Calming the spirit and ensuring super-vivencia: rural Mexican women-centred teaching and learning spaces

“The Only Mexican in the Room”:Sobrevivenciaas a Way of Knowing for Mexican Transnational Students and Families

“…Sobrevivencia knowing is the knowing embedded in how the individual, family, and community survive and thrive in their understandings of the world around them. This is rooted in the recognition that survival is a priority and yet precarious if one does not work toward it, though, as Trinidad Galván aptly notes, what “may lead to wholeness [is] also messy and permeated by outside forces” (2010). These outside forces may include economic recessions, uneven formal schooling opportunities, and racial hierarchies.…”

“…Weaving subaltern community knowledges, spiritualities, and ancestral knowledges, Chicana feminists have drawn from critical race theory, LatCrit, transnational feminism, and postcolonial theory (to which they have also contributed; see, for instance, Delgado Bernal and Elenes ; Latina Feminist Group ; Pérez Huber ) to create the expansive interpretive lenses illustrated above by Anzaldúa, among others. For instance, Trinidad Galván's work highlights the deep connection between spirituality and lived experiences of women who used resources of ancestral and indigenous‐informed community wisdom. These women co‐created spiritualities that were sustaining and deeply meaningful for rural, materially poor, campesina women who stayed in Mexico while their husbands and other loved ones migrated to the United States for work (2005, 2006, 2010).…”

“…By sobrevivencia, she refers to “what lies ahead and beneath plain victimry, our ability to saciar (satiate) our hopes and dreams in creative and joyful ways” (2006:163). Trinidad Galván () shows the women's communal orientation and their ability to share testimonies about difficult systemic oppressions were related to both global economic problems that caused migration as well as the patriarchy that sometimes created marital tensions. The campesina women in her study had a positive impact on their greater communities and in their individual lives, yet they were often on the cusp of mere survival because of the “unrelenting adversities” (2010:319) the women faced.…”

“…I describe one of these main ways of knowing as sobrevivencia knowing, or survivalist knowing. Building upon foundational work of Ruth Trinidad Galván (, ), I explore how sobrevivencia knowing is the set of senses regarding how the individual, family, and community survive and often thrive. The four families, whose primary residences were in the Washington, DC area, showed this sobrevivencia knowing in their outlooks for the future, their framings of their pasts, and in their present challenges and everyday lives.…”