Abstract
LatinX student enrollments in community colleges in the United States are rapidly growing, yet LatinX student success rates have not matched this growth. There is a need for community college programs that serve LatinX student populations more effectively and incorporate multicultural educational practices. Using Anzaldúa’s Mestiza consciousness theory, this study analyzed community learning testimonios written by Latin American movement leaders and identified common themes applicable to a process of critical consciousness development in critical educational programs. The themes common across the four testimonios were (a) collective motivation for learning; (b) organizational dynamics, practices, and values; (c) critical social consciousness; and (d) transcendent communal awareness of identity.
Keywords
Community colleges are uniquely suited to offer resources for LatinX students that are affordable and local, and they are the primary higher educational resource of these students (Bedolla, 2012; Contreras and Gerardo, 2007; Crisp and Nora, 2010; Gándara and Contreras, 2009; Razfar and Simon, 2011; Teranishi et al., 2011). In order to respond to LatinX student needs, community colleges must develop synergy through the cultivation of partnerships and by coordinating national and community resources that can facilitate success as steps toward pragmatic solutions to social issues. At the same time, many college programs continue to operate within a dualistic cultural and individualistic instructional paradigm (Calderón et al., 2012; Freire, 2001; Said, 1993). This dominant paradigm rests on assumptions that all students should work toward nationally institutionalized educational goals such as language acquisition and skill proficiency and that these goals will benefit the nation by helping individual students to succeed (American Association of Community Colleges, 2012). These assumptions do little to take into account pluralistic or communal identity, the importance of building cultural bridges with understanding, or the value of recognizing LatinX communal cultural and educational perspectives (Anzaldúa, 1999; Calderón et al., 2012; Chávez, 2012; Freire, 2001; Hooks, 2003; Huber, 2009; Saavedra and Pérez, 2012).
Social justice service learning programs for LatinX students
As a practical response for innovation in educational programs that serve LatinX college students, service learning researchers have applied social justice theories and adopted philosophies of holistic motivational engagement in order to propose methods for educators to deconstruct the teacher/learner paradigm and replace it with practices of collaboration, collective learning, mutual responsibility, and mutual service that is empowering for all participants (Arca, 1997; Bacon, 1997; Bridwell-Bowles, 1997; Dewey, 1990; Flower, 1997; Jenkins, 2012; Keen and Hall, 2009). These researchers define ‘service learning’ broadly as a method of engaged instruction and learning that incorporates real-world service projects into curricular goals in order to achieve learning outcomes.
In the past two decades, service learning projects have been increasingly directed toward creating learning environments that are adapted to the self-identified values and needs for cross-cultural identity development of learning communities, yet there is still a dearth of research about the distinctive communal educational values and identities of LatinX student populations and communities and how these may create effective service learning environments for these students. More extensive knowledge is needed about how LatinX values and identities may align with service learning in order for service learning program designers to develop programs for adult students that come from LatinX community perspectives and meet their educational and cultural needs (Bernal et al., 2009; Lenon, 2009; Muñoz, 2012).
Indigenous Latin American learning paradigms
This study is grounded on the primary assumptions that indigenous cultural learning practices are underrepresented in U.S. higher educational curriculum design, that many LatinX students in the U.S. have some indigenous or ‘non-Western’ heritage (Brown and Patten, 2012), and that there is much to be gained for post-colonialist education by studying indigenous practices and using them to bring about curricular innovation (Alfred, 2005; Baronnet, 2013; Biermann and Townsend-Cross, 2008; Freire, 2001; Huber, 2009; Kaufman, 2011; McNally, 2004; Smith, 1999; Steinman, 2011; Wilson, 2004).
The indigenismo movement in Latin America has identified common threads of community values and practices among diverse Latin American indigenous cultures and has urged policy makers and public servants to reintegrate these values into society (Alfred, 2005; Baronnet, 2013; Biermann and Townsend-Cross, 2008; Kaufman, 2011; Wilson, 2004). This study investigated indigenous practices by analysis of community learning testimonios written by indigenous Latin American cultures in order to distil common themes through a process of analysis and reflection. The indigenous communities included in this study implemented post-colonialist methods of learning through service that relied on self-determination and communal needs to establish learning goals and motivate learners. For example, in Guatemala, an indigenous community organized and educated themselves regarding literacy, advocacy and media publication practices in order to respond to threats to their lives and land rights (Menchú, 1984). By learning from these communities, educators can work towards inclusion of multicultural perspectives in service learning program design and support LatinX students’ identities, in particular, through integration of Latin American educational values and practices. As a result of this analysis and comparison, researchers and practitioners will be aided in creating innovative ways to engage LatinX students within a post-colonialist instructional framework that integrates Latin American indigenous wisdom within the community college environment.
It is important to caution that, rather than treating Latin American culture or LatinX students as homogenous and seeking to apply find a ‘one size-fits all’ strategy for teaching LatinX students, this study recognized the pluralistic and shifting nature of identities and sought to implement post-colonialist methods for research. By crystallizing possible applications of indigenous Latin American learning strategies for higher education, the study has created possibilities for intentional integration of marginalized practices that contribute to the mosaic of cultural influences throughout Latin America (but have been historically underrepresented) into U.S. community colleges. To accomplish this, testimonial documents generated by independent LatinX learning communities in Central and South America have been interpreted in order to describe a process of consciousness-building and collective education within anti-imperialist social justice movements. While the indigenous practices explored in this study may prove to be effective for other populations (not exclusive to LatinX students), the need for studies specifically investigating strategies for LatinX service learning program development (Anderson, 2003; Bedolla, 2012; Bernal et al., 2009; Lenon, 2009; Muñoz, 2012), along with the identity-based tie between many LatinX students and marginalized Latin American cultures (Anzaldúa, 1999; Brown and Patten, 2012; Freire, 2001), has created an important inroad for exploration in this study. Future studies may also be needed to further verify the efficacy of the learning strategies identifies here for specific LatinX student populations in the United States.
Post-colonialism
Post-colonialism refers to the postmodern theoretical turn that questions the validity of positivist epistemology and identity paradigms and focuses on creating transcendent awareness of cultural oppression in order to pursue social justice goals (Calderón et al., 2012; Freire, 2001; Giroux, 2011; Hooks, 2003; Said, 1993). Rather than simply a reactionary imperative, post-colonialism is a movement that seeks to revise the dualist cultural paradigm within which cultures are either dominant or marginalized and to integrate multiple cultural perspectives within a pluralistic society made possible by consciousness and mutual respect.
This study applied post-colonialist theoretical and methodological frameworks to community college program innovation and, in particular, to service learning programs designed to empower LatinX students. Service learning is emergent as a post-colonialist pedagogical strategy for empowering students and communities in multiple disciplines, and it is potentially compatible with the missions and program offerings of community colleges (Bernal et al., 2009; Jenkins, 2012; Keen and Hall, 2009; Lenon, 2009). For the purposes of this study, ‘service learning’ refers to learning strategies that promote community engagement and service work as teaching tool. As Deans (2000) outlined, possible scenarios for service learning may include performing work for the community, working with the community or working to publicize community issues.
A key qualification that this study places on post-colonialist service learning programs is that they are not limited to traditional, dualistic, servant/served relationships between students and communities. Instead, post-colonialist service learning programs should empower students to engage with communities not only as outsiders acting on behalf of academic institutions, but as program participants working within their own communities, for their communities, in a process that promotes both learning and community empowerment and in which any individual may play the role of learner, teacher or service recipient.
This study was grounded on post-colonialist values in research and curricular development and the potential for service learning programs to pursue these values consciously and effectively in community colleges in United States. The primary focus of this study was investigating how indigenous learning strategies may enrich service learning program design for multicultural students and communities. Because of growth of LatinX student populations and educational needs related to that growth, it is essential that research in this field be directed toward finding ways to empower LatinX students. Testimonios from Latin American social justice learning projects demonstrated the process through which indigenous values became incorporated into cross-cultural resistance movements and post-colonialist consciousness developed within communities engaged in these movements. The narrative of this process holds information about the values and strategies that could be adapted to create post-colonialist service projects in the United States. As such, the study sought to identify considerations for post-colonialist service learning programs through a comparative analysis of indigenous Latin American community educational values.
Purpose
This study identified shared themes from indigenous Latin American social justice community learning projects in order to develop insights into project dynamics that empower communities through a process of mutual understanding and support identified by theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) as ‘Mestiza consciousness’. The resulting understanding of values and strategies that are present within indigenous cultures may be used in future research that tests and develops the effectiveness of these values and strategies in innovative service learning programs in the United States.
The primary research question explored in this study was: What key values related to community learning strategies emerge from analyses of published narratives detailing Latin American indigenous communities’ social justice learning projects?
Theoretical framework
As a theoretical framework, Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1999) post-colonialist theory of Mestiza consciousness informed the present study from inside out as a guiding philosophy, epistemology and model cultural identity formation and learning community organization. Post-colonialist feminist Chela Sandoval (Anzaldúa and Keating, 2002) described Anzaldúa’s ‘path to conocimiento’, or method for developing a transcendent awareness of the self and community in LatinX culture, succinctly: This method provides cognitive and emotional maps necessary for guiding internal and collective external action. Briefly put, the technologies of this method are (1) reading power, as in radical semiotics, la facultad, or ‘signifyin’; (2) deconstruction, or coatlicue; (3) meta-ideologizing; (4) differential perception, or nepantla, and (5) democratics, the ethical or moral technology that permits the previous four to be driven, mobilized, and organized…this methodology provides passage to that unfastened, differential juncture of being—la conciencia de la mestiza. (p. 24)
Case descriptions
Individuals’ responsibilities to the community were essential to community survival. Conditions were very difficult, and many did not survive. Religious leaders (priests) encouraged the community to unite in order to accomplish development projects and to empower themselves. Increasingly, education was needed to defend community members from persecution by landowners and the government who seized land. In particular, the ability to speak, read and write Spanish, to communicate between communities, and to navigate legal and political hurdles became essential. When the community was forcibly removed from their homes, thrown in jail or killed and their animals and crops destroyed, they began to reach out to other communities and to educate themselves in order to understand the system of oppression, eventually organizing the CUC (Comité de Unidad Campesina or Peasants Unity Committee) to defend their communities.
Rigoberta is the narrative voice, and her chapters are organized into passages on culture and identity, community life, important life events for herself, her family, and the community and the progress of the community empowerment movement. Although cultural traditions and important events are described in Rigobtera’s voice, their telling is the product of knowledge and perspectives of the community as a whole and a patchwork of stories told to Rigoberta by others and passed on through rituals that detail the life of the community, rather than one person or family solely.
Tijerino’s story adds variety to the testimonies included in this study because of her dual perspective as a Nicaraguan and her mother’s colonialist heritage. The narrative demonstrates the perspective of a multicultural community united by an oppressive regime and also the solidarity created by mutual understanding among community members. According to Tijerino, in the 1950s–1970s, Native communities such as the Matagalpa and the Subtiavans were forced to defend their land rights and rose up along with peasants to struggle against the repressive Somoza regime. The revolutionary movement, known as the Sandinist Front for National Liberation (FSLN) for the leader Augusto Cesar Sandino, began in 1958. In 1967, the Nicaraguan government instigated a counter-insurgency campaign to repress the movement. This Sandinist Front had an ‘international proletarian vision’ for a unified response to the repressive efforts of CONDECA (Council of Central American Defense), which had included forced sterilization, displacement, political imprisonment and assassinations.
Tijerino’s testimonio represented the oppression and struggle of the Nicaraguan people in order to create awareness of human rights abuses and injustice occurring under the Somoza regime. The narrative was divided into time periods and also important events in Tijerino’s life, including the struggles of her community against repressive forces and her personal and the Front’s collective journey toward political consciousness and empowerment. Her account included the stories of women who organized or were imprisoned with her in order to honor their courage. By 1975, the repressiveness of the Somoza regime was being covered by international press, and a voice for the people was crucial. In 1978, three years after her account was written, Tijerino was once again imprisoned by the Nicaraguan National Guard.
In 1994, the workers’ rights organization, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), took control of six towns in Chiapas with the intention of subverting the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institutional), which had run Mexico for 70 years. For indigenous peoples of the region, the EZLN movement represented the latest incarnation of hundreds of years of resistance, which unified the native peoples within a post-colonialist – rather than simply anti-colonialist – consciousness. Guerrilla fighters and community supporters rallied around the both male and female leaders of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee, a democratic convention of the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Tojobal, Male and Zoque peoples.
After becoming associated with the EZLN and targeting by the government, over 150,000 indigenous people migrated to the forests, including women who were forced to flee by their husbands or fathers. As Rovira made clear in her reports, women in indigenous villages before the EZLN were often subject to sexism and violence. Nevertheless, women and men from the villages joined the EZLN to fight for food, healthcare and education. They joined up with the revolutionary groups with egalitarian political consciousness that had gone into the mountains in 1983 and spent over 11 years working to raise indigenous awareness. While these groups were less organized and more violent in the 1970s, they learned to shape the movement and actions according to the values of the indigenous people though collective decision-making processes. Over the course of three decades, the EZLN, acting through egalitarian principles of leadership, became the principal organizer of education and healthcare and an engine of empowerment for all marginalized members of the communities.
Limitations
While testimonial accounts and, in particular, testimonios embedded in sociopolitical struggles, have been recognized for the roles they play as strategic media and as multivocal records of the histories of marginalized communities, scholars have also expressed concerns about their authenticity and validity as modes of representation for these communities (Arias and Stoll, 2001; Beverley, 2004; Marker, 2003; Patai, 2012). As with other forms of narrative ethnography, the subjective lens of the authors’ perspectives and commentaries in the texts included here may be called into question (Merriam, 2009). Additionally, the way that the researcher’s subjectivity has played into case selection and analysis is another layer of subjective interpretation in this study.
While these layers of subjectivity represent further distance from a semblance of ‘scientific objectivity’, the researcher has chosen to view this eschewing of objectivity as an acceptance of the subjective nature of cultural knowledge and embrace of the work of collaborative understanding and the ‘bridge-building’ or nepantla concepts tied to Mestiza consciousness. Triangulation has been identified as a valuable check on the uncertainties of subjectivity in in ethnographic research (Merriam, 2009). The present study engages in triangulation of the testimonios included both for the purposes of mutual understanding and as a method of validating the authors’ experiences. In addition, the range of historical and cultural contexts represented by the variety of narratives serves to check for relevance of themes across these contexts. Certainly, the age of testimonios may call into question their pertinence to contemporary circumstances. Their significance, though, lies not in their capacity to mirror present cultural phenomena, but in their potential to illustrate pervasive and enduring social justice practices that have applications as post-colonialist educational strategies.
Narrative themes
During the process of interpretation, the richness and complexity of the cultural phenomena represented in the selected testimonios became clear, along with their mutual significance to a mosaic of Latin American social justice movements and indigenous values taking shape in the mind of the researcher. Although a measure of uniformity across cases was one goal of case selection, each of the testimonial texts included here is also unique in several ways. While they all satisfy certain requirements (they are all multivocal; they all represent indigenous communities struggling for empowerment through education and social justice projects; and they all demonstrate post-colonial consciousness), the authorial contexts and social conditions surrounding their movements and their accounts are various.
I, Rigobtera Menchú (Menchú, 1984), perhaps the most iconic testimonio in this group, served as an ideal example of an auto-ethnographic text: written by an indigenous woman about her community’s empowerment effort; it also serves as a medium for political publicity on a world stage. Let Me Speak! (Barrios de Chungara, 1978) detailed the struggles of a Bolivian mining community, populated largely by indigenous people and MestizX, and was also auto-ethnographic and publicity driven. Inside the Nicaraguan Revolution (Tijerino, 1978), on the other hand, was written by the daughter of colonialist settlers in Nicaragua. Aside from the original of the author, though, this text was otherwise much like the previous two, and in addition, called into question the construction of identities within a post-colonialist framework and also the importance of cultural boundaries in social justice movements. The last case text included, Women of Maize (Rovira, 2000), conflated all of these issues as an account collected by a researcher–participant on behalf of indigenous communities, representing their words and also her own ethnographic commentary.
As a virtue of their variety within a defined set of qualifications, these narratives offer a site for investigation of Mestiza consciousness that is multidimensional in its cultural information. Through the process of analysis, key similarities between the cases began to arise that are, perhaps, most significant when considered as factors that were not included in qualification for case selection but that, nonetheless, proved to be defining characteristics of all of the communities included. For example, political consciousness was a driving element in all of the cases. Moreover, a specific consciousness of workers’ rights, the importance of solidarity among the working class and a need to change the current political regime was at least as (or more) pervasive than indigenous solidarity or a preservation of indigenous identity throughout the testimonios. Additionally, although women were not specifically chosen as preferred authors during case selection, women’s testimonios where overwhelmingly dominant within the pool of cases considered – in fact, only texts written by women were found to meet all of the research requirements. In light of this, the researcher chose to understand authorship by women as a significant element in testimonios, because, in all of these marginalized communities, women occupy a doubly marginalized social position. This ‘double marginalization’ has caused communities of women to gain particularly acute awareness of the politics of oppression and the need for a post-colonialist awareness that is broadly inclusive and respectful of all identities.
The analysis engaged in Anzaldúa’s (1999) first two steps, cultural reading and deconstruction of significance, for the purpose of understanding how the represented communities progressed through the process of Mestiza consciousness and of using insights gained to set the stage for educational communities to follow a similar path. The analysis was based on themes from Anzaldúa’s (1999) path to conocimiento and applications for service learning research. It is important to note that Anzaldúa did not intend for her ‘stages’ to be necessarily sequential, but that all may be present elements at various times in a process of developing consciousness. In the unfolding processes analysed here, critical consciousness arose along with a collective motivation for learning and organizational dynamics, these processes being largely iterative. As a result, the sequential presentations of elements here is less significant than their interplay between each other.
The analysis identified four key elements across the four cases were crucial in the communities’ educational and political empowerment and that may be transferred to service learning projects in the United States. These four shared elements included: (a) collective motivation for learning; (b) organizational dynamics, practices, and values; (c) critical social consciousness; and (d) transcendent communal awareness of identity. These elements are described in greater detail below and are each further divided into sub-themes that illustrate their various aspects and contexts.
Collective motivation for learning
‘Collective motivation for learning’ refers to the context within which community social justice movements and learning projects developed. This theme relates to the situation of the self within which ‘reading power’ or ‘la facultad’ can begin to take place. Mestiza consciousness, like other post-colonist and post-feminist theoretical frames, posits that oppression is a systemic condition of cultures that impose dominant paradigms and practices monolithically, thereby relegating all else (identities, beliefs, ethnicities or otherwise) to a marginalized social status. Reading power refers to an awareness of the sociocultural and personal facets of oppression. The motivation to learn in order to achieve collective empowerment, within Anzaldúa’s (1999) framework, may exist wherever inequality and fragmentation of identity (or marginalization) are present, although oppression may not always result in sufficient motivation or reading power to bring about collective social movements. As such, it was one goal of the present study to understand what events or contexts caused the communities included to recognize systemic oppression and to choose to empower themselves through collective education and action. This theme, along with the others, has been broken down into component sub-themes in order to illustrate the extent of similarities shared between all of the cases. Collective motivation for learning came through hardships and necessary skill acquisitions experienced within a context of collective identity and values.
In all of the cases included here, political oppression resulting in physical harm, death, displacement and extremely harsh living conditions prevailed. Massacres of villagers attempting to resist displacement by colonialist landowners and governments, denial of basic social services and rights to own property, illiteracy, high mortality rates due to treatable illnesses and dehumanizing prejudice against ethnic minorities and the poor were among the factors that drove villagers to take up arms and to resist their oppressors. For example, Menchú’s (1984) father was killed, and she witnessed people of her village slaughtered as a child. Barrios de Chungara (1978) recounted harsh conditions for mine workers and their families The housing isn’t given, it’s just loaned; we only have water in public pumps; the baths are public; we only have electricity during hours the company chooses; education’s very expensive for us because we have to buy uniforms, school supplies, and so many other things. (p. 28).
The targeting of entire communities based on marginalized identities was also a factor in these communities’ collective motivation for action as indigenous people, as workers, and as cooperative, largely familial units in which collective survival depended on the collaboration and support of all members of the communities. Menchú (1984) noted that every individual had a role in the life of the village, including parenting, providing food and performing religious rituals. As she reflected, ‘I remember very well never wasting a single moment [working as a child], mainly out of love for my parents and so that they could save a little of their money, although they couldn’t really save any’ (p. 36). For Menchú’s people, village life was lived collaboratively day-to-day. And the education of children was a collaborative process that the whole community took part in. Learning, she says, was regarding in her community as a process that occurs as the result of experience with village life.
According to Barrios de Chungara (1978), the whole community sought relief from the injustice and injuries of the mines together: ‘The first thing we’d do would be to straighten the things out in the mines, buy new machinery, for example, so that we could work better, make our system of nutrition suit the physical wear and tear…our compañeros shouldn’t have to die that way in the mine’ (p. 30). This solidarity, both practical and emotional, was echoed by the words of Major Ana Maria, EZLN leader. She reported that, for her, seeing the suffering of children dying from curable diseases was much more horrible than fear of death. This humanization of others contrasted with the dehumanization of indigenous and poor peoples by governments and landowners for the purpose of justifying oppression. Tijerino (1978) mentioned that it was in part her inability to remain complicit in dehumanizing prejudice against members of her own household and community who were considered dispensable that compelled her to join the FSLN.
Education and skill acquisition were essential to achieving collective empowerment in all of the cases included. Literacy and language, leadership, communications, organizing and even arts and craft skills were developed in service to the community and in resistance efforts. Sometimes these skills were identified as necessary for self-defense after lack of knowledge had allowed colonialists to take advantage of native peoples; other skills were honed for the opportunities that they afforded. According to Menchú (1984), her people were tricked into signing over their land because they could not read. Political literacy was also essential for organizing support and gaining international representation. In addition, knowledge was needed to create documents and run radio stations for organizing efforts. Indigenous Mexican women thought that women should know about human rights in order to be able to defend themselves. In turn, the EZLN advocated for special schools, including some for women, to learn to read and write as well as maternity hospitals.
Political consciousness was also vital for maintaining ideological clarity. Barrios de Chungara (1978) warned that if ‘the enemy’ of ignorance exists within the homes of the peasants, then it may become a weapon to be used against them. For that reason, the community took on the charge of seeing their situation and systemic oppression clearly and engaging women and children as equal participants in the struggle along with men. Initially, the miners and their families did not know how wealth was distributed or how to question the system of distribution, but when they organized and learned bit by bit they gained more motivation to learn in order to improve conditions.
Organizational dynamics, practices and values
The second shared theme identified here, organizational dynamics, practices and values, corresponds to Anzaldúa’s fifth element in the path towards Mestiza consciousness, the practice of ‘democratics’, which enables collaboration between individuals and creates a forum for the other four elements to take place (Anzaldúa and Keating, 2002). This theme is illustrated in diverse participation and leadership as well as strategic practices for resistance and empowerment.
Social justice movements involving indigenous communities in the cases reviewed here had broad participation within a variety of communities. Menchú reported that there were 23 ethnic groups and 23 languages involved in the struggle in Guatemala. Barrios de Chungara (1978) mentioned mining communities and other poor workers united by the Bolivian trade union system. Student organizations and, in some cases, religious organizations or clergy also participated. Tijerino (1978) noted that students also engaged in guerilla warfare along with indigenous and poor workers’ communities. Menchú (1984) encountered clergy who encouraged her to educate herself and her community and to practice solidarity with other oppressed peoples. Barrios de Chungara (1978) worked with Christian groups in Bolivia, while, according to Tijerino’s (1978) accounts the Catholic Church in Nicaragua was more conservative and aligned with the government than with the interests of poor or indigenous people.
The movements were broadly inclusive of all those who were willing to struggle against oppression, and bridges between communities were often built in the process of cooperative resistance. This occurred between LadinX, MestizX and indigenous peoples, students and the working class, and also men, women and children. As noted in Rovira (2000): Different ethnic communities came together. Tzotziles married Tzeltales, Tzeltales married Tojolabales, Choles married Tzotziles. These couples communicated in the husband’s dialect, which is why many women became bilingual. Many learnt Spanish because it was useful to sell the harvest, to defend their rights and campaign for their demands. They coexist with many mestizos, poor campesinos who also fled to the Lacandon forest. (p. 21)
The narrators all noted some common practices used to organize and educate themselves and to resist oppression by governments and landowners. The process of organization was developed within localized communities and was then carried over to others by volunteer ‘ambassadors’ who could begin as participants in their own villages and then go on to help neighboring communities. In Barrios de Chungara’s (1978) case, while the trade unions were primarily given credit for organizing the workers, women’s committees and those not associated with trades were organized by those who saw a need for engaging groups with whom they identified in the struggle and giving them a forum for aiding the community in political resistance. In Chiapas, guilds of weavers organized themselves in order to have the rights to sell their crafts. After incurring discrimination by the government, the weavers (mostly women) democratized the weaving organization, creating indigenous representatives to work directly with traders and to lobby for rights. Women in revolutionary organizations associated with the EZLN also held local meetings and regional assemblies to decide which villages to focus on in educational efforts and which political actions to take next.
Menchú (1984) mentioned the foundational basis for committees and working groups as a way for community members who desired to make contributions to social justice movements to collaborate in order to find practical ways to help. She described the collaborative process: We had to do whatever work the community wanted, what was most needed at the time. And that was teaching many of the compañeros to do the same job we did. We tried to avoid all working at the same thing and changed round all the time so that everyone got experience of the different duties…We were putting new ideas into practice the whole time and practicing the things we had to do together. (pp. 127–128)
Language, leadership, communications and public speaking skills were among the skills that communities helped participants to develop in order to engage in resistance strategies such as political advocacy, collective support and publicity campaigns (including theatrical cultural performances). In Bolivia, committees organized rallies, hunger strikes, letter-writing campaigns and soup kitchens. Menchú (1984) mentioned her time spent learning Spanish and political circumstances in Guatemala in order to be able to serve and protect her community and herself. Tijerino (1978) emphasized the importance of large rallies convened to demonstrate popular support of the movement and to inform the public about the violence committed by the government against poor and indigenous people. Radio stations were also occupied for the purposes of intercepting information intended to be used against the communities and to send out communiques to allies across long distances.
Critical social consciousness
Critical social consciousness corresponds to deconstruction, or the second step in Anzaldúa’s path to conocimiento (Anzaldúa and Keating, 2002). The indigenous communities included in this study participated in a process of deconstruction through which they gained awareness of systemic power dynamics that work to marginalize and oppress peoples and cultures based on differences in identities. As communities, motivated by hardship and equipped with collectivist values, engaged in resistance measures against repressive regimes, learning played a central role in their progress toward empowerment. Not only were skills and trades important for participants to learn, but education regarding the functioning of systemic oppression also proved to be a key to effective resistance. Awareness of the importance of critical awareness and determination to critically self-educate, knowledge of ways that dominant, oppressive social practices work to marginalize outsiders and methods of re-affirming the value and potential authority of devalued, exploited peoples and cultures were cultivated by communities in pursuit of social justice. This theme is illustrated in critical community education that exposed oppressive practices re-affirmed the community’s own identity and value.
Menchú and Barrios de Chungara mentioned the importance of informal education and experiential education, rather than schooling, as important elements of community life. As Barrios de Chungara (1978) stated, ‘The people’s experience is the best schooling there is’ (p. 204). She also mentioned that school is Bolivia was an ‘alienating education’ that taught patriotic ideals about devotion to a country that did not devote itself to them or their families. Because schools were often run (if they existed at all) by colonialist governments, movement participants had to find other ways to access critical knowledge. Tijerino mentioned that her schooling was a place where she saw injustice and discrimination, but that she gained a consciousness of these through her mother’s tutelage and through ‘revolutionary texts’ by authors such as Carl Marx, Maxim Gorky and Ernesto Cardenal. She went to a conservative Catholic school where she was taught to do volunteer service collections for the poor, and, she reflected, rather than teaching her to take up the struggles of the poor as her own, this service taught her that if she took on her assigned role in society, she did not have to concern herself further with social injustice. As a result, she questioned the literal interpretation of religion mandated by conservative Catholicism; and the level of social engagement they promoted. Because she had also lived and gone to school alongside peasants who she saw as her equals, she had learned through her experience not to separate herself from them.
Menchú (1984) also described the importance of experiential education to her community: ‘We don’t need very much advice, or theories, or documents; life has been our teacher. For my part, the horrors I have suffered are enough for me. And I’ve also felt in the deepest part of me what discrimination is, what exploitation is’ (p. 129). To Menchú values of Christian brotherhood meant not accepting injustices against others; she was introduced to critical consciousness through priests who called on community members to organize and encouraged solidarity against oppression. Prison was also a place where movement participants could learn, often from more experienced resisters. Menchú’s father met a political prisoner while in prison who enlightened him on the need for social action and the systemic injustice being done against the poor all over Guatemala. The situation, as he learned and then passed along to Menchú and her community, had stemmed from the ownership (or lack) of land and from exploitation of workers and of indigenous peoples. Tijerino (1978) and Rovira (2000) also chronicled critical knowledge conferred among family members or those imprisoned together. One indigenous woman interviewed by Rovira (2000), Norma, recounted: ‘My father didn’t understand the organization. But it so happened that my mother did understand and she began explaining to us bit by bit. Finally, later, my father came to understand it too and gave us lessons in politics, late at night, telling us how exploited we were’ (p. 32).
It was also recognized in the communities that pervasive critical awareness was vital and that all participants in the movement should understand the reasons for their resistance and the dynamics of their exploitation, not just leaders. Menchú (1984) noted the importance of practices of constructive criticism among equals to ensure that the movement remained in the hands of the people and was directed toward liberation. Barrios de Chungara (1978) also urged that critical education should be accessible to the poor, in order to empower them: I want [this account] to reach the poorest people, the people who don’t have any money, but who need some orientation, some example which can serve them in their future life…It doesn’t matter what kind of paper it’s put down on, but it does matter that it be useful for the working class. (p. 15)
In each of the cases studied here, communities also looked to re-affirm the value of indigenous cultures and knowledge as a part of the critical process. For Menchú’s community, the preservation of ‘Indian knowledge’ was highly valued, and important secrets were also kept in defense of communal culture, in order to protect them and keep them sacred. The loss of traditional ways was seen as loss of identity and integrity. Members of the Bolivian and Nicaraguan movements and the EZLN sought to use critical awareness as a lens through which to view traditional ways and to decide whether to alter them or not. ‘Rather than a return to traditional ways’, her introduction noted, ‘the EZLN demands that communities have the right to determine their own rules collectively, to select the traditions they want to keep or reject’ (p. 5). This demand was for respect for native cultures and also the autonomy to develop the community in ways that the indigenous people themselves deemed appropriate.
In addition, it was significant that Menchú (1984) and Rovira (2000) also devoted portions of their narratives to descriptions of traditional indigenous rituals and ways of life, in order to set the context in which resistance movements were imbedded and as a method of helping readers to understand the communities’ identities and values. This representation was a form of recognition of the power and authority of native cultures. By introducing competing values, also, the indigenous cultures proved to be subversive of the dominant system.
Transcendent communal awareness of identity
As participants came to terms with systems of oppression, they seemed to move from an anti-colonialist to a post-colonialist consciousness; that is, from a paradigm of opposition to one of integration. As they progressed in organizational leadership and awareness of political power structures, their values were aligned increasingly with mutual respect, collective survival and shared humanity within the oppressive system. Feminist consciousness sprung in most cases from a respect for the importance of all individuals’ roles in social survival and awareness of the importance of including the defense of all marginalized peoples (not just men) in the struggle against systemic oppression once it had been exposed.
The process of developing transcendent awareness of identity was a natural extension of critical education in the communities, and it corresponds with Anzaldúa’s third and fourth elements of Mestiza consciousness building, ‘meta-ideologizing’ and ‘nepantla’. As narrators reflected on the progress of their movements and the successes of their communities at the conclusion of their testimonios, the communities and interests they refer to are clearly global; they include a desire to free all colonized or marginalized peoples from the bonds of systemic injustice. The following sections offer examples of this awareness collective identity and also a commitment to fighting oppression globally.
The value of collectivism enacted in organizational practices, according to testimonio authors, a vital element in woven into the fabric of their cultures. Menchú (1984), Barrios de Chungara (1978), Tijerino (1978) and Mexican women interviewed by Rovira (2000) all noted the impact of communal identity in families and in communities as a result of indigenous values. According to Menchú (1984), children were raised communally, and the entire community was effectively a family for each child. In addition, the woman democratically chosen to represent and lead the community is considered a mother by all the children. She described the symbolic status of children as ‘the fruit of communal love’ (p. 8).
Because life events, such as plenty, fertility, famine and barrenness were weathered, mourned and celebrated communally, neither survival nor joy was an individual matter. A woman named Ana Maria, when interviewed by Rovira (2000), also affirmed the collective interest shared by native people in the EZLN. ‘If land is to be distributed we’ll all get some, not only the Zapatistas. Schools, hospitals, and so on, we’re all going to benefit, that’s what our struggle is about’ (p. 39). For Ana Maria and for others interviewed by Rovira, communal values were not only carried over into the social justice movements, but were strengthened by it. Because the people were dependent upon one another for political and cultural survival they had a renewed sense of interdependence and of shared identity as people who were working together to live off the land and to retain their autonomy.
Barrios de Chungara (1978) described a similar sensibility within her family and her community as a mineworker’s wife: ‘My life is related to my people. What happened to me could have happened to hundreds of people in my country’ (p. 15). To Chungara, collective identity among the poor mining communities of Bolivia was strengthened by a realization that the first battle against colonialism should be fought and won at home, so that men, women and children could all participate in community empowerment together. The home should be the center of solidarity, she explained, ‘the stronghold that the enemy can’t overcome’ (p. 36). To her, educated people could cultivate self-respect and understand their own claim to autonomy and justice. For this reason, she insisted that families must be integrated in learning together. To her, all individuals, as parts of the whole community, were indispensable and contributed in their own way to the movement.
As collective identity developed around social justice movements, awareness of shared identity and mutual interest also expanded across sociocultural boundaries. Menchú (1984) explained that the struggles of the poor across Guatemala were part of a single struggle, regardless of cultural and ethnic difference among native peoples. The movement was organized, she said, because of a collective realization that workers’ rights could only be won through unity. Similarly, Barrios de Chungara (1978) emphasized the importance of unity: ‘We have a revolutionary movement that relies on a unified leadership’, she noted ‘a leadership that has known how to confront its own internal problems, bearing in mind that unity is a determining factor in carrying the struggle forward’ (p. 163). In Nicaragua solidarity was also promoted (Tijerino, 1978), and in Chiapas, a leader named María insisted that the government should not be allowed to divide the poor: ‘It is crucial that we poor people unite, because right now there are problems…everyone is criticising each other. Everywhere we hear that strength lies in unity. It is very important that both men and women know what is happening and know how to keep going’ (Rovira, 2000: 142).
As solidarity was extended to multiple autonomous groups with a stake in social justice and shared identity as communities oppressed by colonialism, post-colonialist consciousness began to expand to include a global vision of social well-being and to depend on the awakening of people and cultures internationally to a responsibility to end exploitation. Menchú gave a voice to her community’s wish that freedom be used to teach all people so that they might have freedom too, and she also publicized her people’s struggle so that an international audience might identify with them and take up their cause. Likewise, Barrios de Chungara (1978) asked If we go on the way we are…when will we ever have a healthy society? And if we go on treating people only as human machines that have to produce, produce, and then die…Well, this way human capital is just being thrown away, and that’s the most important thing a society has, don’t you agree? (p. 32)
According to Tijerino, the FSLN in Nicaragua also took on not just poor living conditions in their country but all colonialist capitalism. In an effort to educate herself regarding global struggles against colonialism and to understand the need for solidarity, she visited the Soviet Union and met leaders from other Central American countries such as Guatemala. But she still stressed the importance of authentic solidarity in the form of public support for the revolutionary movement internationally. ‘Many Latin American and European governments condemn the dictatorship’, she noted, ‘But the fact that they condemn the dictatorship does not mean they’ve supported the revolutionary movement…international solidarity…is very important’ (Tijerino, 1978: 158).
Those interviewed by Rovira (2000) demonstrated a commitment to helping all marginalized people globally. Susana said of her work to establish the Revolutionary Law on Women that ‘We have to get better organized and go out to work in the cities, and be united as women, because if we are united we can also achieve something,’ and she wishes for all women ‘that they be free, that they think for themselves’ (pp. 160–161). It became the mission of the EZLN to promote a strong sense of plural and unified identity for the people – as individuals, indigenous, Mexicans, women, men, young people and elders. They called this ideology ‘anti-imperialist nationalism’, which, the author noted, was a movement of ‘humanity’ against the dehumanising effects of neoliberal globalisation. While struggling for localised changes, the Zapatistas have unfurled a banner which aims to unite a far broader constituency: the construction, according to their slogan, of a ‘world which has room for many worlds, (p. 6)
Implications for practice
Analysis of the four testimonies identified four major themes. These themes are supported by the literature as discussed in the following paragraphs. Primarily, the Latin American social justice movements examined in this study shared a central focus on critical awareness, and, as such, post-colonialist theory was an appropriate conceptual context within which to frame their analysis. Post-colonialist theorists have pointed out the fluid, plural and constantly changing nature of cultures and of identities as they intersect (Anzaldúa, 1999; Anzaldúa & Keating, 2002; Said, 1993). In light of this, it may be unsurprising that in all of the cases explored here social justice movements focused on empowering indigenous communities occurred as a result of an interaction of cultural and sociopolitical elements.
On the whole, the social justice movements included in the present study were organized and focused in order to pursue collective goals that were founded on indigenous, post-colonialist core beliefs and values. While political, economic and outside cultural contexts certainly (and necessarily) also influenced strategies for empowerment, indigenous values formed an alternative context in which marginalized peoples and cultures should have some authority and were deserving of equal human rights. As such, these values laid the foundations for post-colonialist consciousness and may have contributed to the rise of post-colonialist political paradigm internationally. Regardless of whether indigenous values influenced post-colonialist consciousness or the reverse, it is clear from the present analysis that these are tied closely, and that they are ultimately interdependent.
Possibly most important for post-colonialist service learning scholars were the values of mutual responsibility for collective survival and awareness of interdependence that lead to a strong work ethic and mutual respect for love, above all, that drove organizational practices within all of the movements included here. Collective identity, which was ultimately inclusive of all oppressed peoples and ways of life, was also an important factor in creating solidarity within more localized working groups. For people who belonged to multiple identity groups, (such as women, weavers, young people, etc.) it seemed important to associate with groups closely aligned with these identities, perhaps to strengthen solidarity and collective consciousness that could then be channeled outwards in more inclusive circles in a kind of radiating effect. This radiation or ‘ripple effect’ reaching outward was also present as a strategy for sharing skills and leadership abilities. By taking care of themselves and their immediate communities first, individuals could build their strength and increase their contribution to the entire movement.
Critical consciousness came about in the cases examined here as a result of a collective movement and was interwoven into the context of that movement. Critical education was both a reason for the origination of the movements and a necessary condition contribution to their continued success. Indigenous tribes in Central and South America already had a long history resisting colonialist oppression (Rovira, 2000), and the social justice movements included in this study would not have come about without some consciousness of marginalization and injustice already existing in the communities. As needs for awareness became greater, though, increasing critical consciousness also became an important strategy for developing the movement.
The continual development of critical awareness within the communities is a characteristic of indigenous social justice movements that may be transferred to service learning projects. Critical education allowed project participants to expose and deconstruct a system of injustice, and knowledge of the system allowed them to create strategies for collective liberation, in addition to resistance. When participants understood how they were marginalized and exploited based on their identities, they could connect with others who they identified with in order to work toward mutual empowerment.
Finally, communal identity was a strong value for indigenous cultures involved in social justice movements reviewed here, and this value was adopted and expanded by the broader movements as men, women, and children worked together for mutual survival. As participants gained more awareness of systemic oppression, it became clearer that exploited people had to have solidarity with one another in order to truly transcend the system of oppression in which they were marginalized and dehumanized. They learned that, rather than enemies based on their socio-cultural differences, indigenous people, MestizX, LadinX and ‘Gringos’ could all be allies in the struggle for post-colonialist empowerment.
As demonstrated by the cases reviewed here, post-colonialist values and strategies were developed in social justice movement not only by indigenous people, but also by an exchange between individuals and communities that led mutually to an expansion of consciousness. Although not all of the testimonios presented here come from traditionally indigenous voices, the communities represented in them were all influenced by indigenous values of collective identity and the inherent autonomy of a plurality of communities and applied these values in their work to resist the system of oppression driven by imperialism and colonialist hegemony. As a result, participants learned to see and respect each other in new ways and roles that exist outside the system of repression, regardless of their differences. For service learning researchers, the implication of this process may be the importance of building collective identity through awareness of a shared community based on shared culture as well as respect for individual autonomy and then expanding this consciousness through critical work that exposes the system within which participants and non-participants are subject to dehumanization or marginalization. It is the researcher’s belief that the inclusive solidarity cultivated in such processes might serve as motivation to work towards empowerment and autonomy for all marginalized people – not only in the social justice movements discussed here, but, adapted, also in social justice service programs for LatinX students.
Recommendations for future research
As noted throughout the preceding sections of this study, the indigenous social justice projects reviewed here have demonstrated learning and development strategies that may be applied to service learning projects focused on promoting post-colonialist perspectives and serving multicultural student populations United States colleges. Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1999) theory of Mestiza consciousness was used to trace the consciousness-building process within the social justice movements. Insights gained through this analysis and through triangulation between testimonio authors’ and the researcher’s interpretations have allowed several key values and learning strategies to emerge as essential to that process.
First, the theory of Mestiza consciousness was a valid framework for understanding the development of inclusive critical awareness of systemic oppression. Analytical authority, deconstruction of oppressive structures, understanding the reasons for that oppression and realization of shared identity and inherent autonomy, all set within participatory and democratic pursuit of freedom, were elements included in all of the movements reviewed in this study. As post-colonialist service learning researchers move forward, these frameworks may prove useful foundations for project development. Confirming these results for use with diverse populations in the United States and finding innovative ways to guide students through the consciousness-building process are next steps that researchers can take to pursue post-colonialist service learning program design in the future.
In addition, the widening circle of solidarity and autonomy is a valuable concept for understanding the expansion of collective identity outward through intercultural bridge-building in the movements included. As oppressive social structures were recognized, so too were the inherent humanity and right to autonomy of all marginalized peoples. This recognition of autonomy was empowering for communities, but it also caused a realization that all cultures and identities deserve respect and freedom of self-determination. This realization is, effectively, the widening of the circle. More research that discovers instances of widening circles of solidarity and autonomy and innovation in programs that allow this process to occur will help to demonstrate the utility of this strategy in U.S. colleges.
Finally, much like the triangulation that has occurred between multiple perspectives in the analysis of the cases in this study, it is essential to recognize that the progress toward post-colonialist consciousness engaged in by participants in the social justice movements was iterative, integrative and interactive. Rather than flowing through elements of consciousness-building like steps or stages, each of these elements has fueled the development the others. As communities reflected (sometimes collectively, as through the process of testimonio authorship, or sometimes individually) on their histories and progress, they engaged in analysis and deconstruction and experienced an expansion of consciousness and revision of political understanding over and over again. Many cycles through this process, within the history of the movements, also produced the impression of a larger, collective movement through the process. But it should be emphasized that elements occurred in close relationship to one another repeatedly, and in a variety of ways for each individual and community depending on social, political, economic, and cultural factors. As researchers seek avenues for implementation of this iterative process, they might examine it more closely and in depth in particular individuals or communities. In addition, they might trace the impact that external or internal factors have on consciousness-building so that they may develop strategies for post-colonialist service learning projects in context.
Summary
This study pursued post-colonialist curricular development for service learning programs designed particularly to support LatinX student identities. Post-colonialism and Anzaldúa’s (1999) theory of Mestiza consciousness were applied to the research design and to the analytical process focused on identifying indigenous values and strategies used by marginalized communities in Latin America as they engaged in social justice learning projects. LatinX student population growth and educational needs in U.S. community colleges, post-colonialist development in service learning program design, and indigenous empowerment theory all motivated the researcher to establish a foundation for future research and innovation.
Through thematic coding and triangulation between perspectives, testimonios were analysed based on elements of consciousness-building and community learning. A comparison of the values and strategies within and across the testimonios was used to produce interpretations of key characteristics that led to the development of mutual empowerment among participants. These characteristics were then compared with potential service learning curricula in the United States. Critical education and reflection, increasing collective identity through bridge-building and awareness of mutual autonomy, and a collaborative, iterative process of critical consciousness were all found to be key elements of Latin American social justice movement success that may be transferred to post-colonialist service learning curricula.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.