Ambigú Trashumante: decolonial praxis unforgetting histories, constructing future justice

• In Event: Part 2: Advancing peace, justice and human rights through community-engaged praxis in education

Proposal

Objectives: This applied social research project, Ambigú Trashumante Barra de Café Ambulante, aims to disrupt dominant theories of immigration, migration, and refugee movements by challenging the transit state and final destination paradigms often centered on the U.S. The social project promotes community-engaged arte útil as a creative, pedagogical, and liberatory manifestation of social justice, transcending traditional insider/outsider dynamics. Specifically, Ambigú reclaims narratives of human movement, highlights Mexico as a destination, and fosters anti-conformity through migrant and immigrant entrepreneurship.

Theoretical framework: The project is theoretically grounded in Tania Bruguera’s (2012) concept of arte útil—useful art, which emphasizes art's functional role in societal transformation. Methodologically, it employs a decolonized settler ethnography combined with Mesoamerican Community-Based Participatory Action Research (MCBPAR), centering Indigenous knowledges and community agency. This framework challenges xenophobic narratives of exceptionalism by reframing human movement through an anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberalist, and decolonial lens.

Decolonial methods: From 2022-2023, a six person collaborative team constructed a bicicargo—a cargo bike transformed into a mobile coffee bar. This useful art literally embodied justice and capitalistic disruption by offering free coffee in Mexico City, creating a space for knowledge exchange and creative power. The research observed and documented interactions and transformations facilitated through this mobile intervention, particularly in partnership with a local youth movement in Nezahualcóyotl and immigrant, migrant artists.

Data: The primary data emerged from the lived experiences and interactions facilitated by the Ambigú itself, including its construction by diverse immigrants and migrants, the ceremonial offering of free coffee, and ongoing engagements in CDMX. Observational insights and decolonial qualitative analysis of community interactions served as evidence. The Ambigú itself, as a physical and symbolic artifact, functions as a core material embodiment of the project's inquiry.

Conclusions in resistance: Five core patterns emerged in 2023: (1) the right to thrive in place and freedom of mobility through social autogestivo entrepreneurship, (2) the equalization of power for those with a trade, (3) an anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberalist subversive movement, (4) tequitl (Náhuatl for communal labor), and (5) the reclamation of materials, trade, and space. The project demonstrates Ambigú as a conduit for immigrant, migrant, and refugee justice, presenting an alternative liberatory education model outside traditional neoliberal hierarchies.

Decolonial scholarly significance: Ambigú contributes to peace, social justice, and human rights education by foregrounding community engaged praxis and offering a tangible model for decolonized, liberatory education outside conventional academic settings. It aligns with the conference theme of unforgetting histories and imagining futures by challenging historical narratives of migration and constructing new justice-rooted visions through a highly localized, community driven initiative.

Author

• Augusto Rivero, Augusto Rivero