participation in danza azteca as a translingual Mesoamerican way of knowing, learning, and praying through the body.
Framework: This research is informed by the theoretical contributions of Critical Latinx Indigeneities (Blackwell et al., 2017), translanguaging as sociocultural practice (García & Wei, 2014), and immigrant families’ lived civics (Cohen et al., 2018; de los Ríos & Molina, 2020) to explore an Indigenous Quechua mother’s and her three children’s (of both Quechua and Mexican descent) perspectives on multilingualism, learning, culture, and community engagement through danza azteca (traditional Mesoamerican dance).

Methods and Data Sources: The guiding research question asks, “According to the focal family, what are some of the motivations for and lessons learned through their participation in danza azteca.” The focal family is multilingual (Spanish, English, Quechua speakers) with all three children born in Northern California, and the immigrant mother is from Lima, Peru, and the immigrant father is from Morelia, Michoacán. Guided by the ethics of relational and community-based research, the researcher had been in close kinship with the focal family for four years prior to any research activity commencing. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Northern California, mainly participant observation, field notes, semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation interviews, the findings explore how danza azteca is a conduit for this mother and her children to “encontrar raíces juntos” (explore their rich histories together). While the father is not a danzante (dancer), he is the family’s regular videographer and photographer.

Results: For this family, danza azteca is a way for them to participate spiritually and civically in their communities across modes and languages, teach and learn about racial in/justice, and foster greater spaces for humanity. The first finding refutes the dominant idea of danza azteca as a “performance” for economic and cultural production by situating it as ceremonial prayer and a form of social protest. The second finding explores how the mother sees herself as one of her children’s earliest civic teachers, especially as she dances alongside them at rallies against police repression and for the greater movement for Black Lives. The third finding examines how, for this family, danza azteca is a way to honor the full humanity of everyone—especially those struggling, sick, and at the margins of society.

Significance: Bi/multilingual families’ important expressive cultural practices are too often neglected in literacy and language research as well as anthropology of education research. This paper contributes to this area and adds to the increasing body of literature that highlights immigrant Latinx parents as primary language and literacy educators (Nuñez & García-Mateus, 2021), community leaders (Baquedano-López, 2021), and acknowledges the robust cultural saberes of Indigenous Latinx parents (Martínez & Mesinas, 2019; Urrieta, 2013).

Author

• Cati V. de los Rios, University of California - Berkeley