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Abstract

This study examines how three recently arrived Indigenous male migrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico in an urban high school in the Pacific Northwest understood and employed Spanish and English to navigate racialized and languaged interactions. Utilizing a Critical Latinx Indigeneities framework, findings from this study show that Spanish is a racialized and languaged system of power that traveled with youth. In the U.S., Spanish interacts with English as a new system of power resulting in the diminishing of Indigenous languages. This study provides urban educators with understandings of the complex systems of race, language, and power Indigenous migrants navigate.

Keywords

Maya youth Indigenous migrants Indigenous Latinxs Critical Latinx Indigeneities colonialism Language

Introduction

This study investigates how two recently arrived¹ K’iche’ and Mam migrant youth from Guatemala and one Nahua youth from Mexico understood how Spanish and English is laden with colonial power in their countries of origin and in the United States.² Recently arrived Maya migrant youth represent a unique demographic within Latinxs. The United States since 2011 has experienced a sustained increase of Guatemalan and Mexican unaccompanied minors arriving in the country. Following established migration networks, these youth most often arrive to urban centers and urban schools (Alvarado et al., 2017; Canizales, 2015; Donato & Pérez, 2017; Estrada, 2013; López & Irizarry, 2019). In most cases, unaccompanied Guatemalan minors are predominantly Indigenous or migrate from primarily Maya and rural regions within the country (Heidbrink, 2020; Nolan, 2019; UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2014). Maya peoples’ migration can be traced back to at least the 1970s (Popkin, 2005) and that of Indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec Mexicans to the Bracero Program of the 1940s (Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Kearney, 2000).

I focus attention on recently arrived Maya and Indigenous Mexican minors in urban school settings because they experience different lived realities from those of their non-Maya and non-Indigenous migrant contemporaries within their countries of origin and in the U.S. Human rights advocates and political activists have documented the systemic ways Maya peoples are racially and linguistically oppressed in Guatemala. One of the most recent horrific examples of targeted oppression by the Guatemalan government of Maya peoples is the genocide of the Ixil during the 1980s. For its part, the Mexican government has legislated policies favoring foreign mining companies that directly harm the political and economic autonomy of Indigenous groups such that of the Nahua in various regions across the country (López Bárcenas & Eslava Galicia, 2011; Tetreault, 2015). The oppression that Indigenous peoples experience in Guatemala, Mexico, and the rest of Abya Yala³ are outcomes of colonial legacies of racial hierarchies and structural violence that directly target them (Fenelon & Hall, 2005; Speed, 2019).

Another reason to focus on Indigenous migrant youth is due to urban education's essentially nonexistent research on them despite their longstanding membership in Latinidad, urban schools, and urban centers (Hamilton & Chinchilla, 2001; Manz, 1988; Peñalosa, 1984). Urban Education journal (UEX) has published important work on Native American/American Indian youth and communities including literacy and writing practices (e.g, Cisneros, 2021), science (e.g., Bang et al., 2013), and pedagogy (San Pedro et al., 2016). UEX has also published a plethora of studies on migrant Latinxs. However, a cursory keyword search of “Indigenous” and “Latinxs” in UEX yielded only one study (López & Irizarry, 2019). I modify López and Irizarry’s (2019) call for urban education researchers to broaden their understandings of race and racialization to examinations that “include Indigenous peoples who coinhabit … [Black, Brown, Native, and migrant] identity categories and these spaces” (p. 19). Otherwise, one unintended outcome of the compartmentalizing of “Indigenous” from “migrant Latinx” is the invisibilization of Indigenous migrants’ particular racialized and languaged⁴ experiences (López & Irizarry, 2019).

Latinx education scholars are disrupting the invisibilization of Indigenous peoples from Abya Yala in U.S. urban settings with their recent studies. These scholars examine the language practices and identity developments within urban schools of Ixil, Zapotec, Mixtec, P’urhépecha, and Nahua youth, among others (Barillas Chón et al., 2021). Latinx education scholars, for instance, note how Latinxs perpetrate acts of racism towards Maya and other Indigenous migrants in and out-of-school settings by calling them “indio,” an historical racist moniker used in parts of Central America and Mexico to denote someone who is inferior (e.g., Barillas Chón, 2019; Sanchez, 2018). Minimal studies exist, however, within this emerging scholarship and in urban education that examines Maya and Indigenous Mexican migrant youth's racialized and languaged experiences.

This study intervenes in the urban education's research inattention on Indigenous students by describing how recently arrived K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua youth utilize Spanish and English to traverse their racialized and languaged experiences in Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S. I argue that the youth strategically utilized colonial languages to navigate what I refer to as “colonial codes of power” in their everyday lived experiences. Delpit (1988) defined codes of power as “rules” that relate to “linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self” (p. 283) for interacting in a society ruled by a specific culture of power.⁵ I expand on Delpit's foundational work by noting that codes of power are colonial legacies meant to normalize language use and racialize subjects for the purpose of sustaining unequal relationships of power (Mignolo, 1995; Rosa & Flores, 2017; Veronelli, 2015). Thus, codes or power are colonial, colonizing, racializing, and languaged (Rosa, 2016).

K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua migrant youth do not escape the colonized systems that give rise to codes of power that they are thrust into in their countries of origin once they are in the U.S. (Calderón & Urrieta, 2019; Canizales, 2015). Therefore, I rely on a Critical Latinx Indigeneities (CLI) analytic framework (Blackwell et al., 2017) and a raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa & Flores, 2017) to analyze the youth's languaged experiences in their countries of origin and in the U.S. that shape their lived realities and understandings of colonial codes of power. Findings from this study show that Spanish is a racialized and languaged code of power in Guatemala and Mexico that informs Indigenous youth's understanding of their Indigenous selves, and their racialized and languaged interactions. These codes travel with youth into the U.S. where they interact with English as a new languaged and racialized code of power.

Additionally, this study demonstrates that unlike non-Indigenous recently arrived migrants from Guatemala and Mexico, K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua youth learn codes of power under multiple colonial conditions in their countries and in the U.S. This understanding should provide urban school educators working with recently arrived Central American and Indigenous Mexican migrants an awareness of intra and inter-ethnic group dynamics including instances of racism towards Maya and Nahua youth. Significance of this study for urban education theory lies in the CLI analytic framework employed. CLI prompts urban education scholars focusing on migrant youth from Abya Yala to consider the dynamic histories of colonialism, racism, indigeneities, language, and migration when making sense of the vast demographic often lumped under the Latinx category.

Analytic Framework

I rely on Critical Latinx Indigeneities (Blackwell et al., 2017) and raciolinguistics (Alim et al., 2016; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa, 2016; Rosa & Flores, 2017) to analyze the youth's racialized and languaged experiences. I employ these analytical perspectives to demonstrate how racialized and languaged experiences informed Indigenous youth's understandings of colonial codes of power in their contexts of origin and new contexts of reception. CLI is a recent interdisciplinary analytic in Latinx Studies. It emerged to expand the established theoretical frames for interpreting the realities of Indigenous peoples across Abya Yala and how they are reformulated in the U.S. (Calderón & Urrieta, 2019; Saldaña-Portillo, 2017). In particular, CLI undertakes a comparative and transborder (Stephen, 2007) approach to understanding the shifts in Indigenous subject formations over time that happens due to migratory movements, layered racialized systems encountered in this migration, and the colonial debris shaping the contexts of departure and arrival (Saldaña-Portillo, 2017, p. 139).

I find CLI useful in making sense of how the colonial codes of power Indigenous youth learned in Guatemala and Mexico traveled with them and intersected with new codes of power in the U.S. Understanding why and how codes of power travel requires investigating and unpacking mestizaje and Whiteness operating in Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S. For the purposes of brevity, mestizaje can be understood as an ideology and political project aimed at creating non-Indigenous and other-than-Indigenous subjects for the purposes of consolidating and maintaining unequal relationships of power. In Abya Yala, nation-states have invested interests in mestizaje and maintain it through the colonial legacy of racialized schemes and the “co-naturalization of language and race” (Rosa & Flores, 2017, p. 622). Atop these racialized and languaged systems is the White racial category and the Spanish language in the Spanish speaking countries. Telles (2014) and colleagues (Telles & Flores, 2013) note that depending on national contexts and relationships between education, class, and skin color allows some to cross into the White racial category more fluidly than others. While there is some flexibility in and out of racial categories, Whiteness continues to operate based on skin color hierarchies.

Similar to mestizaje, Whiteness in the U.S. operates as an ideology, best exemplified in the Black/White dichotomy. In this dichotomy, there are only White and non-White subjects; thus, all social, political, and economic relations are centered around White subjectivities. Latinxs are racialized under a “collective Black” category in this dichotomy (Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2009).⁶ I ague that in the U.S., mestizaje is cloaked under the “Hispanic/Latino” racial categories. For instance, Hispanics at various historical points have been racialized as White or “honorary White” (Almaguer, 2012; Rumbaut, 2009). It is clear that “honorary White” meant proximity to Whiteness. Ultimately, the goals of mestizaje and Hispanic/Latino is Indigenous erasure. As I demonstrate in this paper, the colonial codes of power Indigenous migrant youth are born into impacts their treatment in their contexts of origin. These codes travel with them through mestizaje logics that overlap with a U.S. racialized system, both of which are grounded on proximity to Whiteness.

Raciolinguistics provides me a complementary analytic to CLI for explaining how Spanish provided the Indigenous youth in this study a schema informing their perceptions of Indigenous group membership. Raciolinguistics examines the role that language has in shaping perceptions of racialized identities. Within the U.S. context, English is racialized in a way that White subjects have or can achieve proper or standard English language skills (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Conversely, proper English is synonymous with Whiteness (ibid). By “proper” or “standard” is not meant key properties and features of language but rather a “raciolinguistic ideology that aligns normative Whiteness, legitimate Americanness, and imagined ideal English” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 165). In this case, English and Whiteness are co-constitutive of each other (Rosa & Flores, 2017). This raciolinguistic ideology is not confined to the U.S. and English. Rosa and Flores (ibid) suggest that a raciolinguistic “perspective” can be applied to colonizing and ongoing-colonized contexts in which colonial languages were implemented to establish a social and racial order (p. 622).

The current work in education scholarship employing CLI shows its critical importance for understanding the unique positioning of Indigenous youth from Abya Yala in U.S. urban settings and schools (e.g., Casanova, 2019; Martínez, & Mesinas, 2019; Urrieta & Calderón, 2019). Moreover, a raciolinguistic perspective elucidates how racialized and languaged systems interact and travel with Indigenous migrant youth across borders.

Methodology

Findings presented in this article derive from a qualitative study I conducted during the 2015–2016 school year of eight recently arrived Indigenous migrant youth (15–20 years old) from Guatemala and Mexico in Pacific North High (PNH), a high school in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.⁷ Six of the youth are Maya (five K’iche’ and one Mam), one Nahua, and another youth preferred to identify as indio (Indian) from Oaxaca. Additionally, all youth were male. The study was guided by the research question: “How do Indigenous migrant youth make sense of indigeneity in their countries of origin and in the U.S.?”

This study asked Indigenous youth to speak about their experiences and understandings of what indigeneity meant to them, including their perspectives on Indigenous languages, Spanish, and English. Therefore, semi-structured interviews were the most appropriate data gathering method (Merriam, 2009). The youth's busy schedules, familial, and work commitments affected the length and frequency of interviews. In total, I interviewed Tonio once, Alan twice, and Juan three times. All interviews lasted between 15 and 54 min, were conducted in Spanish during or after school time, and took place on campus, apart from three that happened at a local library, coffee shop, and laundromat.

Other data consists of approximately 120 h of participant observations, including informal conversations with the Indigenous youth, conducted over a period of nine non-consecutive months at PNH. I conducted observations to fill in any gaps that may have arisen in the semi-structured interviews with the youth. Observations, in addition to the classroom, generally took place in locations frequented by Indigenous youth such as the cafeteria, hallways, sports field, computer lab/library, and immediately outside the school facility. During these observations, I was attentive to the youth's interactions with other Indigenous youth and non-Indigenous Latinx students. I paid close attention to frequency of Indigenous language use by the Indigenous youth, spaces where these languages were spoken, and who they spoke Indigenous languages with.

Participants

I met Indigenous youth in this study through my volunteering at PNH from November 2014 until June 2016. My volunteering consisted of helping Spanish-speaking students with their classwork during their mathematics, arts, and newcomer classes. I recruited students between 15 and 20 years of age who self-identified as Indigenous and spoke and understood some Spanish. This age group was chosen because my study focused on recently arrived Indigenous youth of high school age. I targeted Spanish-speaking Indigenous youth because I am a Spanish speaker that doesnot speak an Indigenous language.

Out of a total of eight male participating youth, this study emphasizes three: Tonio, Juan, and Alan. I center the experiences of these youth because they come from three distinct ethno-linguistic communities in Guatemala and Mexico. They also have different experiences learning Spanish and Indigenous languages in their contexts of origin. In what follows, I provide a brief introduction of each youth to situate them in the context of this study and for my larger argument of how they navigate colonial codes of power.

I met Juan, at the time, a 20-year-old from San Marcos, Guatemala, at the start of 2015. Juan grew up speaking Mam, learned Spanish at school in Guatemala, was eager to learn English, and become trilingual. In Guatemala, he attended secondary schooling, as he planned to be a teacher, while also working to financially support his widowed mother. He had been in the U.S. for about 24 months at the start of the study. Reasons he gave for migrating to the U.S. were to be reunified with his sister and attend school. Once in the U.S. he intended to continue his goal of becoming a teacher by going to college. He was both excited and unsure about how to make this possible. While being a full-time Senior at PNH, Juan also worked full-time as a dishwasher at a local Thai restaurant. He lived with a relative and another acquaintance in an apartment.

Tonio, 17 years old, is from El Quiché, Guatemala, and grew up speaking K’iche’ and Spanish simultaneously. At the time of the first interview, Tonio had been in the U.S. for a year and at PNH approximately seven months. Tonio attended secondary school in Guatemala. He migrated to the U.S. to “search for a future” since, for him, “[en] nuestros paises no hay tantas oportunidades” or “in our countries, there aren't that many opportunities.” Tonio worked at a restaurant and lived with his uncles in the U.S. For him, a primary reason for attending PNH was to learn English. A Junior at PNH, Tonio mostly kept to himself, hanging out in the computer lab/library, as he explained that he did not like to hang out with “malos estudiantes que fuman” or “bad students that smoke,” or that were disrespectful to each other by the way they spoke or treated each other.

Alan, also 17 years old, was born in Morelos Cuautla, Mexico, where he completed preparatoria or secondary schooling. When first interviewed, Alan had been in the U.S. for approximately seven months, and at PNH for about six of those. He lived with his parents and sister in the U.S. While as a child he spoke Náhuatl, early on in his childhood he was bullied at school for the use of it. Subsequently, his grandparents whose language of origin is Náhuatl discouraged him from speaking the language. As a result, Alan knows some Náhuatl but is primarily a Spanish speaker. Reasons he gave for his family migrating to the U.S. were for him to have a better future. He enrolled as a Senior at PNH and said that his goal was to graduate from school and “earn a degree to be able to work in something humble.” Alan on occasion worked with his father painting houses during the weekend.

Schoolmates

Steinberg and Morris (2001) noted the importance of schoolmates’ impact on youth's sense of self. I interviewed the Indigenous youth's schoolmates to understand their perceptions of Indigenous peoples in their contexts of departure and in the U.S. Criteria for selecting schoolmates included being 15 through 20 years of age, Spanish speakers, and recently arrived. The schoolmates consisted of Adolfo, a 19-year-old male youth from Guatemala, and 17-year-old Alexis and 15-year-old Chava, both male youth from El Salvador. These schoolmates did not self-identified nor identified any family members as Indigenous.

Setting

Pacific North High is in an urban city in the Pacific Northwest that historically has served as a place where refugees are resettled. Founded in 1980, PNH was initially designed to be a newcomer center, being a temporary space for recently arrived migrant and refugee youth to become acclimated to the city and U.S. society. The gradual change to high school status began in 2012/2013 with PNH celebrating its first graduating class in 2016. While being an urban high school, PNH continues to also serve as a newcomer center for youth between 11–20 years of age from different areas in the city. Students who attend PNH are given the choice to finish high school there or opt to transfer to their neighborhood school.

This study took place at PNH because it served as one of the few urban schools in the country designed as a primary entry point for recently arrived migrant and refugee youth. My collegial relationship with Ms. Lupita, one of the school's bilingual student services facilitators, and the increase of Central American migrant students during the 2014–2015 school years were two other reasons why PNH was the setting for this study. Ms. Lupita, a migrant from Oaxaca, not only introduced me to the school's principals, thus facilitated my entry into PNH, but also familiarized me to Maya and Indigenous Mexican students. Reflecting the growth of Latinx students, Spanish was the leading language spoken by the student population, followed by Chinese, Vietnamese, and Somali. The school recorded 13% of the Latinx student population being speakers of an Indigenous language and the rest being monolingual Spanish speakers. Staff and faculty alerted me that due to the shifting nature of the student demographics, the school had difficulty recording consistent Indigenous language speaking populations from Central America and Mexico. Thus, the population of Indigenous language speaking students in the school fluctuated throughout the year.

Stages and Methods of Analysis

Stages of analysis included a round of “open coding” followed by more focused coding (Merriam, 2009). After transcribing all interviews in Spanish using a word processor, I did open coding which consisted of cursory labeling of sections of the transcriptions noting youth's discussion of race and language. The second round of coding entailed the creation of “organizational” and “substantive” categories (Maxwell & Chmiel, 2014). In organizational categorizing, I placed the codes created in open coding in larger categories. One example of the organizational categories I created is “Treatment based on Indigeneity.” This organizational category aligned with the topical question I asked regarding the treatment of Indigenous language speakers in countries of origin and the U.S. Substantive categorizing refers to the researcher's own understanding of the words that participants use to describe a particular experience. One example of a substantive category I created is “Bullying”, Alan's phrase to describe non-Indigenous Mexicans' treatment of Indigenous language speaking peoples.

Organizational and substantive coding was followed by an analysis of the codes utilizing my analytic frames. In Alan's case, I interpreted the code “Bullying” as a form of discrimination based on race and language. Juan described “indio” as a pejorative term used by non-Maya people in Guatemala and in the U.S. to mock or put down Maya people. I grouped these two codes under a new emerging category: “Interplay of Race and Language.” I subsequently did a “theoretical categorizing” where I utilized my theoretical framework to analyze my coded data (Maxwell & Chmiel, 2014, p. 26). I interpreted “Interplay of Race and Language” as a colonial legacy of racializing peoples based on language use or perception of languages (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

Limitations and Positionality

One limitation of this study is the lack of gender representation. I was not successful in recruiting female Indigenous youth for this study. This presents a challenge to my arguments regarding Spanish as a colonial code of power shaping understandings of Indigenous selves. Scholars have noted that Maya women face gender discrimination and other structural violences that limits their formal education, thus relegating them to domestic and unpaid labor sectors (Blackwell, 2017; Casanova, 2012; Speed, 2017). These inequities limit Maya women's opportunities to engage with Spanish as a colonial code of power. As a result, Indigenous women “are more likely to be monolingual Indigenous-language speakers when they arrive to the United States” (Blackwell, 2017, p. 160). What is more, Maya women experience greater instances of discrimination than their male counterparts due to the traje/corte or garments they wear which most often are visual expressions of indigeneity (Heidbrink, 2020; Machado-Casas, 2012). Lack of gender representation also presents an opportunity for future researchers to build and expand on the initial findings offered in this study.

I end this section on methodology by stating my positionality. I am Poqomam, born in southern Guatemala, and now part of the Maya diaspora living in the U.S. My family and I crossed into the U.S. unauthorized in the early 1990s. I grew up as a mono-languaged Spanish speaker and learned English in U.S. schools. Learning this colonial code of power has afforded me educational and economic opportunities that due to the Guatemalan government's structuring of poverty would have been beyond my reach had we remained in the country. Learning English, however, has not secured me membership into a culture of power. Whereas I am now a U.S. citizen, with a doctoral degree, and working at a research university I am still perceived and treated as an outsider, intruder, and threat to the U.S.

As an Indigenous person, it is my obligation to share about the racialized and languaged experiences of Maya and other Indigenous migrants in educational settings. I do this to disrupt the epistemological indifference much too common in urban education scholarship towards Indigenous students (Coloma, 2020) in general, and Indigenous migrants from Abya Yala in particular (Barillas Chón et al., 2021). Such epistemological indifference is a violent continuation of colonial logics of Indigenous erasure foundational to Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S. It is my hope that the following findings shed light into Tonio, Juan, and Alan's racialized and languaged experiences and serve as a catalyst for future research on Maya, Nahua, and other recently arrived Indigenous migrant youth from Abya Yala in U.S. urban schools.

Navigating Codes of Power

Alan, Tonio, and Juan constructed representations of their Indigenous selves and of others through their use and understanding of Spanish and English in their regions of origin and in the U.S. I explain in the following subsections how these representations were informed by Spanish as a racialized and languaged code of power that traveled with the youth to their new contexts of reception. Indigenous youth in the U.S. learned new colonial codes of power which overlapped with already established languaged and racial schemas afforded by their previous codes of power. One outcome of the overlapping codes of power is the diminishing of Indigenous languages. I conclude the section on navigating codes of power by proposing that Indigenous youth utilized colonial codes of power strategically and in protective ways (Casanova, 2019; Machado-Casas, 2009, 2012) to navigate their languaged and racialized interactions.

Spanish Informing Understandings of Indigenous Selves in Guatemala and Mexico

Juan, Tonio, and Alan relied on their Spanish speaking abilities, skills, and experiences to identify Indigenous peoples. Juan, who grew up speaking Mam until he attended elementary school, said “yo se que no hablo el español perfectamente” or “I know that I don't speak Spanish perfectly.” Tonio, who although grew up in a bilingual household but spoke mostly in K’iche', shared a similar sentiment when saying “there are certain words that I cannot pronounce well [in Spanish].” These youth's experiences having difficulties speaking Spanish or speaking it with an accent provided them reasons to assume that other Indigenous people would also struggle speaking Spanish or they would speak it with an accent. Tonio illustrated this reasoning in the following way:

I see when that person starts talking, how they can't express themselves well [in Spanish]. So then, [I think] this person speaks an other language. Why? Because they can't express themselves well. Or they couldn't express themselves well. Then, that's why I identify them [as Indigenous]. So, I finally ask, “do you speak an other [Indigenous] language?” … they reply, “No, no.” … I tell them they do. “Why [they ask]?” “Because … you couldn't pronounce this [correctly].”

Adler explained the association between Indigenous peoples and struggles with Spanish when sharing that the word indio in Mexico is often associated with “tener un acento diferente al español. Como hablar de las dos lenguas, idioma español y dialecto náhuatl” “(having a different accent than Spanish. Like speaking from the two languages, Spanish language and the Náhuatl dialect”).

Understanding Spanish as the point of reference for the Indigenous youth in their identification of other Indigenous peoples requires situating this language as an ongoing colonial power within their countries of origin. The Guatemalan constitution, as recently as 1993, reenacted Spanish as the official language of the country while relegating Indigenous languages as only components of the “Nation's cultural heritage” (República de Guatemala, 1993). In this case, the constitution intentionally strips Indigenous languages of any sociopolitical and socioeconomic powers. Conversely, the state reproduces Spanish language hegemony in the country among racialized groups such as ladinos (i.e., mestizos) and Indigenous peoples for the purposes of maintaining political and economic control (Cojtí Cuxil, 1996). Through internal colonialism, which is colonial relations of power supporting systems of economic and labor exploitation within colonized nation-states, Spanish to this day continues the colonial legacy of racialized and languaged hierarchies in Guatemala and in Mexico. Ladinos and mestizos also reproduce Spanish in these countries because of its promise of colonial power, or proximity to it.

Scholars writing about the “coloniality of power” note that an historical outcome of colonization was the creation of White and non-White subjects reflecting a division of human and non-human (Grosfoguel, 2016; Mignolo, 1995; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992).⁸ Veronelli (2015) notes that the creation of human (colonizers) from non-human (colonized) was accompanied by colonizers ascribing value to the “expressive tools” such as spoken language that each group utilized (p. 117). Colonizers perceived colonized peoples, including Indigenous peoples, not only as “communicatively inferior and their languages not fully languages” (Veronelli, 2015, p. 118) but also incapable of governing themselves. Colonizers then implemented Spanish, and racialized categories, as the language of governance and social interactions to administer more efficiently their new racialized subjects (Mignolo, 1995; Rama, 1996; Vinson, 2018).

Indigenous peoples in Guatemala and Mexico have varied reasons for speaking Spanish in their social and public interactions. One reason relates to the construction of representations of their Indigenous selves and of others for navigating racialized and languaged interactions. Tonio, Juan, and Alan in their places of origin relied on their experiences with and understanding of Spanish as a racializing process to assess who most likely was Indigenous based on that person's Spanish speaking skills. However, there are caveats to relying on Spanish speaking skills as a major indicator of Indigenous identity. In recounting his experience with being asked about his Indigenous background and whether he was an Indigenous language speaker, Alan said “proudly yes. I am Indigenous. ‘Do you speak [an Indigenous] language?’ [others] ask me. ‘I don't speak any [Indigenous] language. I can understand [Náhuatl], but I can't speak it.’”

Tonio, Juan, and Alan employed Spanish to present themselves as Spanish-speaking Indigenous people as a preemptive strategy to mitigate instances of racism outside their immediate Indigenous languaged communities. As Tonio recounted, “dialecto⁹ … solo se maneja en tu pueblo con … los que entiendan [sic]” (“dialect … is only used in your pueblo with … those that understand”). The use of Indigenous languages in social settings often led to mockery and bullying as Alan shared, “en México se ve que [personas no-indígenas] hacían mucho bullying por el idioma. Y si otro hablaba otro idioma y hablaban diferente o solamente hablaban el puro náhuatl, [las personas no-indígenas] les hacían mucho bullying … Y hay veces que hasta nos decían groserías” by which he meant, “in Mexico, you could see that they [non-Indigenous people] did a lot of bullying based on language. And if another [person] spoke an other language and they spoke it differently or if they only spoke Náhuatl, they [non-Indigenous peoples] would bully them a lot. They would even sometimes swear at us.” Alan added, “sometimes people would make fun because you speak such an old dialect like Náhuatl.” An outcome of this discrimination results in Nahua and other Indigenous peoples not speaking their Indigenous languages in public settings as Alan noted, “out of embarrassment that … other [non-Indigenous] people would make fun of their dialect, they don't learn it.” Discrimination based on language is extended to school settings where Alan once again shared: “entones me decían [otros estudiantes] que no podía jugar porque no entienden lo que digo. Entonces … empecé a olvidar ese idioma y empecé a hablar español”, meaning, “then they [other students] would tell me that I couldn't play with them because they didn't understand what I was saying. So, I began to forget that language and began to speak Spanish.”

Youth's limited use of K’iche’, Mam, and Náhuatl in public settings is a similar strategy that Maya language speakers engage in other parts of Guatemala as they use Spanish to not only prevent being victims of discrimination but also to access medical services and other types of social resources (e.g., Cerón et al., 2016). Their experiences dealing with codes of power provided the youth understandings of the social and racialized significance of Spanish. They used these understandings to identify potential Indigenous or Spanish language speakers in Guatemala and Mexico. I posit that a primary reason for identifying different language groups was to evaluate the types of interactions they could have with them. What is more, identifying someone as a potential Indigenous language speaker did not mean that the youth spoke to them in Mam, K’iche’, or Náhuatl. Spanish continued being the language that mediated their interactions outside of their familial and community Indigenous languaged settings, unintentionally reinforcing it as the sanctioned language of power.

Traveling Codes of Power and Interactions with English

The codes of power the youth learned and employed in Guatemala and Mexico traveled with them to the U.S. Their languaged experiences in Mexico and Guatemala informed their identification of Spanish speakers including Indigenous peoples in their new receiving contexts. Juan, for instance, shared the following ways he identified Indigenous students at PNH: “I know … six students … I’ve talked with them [in Spanish] and they told me that they’re … from Guatemala. They tell me the place they’re from and they speak other languages.” For Alan, whose grandparents discouraged him when he was a child to speak Náhuatl, the process of identifying Indigenous peers and being identified as Indigenous was mediated by Spanish:

There are times I’m asked [by schoolmates] if I speak another language. I tell them no. But I can understand it [Náhuatl]. And there are times that I am asked, “yes, but what language do you speak? I speak Náhuatl.” “Oh, I also speak a bit, but not that much.” And they speak to me [in Náhuatl] … And precisely, people that I know that speak like me, and they too, they ask, “where are you from?”

The youth's non-Indigenous Latinx schoolmates in this study also relied on language to determine who they believed to be Indigenous. When probed about what came to mind when hearing the word “Indigenous,” Chava, Alexis, and Adolfo respectively said that it meant someone that “speaks dialecto … that speaks another language besides Spanish”, “language and clothing” and “languages they [Indigenous people] speak.” Alexis further commented that in absence of visible markers that he used to identify Indigenous peoples such as clothing, he relied on language. Specifically, Alexis commented that he identified Indigenous students at PNH based on “la forma y el acento [en español] que ellos tienen” or the “form and accent [in Spanish] that they have.”

Alan, Juan, and Tonio understood the significance of Spanish as an important colonial code of power that mediated languaged interactions even in the U.S. For this reason, verbal exchanges with schoolmates, especially initial ones where they had not previously met, all happened in Spanish. Colonial codes or power traveled into the U.S. as evidenced by how their non-Indigenous migrant schoolmates identified Indigenous peoples based on their accent in Spanish. Indigenous youth's accents placed them as non-White and non-mestizo because of the specific raciolinguistic ideologies they are born in, that travel with them, and that interact with raciolinguistic ideologies in the U.S.

Rosa and Flores (2017) noted that “raciolinguistic ideologies shape the experiences of diasporic populations across societal contexts” which demands a remapping of transnational racialization processes (626). The youth in this study showed how raciolinguistic ideologies cross borders when they relied on Spanish as a linguistic code to racially situate themselves and Latinx classmates and navigate their new racialized and languaged contexts. Whereas in Mexico and Guatemala youth were ascribed and managed the indio or indígena racial moniker and the racialized and languaged hierarchies under which they operate, in the U.S. they had to make sense of Latino and/or Hispanic racial categories through raciolinguistic ideologies. Alan exemplifies this process when sharing how non-Indigenous people react in Mexico to being called indígena and by the ways he makes sense of his Indigenous self in the U.S. He said that in Mexico, “si alguna persona que habla español le dices ‘indígena’, se molestea. Se enoja y hasta con insultos te dice ‘porque me dices indio, si soy mexicano. Y soy nacido en le D.F.’” or “if you tell someone that speaks Spanish that they are ‘Indigenous’, they get upset. They get mad and with insults they tell you ‘why do you call me ‘Indigenous’, if I’m Mexican. I was born in the D.F. [Federal District].” Alan in the U.S. stated that he identifies as “Hispanic because I know how to speak Spanish.” He further elaborated, “I always identified myself as coming from the Náhuatl culture … I am Mexican, but also Hispanic, but I have sangre latina [Latina blood], and I have Indigenous roots. So, then, I have a bit of everything. So, I consider myself more, like they say, indio [Indian].”

Evident in Alan's account is a complex understanding of race and language that operates within Mexico and across and bidirectionally between Mexico and the U.S. In Mexico, the ability to speak Spanish by non-Indigenous people serves as a rebuke to being identified as Indigenous. In contrast, Spanish for Alan in Mexico and in the U.S. is a way of not only making sense of racialization processes but also of reinforcing his Indigenous self. He explained that he is “Mexican” noting the importance of this national identity, reified in Mexico through Spanish, that locates him as an Indigenous Mexican state-subject living in the U.S. Alan also identified as “Hispanic” because he understood that this is a racialized category of peoples in the U.S. based on the perception of Spanish as a shared language. Additionally, he claimed the pan-ethnic “Latino” label given his understanding that other peoples from Abya Yala also live in the U.S. Given the option of self-identifying, Alan said, “I would identify as indio.”

Indigenous youth's understandings of racial discriminations based on language traveled with and informed their languaged interactions in the U.S. For instance, Alan related the following lesson he learned from his Nahua grandparents based on their perceptions of language discrimination towards Indigenous peoples:

So they taught me since I was little that I shouldn't learn that language [Náhuatl] … people that spoke Spanish well did a lot of bullying. That's why my family members stopped learning that language … my grandparents gave up on speaking Náhuatl to me and learned Spanish. They started teaching me [Spanish]. They took away my culture, the Náhuatl language, that language is almost becoming extinct.

Tonio growing up in El Quiché was also given similar advice by others outside his family. Tonio said the following as I explained in another study (Barillas Chón, 2019):

In Guatemala, some people have told me, because dialecto is only used in your town with those that understand it. On the other hand, Spanish is utilized in … other places. Well then, ‘don't use it [dialecto]. Focus more on Spanish.’ Some people have said that to me, because that is what is always used. On the other hand, dialecto is also good, but is only used in some places. Then is better to learn Spanish. (p. 27)

Casanova (2019) argued that Indigenous youth navigate discriminatory experiences by employing “Indigenous protective processes”, which are asset-based lessons they learned from their families and communities including the importance of their Indigenous backgrounds. The lessons and advice Adler and Tonio received are aspects of Indigenous protective processes that they were given to mitigate instances of discrimination in Mexico and Guatemala.

Casanova (ibid) additionally noted that Indigenous protective processes are enacted across borders. Juan, Tonio, and Alan in the U.S did not deny that they spoke or understood Indigenous languages nor rejected their Indigenous backgrounds. For instance, Juan commented that he felt “pride” when meeting “other people from Guatemala that speak an other [Indigenous] language.” Tonio shared that when students at PNH ask him what language he speaks, he replies “bueno, hablo español. Y siempre digo que hablo k’iche’” (Well, I speak Spanish. And I always say that I speak K’iche’”). These youth also stated that they did not experience discrimination based on their languages nor based on their Indigenous identities at PNH. However, they did point to other Indigenous youth who experienced discrimination. Juan's observations regarding interactions between non-Indigenous Latinxs and his Indigenous peers is revealing of Indigenous discrimination: “there are some [students] … they don't want to be friends … I guess sometimes it's, who knows, racism, or I don't know. There are times when you don't get along. And it's another problem among Hispanics because sometimes we don't get along. Who knows why.” The impact of the discrimination Juan speaks of results in Indigenous youth hiding markers that identifies them as Indigenous, primarily their languages. Tonio speaks to this when noting “he escuchado con otras personas [indígenas] de que … como, que lo esconden [el dialecto]. No quieren decirlo. Porque le da vergüenza o, no se. Pero la mera verdad, a mi no, no me da vergüenza” meaning, “I’ve heard that other [Indigenous] people … like, they hide it [their dialect]. They don't want to say it. Because they are embarrassed, or, I don't know. But truthfully, I don't get embarrassed.”

Earlier in this paper I pointed out mestizo logics in Guatemala and Mexico that creates subjects who are non-Indigenous or other-than Indigenous. Spanish and its accompanied racial logics are reproduced by mestizos in Abya Yala and then in the U.S. because it promises proximity to economic, political, and social power. The coloniality of power established a reinforcing and hierarchical relationship in Abya Yala between race, language, and systems of power. White and the ladino and mestizo elite occupy the echelons in this system while Indigenous peoples are relegated to the bottom. Spanish in Abya Yala provides proximity to Whiteness and conversely, is a move way from Indigenous subjectivities. The movement away from Indigenous travels into the U.S through racial logics that views proximity to Indigeneity as undesirable. This is a primary reason why some non-Indigenous Latinx youth schoolmates do not want to get along with Indigenous youth at PNH. Under these forces, Indigenous youth enact the protective processes they learned in their regions of origin in the U.S. Indigenous youth made conscious decisions, weighing the benefits of speaking Spanish against a background of racism and discrimination, when utilizing Spanish to communicate with their Indigenous peers and Latinx schoolmates.

English Replaces Spanish and Concealment Practices

Tonio, Alan, and Juan must not only learn Spanish in their places of origin but also English as an additional code of power in the U.S. These youth relied on Spanish to navigate their new languaged and racialized settings while also understanding the importance of learning English in their new raciolinguistic contexts. The instrumentality of English and its relationship with shaping everyday lived experiences is evident in Juan's and Alan's respective statements: “knowing English is very significant because, well, I’m in a new country. A country that I didn't know; a country that I got to know here and … a country where I need the language to be able to get ahead” and “I am here in this school because of that; I am learning English. So, if I spoke it … I would not be here.” In fact, learning English was one of the primary reasons why the youth were in school.

Alan was also critically aware of the global importance of English as a code of power when he mentioned learning some of it in Mexico: “y casi en todas las escuelas están aprendiendo el inglés [los estudiantes]. [Escuelas] ponen una hora de inglés … ¿para que? Para que se te quede un poco del inglés … para asegurar tu futuro. Claro, porque si no sabes como se dice esto en inglés … no vas a poder avanzar en la vida”, meaning “in almost all schools they [students] are learning English. They [schools] assign 1 h of English … for what? So that you learn a bit of English … to ensure your future. Of course, if you don't know how to say this in English … you won't be able to advance in life.” A significant difference between Spanish and English is that while the former continues being an important code of power for the youth in the U.S., it is surpassed by the latter. English is the leading code of power in the U.S. because of this country's long-held views of the exceptionalism of English monolingualism as vital to the nation's racial and linguistic makeup (Zentella, 2007). The relationship between nationalism, racialization, and language persists despite the U.S's neoliberal rhetoric, making their way into educational language policies, regarding the importance of bilingualism (Flores, 2013).

An outcome of learning colonial codes of power is the liminal positioning of Indigenous languages. I wrote earlier that Juan and Tonio did not deny their Indigenous languages, however, they explained that there were limited to no opportunities for them to speak them in the U.S. and at PNH. When asked if he spoke their Indigenous language in the U.S., Juan replied that he spoke it with his sister but the longer they were in the U.S. the less frequent they spoke it with each other. Tonio originally mentioned in his interview that he spoke K’iche’ only at home, “y ahora aquí, ya solo en la casa porque aquí es diferente.” However, in informal conversations he mentioned speaking K’iche’ at a Christian church he attended and at soccer matches he played in where he met other K’iche’ speaking people. In both cases, the youth spoke their Indigenous languages in familial or communal settings. This is similar to the settings they spoke their Indigenous languages in Guatemala.

Juan and Tonio also shared that they had limited to no opportunities to speak Mam and K’iche’ at PNH. For instance, Juan said “here is almost … not practiced”, “dialect is not spoken,” plus “Spanish and English is [sic] the one [languages] we use almost always.” What is more, the youth did not speak their Indigenous languages even when meeting other students at PNH who may have been speakers of the same Indigenous languages. Tonio responded that one reason why he did not speak K’iche’ at PNH was because he had no one to speak it with. He went on to explain differences of Maya languages in the following way:

I don't have peers that speak a dialect the same as mine. Because others that are from Guatemala also, but they are like, how can I tell you, neighbors. And then they borrowed like a bit from our dialect. It's like that. Then I can't communicate, just like perfectly talk with them using the dialect that I speak with that person. Just a few words.

Due to what he experienced as limited opportunities to speak the type of K’iche’ he knew, the strategy that Tonio used to communicate with others at PNH was relying on Spanish and then English. Juan, Alan, and the rest of the Indigenous speaking youth in my study also employed similar strategies to those of Tonio's.

Machado-Casas (2009) noted that Indigenous migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala exist in spaces of “oculto” or concealment. Indigenous migrant youth's concealment are protective processes enacted to safeguard aspects of their Indigenous selves (Casanova, 2019; Machado-Casas, 2009, 2012). I interpret Juan, Tonio, and Alan's learning and speaking English and Spanish outside their languaged and racialized communities as practices of concealment. These youth are proud of being Indigenous. However, learning colonial codes of power and limiting their public use of Indigenous languages was a form safeguarding their Indigenous selves from potential maltreatment from non-Indigenous people. This concealment was not always successful since raciolinguistic ideologies in their places of origin and in the U.S. positioned them as non-mestizo or ladino once they spoke.

I also interpret concealment as agentive. Indigenous youth engage in protective practices that serves their immediate wants and goals. For example, I explained in another paper (Barillas Chón, 2019) that for Luís, a K’iche’ student and peer of the youth in this study, learning and speaking Spanish and English and disassociating himself from K’iche’ was an act of agency. Luís understood that colonial languages are tools that provide access to better labor and economic opportunities compared to K’iche’ in Guatemala and the U.S. Luís did not see the economic benefit of maintaining K’iche’ outside his languaged community. Concealment as protective processes are strategies youth learned given their marginalized and minoritized placement in racialized systems in their contexts of departure and new contexts of arrival. Moreover, these strategies are now deployed in the U.S. where the colonial logics they grew up under traveled with them and with other migrants from Abya Yala and overlap with new codes of power.

There are also negative unintended consequences to hiding, limiting, or denying Indigenous languages. One way Alan's grandparents navigated codes of power was by not teaching him Náhuatl. I have noted before (Barillas Chón, 2019) that this is a process of learning not to learn Indigenous languages. One additional outcome of learning not to learn is Indigenous language loss. England (2003) posits that bilingualism and literacy in Spanish in Guatemala is often accompanied by the gradual loss of Maya languages. Literacy is not necessarily the culprit contributing to language loss. The school and its reiterations of raciolinguistic ideologies is an historical colonial structure directly contributing to Indigenous erasure through elimination of Indigenous languages.

Juan, Tonio, and Alan learned Spanish at school. Moreover, it was at school where these Indigenous youth experienced negative languaged and racialized interactions. Processes of Indigenous language erasure and Indigenous invisibilization are not confined to Guatemalan and Mexican schools. They are also present in U.S. urban school environments (Coloma, 2020; Morales et al., 2019, Ruiz & Barajas, 2012). This study does not investigate urban schooling processes erasing K’iche’, Mam, Náhuatl or other Indigenous languages. Morales et al. (2019), however, have shown that school's emphasis on Spanish causes unintended harm to Indigenous students’ identities, including their Indigenous languages.

Implications for Urban Education

Findings presented in this study contributes to urban education research by elucidating the experiences of recently arrived K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua youth and expanding understanding of Latinx students in urban schools. This study provides initial insights into relationships between language and Indigenous youth's racializations. It also demonstrates the ways Indigenous youth learned and utilized colonial codes of power under intersecting colonial conditions. Moreover, findings from this study can provide urban school educators and other practitioners working with recently arrived Central American and Indigenous Mexican migrants an awareness of intra and inter-ethnic group dynamics including instances of racism towards Maya and Nahua youth. In this section I provide some practical implications derived from the findings to educators, practitioners, and researchers.

First, urban educators and other practitioners must become aware of recently arrived Indigenous migrants in schools and classrooms. This requires developing methods (e.g., surveys that allows for Indigenous self-identifications) for identifying Indigenous youth populations and their diverse languages (Barillas Chón et al., 2021). Secondly educators and practitioners must interrogate how their practices can contribute to the constraining of Indigenous students’ identities and languages by their normative views of Spanish as “the heritage” language of its Latinx population and by prioritizing the use of standard English language (Morales et al., 2019).

Recently arrived Indigenous migrant youth learn Spanish and English under colonial forces that buttress their need to operate in cultures of power. Cultures of power exist due to colonial codes of power. In other words, colonial codes facilitate participation, even if marginal, in colonial cultures of power. It is a vicious cycle. Transforming urban education to meet the strength and desires of Indigenous migrant students means intervening in this cycle. My third recommendation is for educators and practitioners to intervene in the culture of power and codes of power cycle by employing a “critical heteroglossic” perspective that “both legitimizes the dynamic linguistic practices of language-minoritized students while simultaneously raising awareness about issues of language and power” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 167). In practical terms, this means that educators welcome the plethora of languaged and knowledge resources Indigenous migrants bring to the school and classroom. Raising awareness of and critiquing colonial codes of power does not mean that their learning is not important or necessary. Recently arrived Indigenous youth are in school to improve their ability to navigate colonial codes of power. Therefore, educators and practitioners can support Indigenous youth's learning of English while simultaneously improving their Spanish. Critically examining stories of Maya cultural figures and other Indigenous cultural artifacts are ways to include Indigenous knowledges in the classroom (Barillas Chón, 2021). If done intentionally, educators can use these stories to critique ongoing colonial codes of power such as the marginalization of Indigenous peoples and their languages and disrupting normative understandings of Indigeneity and Latinidad in the classroom (San Pedro et al., 2016).

My recommendation for urban education researchers is for them to question their epistemological orientations regarding Latinxs and their languages. How we come to know and understand Latinxs and their languages is intimately tied to the analytics we use to make sense of this racialized and languaged diverse demographic. Critical Latinx Indigeneities highlights the importance of integrating the dynamic and intersecting histories of colonialism, racism, indigeneities, language, and migration when analyzing Latinxs’ experiences in their places of origin and in the U.S. In particular, urban education researchers must pay attention to how colonial codes of power overlap because this affects Indigenous migrants’ self-understandings and the strategies they employ to make sense of and navigate their new contexts of reception. Like the youth in Casanova’s (2019) study, Juan, Tonio, and Alan re-articulated their Indigenous selves in the U.S. context, “pushing back against the discrimination they experienced … [and] intersecting and crossing the borders of Maya, Mexican, and [U.S.] spaces” (p. 60) as proposed by the CLI frame.

Conclusion

This study described how K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua recently arrived migrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico constructed representations of their Indigenous selves using Spanish and English to navigate racialized and languaged exchanges. The youth in Guatemala and Mexico utilized Spanish to participate in the larger languaged and racialized social order. The colonial codes of power youth learned and utilized traveled with them into the U.S. Indigenous youth in the U.S. continued relying on Spanish for verbal interactions with Latinx migrant youth while learning new colonial codes of power. Due to the United States’ English-monolingualism focus, Spanish is surpassed by English as the most important colonial code of power. To be sure, a primary reason youth attended PNH was to learn English. These youth were keenly aware of the need to navigate two codes of power to operate in multiple racialized and languaged contexts.

Learning codes of power are aspects of Indigenous protective processes. The Guatemalan and Mexican governments have enduring histories of economically, politically, linguistically, and socially oppressing K’iche', Mam, Nahua, and other Indigenous populations. The U.S. has a similar history of Indigenous economic exploitation and political repression. These oppressions are reiterations of colonialisms that predate the regions currently known as Guatemala, Mexico, and the U.S. Indigenous migrant youth make conscious decisions, weighing the benefits of speaking Spanish and English against a background of multiple and overlapping colonialisms and discrimination, when utilizing colonial codes of power to interact with Latinx students. Indigenous youth are agentive and utilize codes of power to best serve their everyday lived experiences, including educational and economic opportunities.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

David W. Barillas Chón

Notes

Author Biography

I am Maya Poqomam and part of the Maya diaspora living across the Americas. My migration journeys and Indigenous remembrance shapes my research focus, educational, and political commitments. I investigate issues concerning Indigeneity, Latinxs, migration, colonialisms, and race in the contexts of schooling and education. My current focus is on how Indigeneity is reshaped in specific temporal-spatial, labored, and schooling contexts, and how Indigenous migrants shape our understandings of Indigeneity. My research is geared to impact a range of communities working with and for the equitable treatment of Indigenous, migrant, and minoritized populations in and out of education settings.

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K’iche’,Mam,and Nahua Migrant Youth Navigating Colonial Codes of Power

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Analytic Framework

Methodology

Participants

Schoolmates

Setting

Stages and Methods of Analysis

Limitations and Positionality

Navigating Codes of Power

Spanish Informing Understandings of Indigenous Selves in Guatemala and Mexico

Traveling Codes of Power and Interactions with English

English Replaces Spanish and Concealment Practices

Implications for Urban Education

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biography

References