Indigenous Immigrant Youth’s Understandings of Power: Race, Labor, and Language

Abstract

One highly significant yet under-investigated source of variation within the Latinx Education scholarship are Indigenous immigrants from Latin America. This study investigates how Maya and other Indigenous recent immigrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico, respectively, understand indigeneity. Using a Critical Latinx Indigeneities analytic, along with literature on the coloniality of power and settler-colonialism, I base my findings on a year-long qualitative study of eight self-identifying indigenous youth from Guatemala and Mexico and highlight two emergent themes: youth’s understanding of (a) asymmetries of power based on division of labor, and (b) language hierarchies. I propose that race is a key component that contributes to the reproduction of divisions of labor and the subaltern positioning of Indigenous languages. Findings from this study provide linguistic, economic, and historical contexts of Maya and other Indigenous immigrants’ lived experiences to educators and other stakeholders in public schools working with immigrant Latinx populations.

Showing Up: A Theoretical Model of Anti‐Racist Identity and Action for Latinx Youth

“…Anti‐Blackness is “a form of colonial oppression that includes practices, policies, and dogmas that uniquely harm, disregard, reject, and devalue the lives and contributions of Black people” (Adames et al., 2021, p. 29). Similarly, anti‐Indigeneity in Latin America results in the systematic political and economic disenfranchisement of Indigenous people and devaluation of their appearance, languages, and cultural ways; this devaluation carries over into the U.S. context (e.g., Barillas Chón, 2010, 2019; Sanchez, 2018). A settler colonial perspective highlights inextricable links between anti‐Blackness and anti‐Indigeneity, as the project of white supremacy was advanced through the enslavement of African people and genocide of Indigenous communities, and their subjugation continues today via ongoing oppressive structures (Bonds & Inwood, 2016).…”

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

“…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.…”

“…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.…”

“…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.…”

“…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.…”