Multiple Perspectives on the Schooling of Mexican Indigenous Students in the U.S.: Issues for Future...

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Multiple Perspectives on the Schooling ofMexican Indigenous Students in the U.S.:Issues for Future ResearchNadeen T. Ruiz a & Manuel Barajas aa California State University Sacramento

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Bilingual Research Journal, 35: 125–144, 2012Copyright © the National Association for Bilingual EducationISSN: 1523-5882 print / 1523-5890 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15235882.2012.703639

RESEARCH ARTICLES

Multiple Perspectives on the Schoolingof Mexican Indigenous Students in the U.S.:

Issues for Future Research

Nadeen T. Ruiz and Manuel Barajas

California State University Sacramento

The authors—a researcher in Latino educational issues and a sociologist specializing inmigration—collaborated to more fully understand and explain the schooling circumstances ofMexican indigenous students. After elaborating a conceptual framework of transationalism, theresearchers present three types of results: (a) critical understandings about Mexican-origin migra-tion for U.S. educators, (b) themes from a series of interviews with Mexican indigenous familiesand U.S. and Mexican educators, and (c) teacher research on the complex question of the languageof instruction for Mexican indigenous students. The authors contend that once educators understandeach country’s role in U.S.–Mexican migration, conceptions of unsuccessful migrants are dispelled,and they can move to a focus on optimizing students’ opportunities for success. Also, results from thefamily and school personnel interviews revealed a pattern of both challenges, such as extreme dis-crimination against Mexican indigenous students, and strengths, such as recognition of the culturaland linguistic strengths that Mexican indigenous students bring to school. The findings resulting fromthis interdisciplinary collaboration, along with initial results from teacher research showing promisefor multilingual instruction for Mexican indigenous students, generated identification of issues forfuture research with a severely understudied population of multilingual students in U.S. schools.

Nadeen Ruiz is Professor Emerita, California State University Sacramento. A recipient of the 2010 Bilingual TeacherPreparation Program Award from the California Association of Bilingual Education, she currently directs the Bi-NationalTeacher Education Project, sending students to Mexico for part of their credential program. Her primary areas of researchinclude transnational teacher education and biliteracy development in general and special education.

Manuel Barajas, Associate Professor of sociology at California State University Sacramento, specializes in migrationstudies, Chicana/o studies, and social inequality. His book The Xaripu Community Across Borders: Labor Migration,Community, and Family (Notre Dame University Press) received the 2011 Distinguished Book Award Honorable Mentionfrom the Latino Section, American Sociological Association.

Address correspondence to Nadeen T. Ruiz, California State University, Sacramento, Bilingual MulticulturalEducation, 401 Gunther Way, Sacramento, CA 95819. E-mail: [email protected]

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126 RUIZ AND BARAJAS

INTRODUCTION

Mexican indigenous families have long been part of the U.S. labor force (Barajas, 2009; Fox,2006; National Center for Farmworker Health, 2011). Only recently, however, do they seem tohave become highly visible to K–12 educators (Pick, Wolfram, & López, 2011; Ruiz, Barajas,McGinty & Romo, in press). Consequently, research exists with Mexican indigenous adultsregarding their migration and living circumstances (e.g., Barajas, 2009; Cornelius, Fitzgerald,Hernández-Díaz, & Borger, 2009; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Kearney, 1986; Stephen, 2007),but there are few studies of Mexican indigenous children within their schooling context. Thepaucity of research in this area contrasts with growing concern of U.S. educators in areas withhigh numbers of Mexican indigenous children whose academic and social needs are not beingmet.

We wrote this exploratory article collaboratively as an educational researcher in Latino edu-cation issues (Ruiz) and a sociologist specializing in Mexican migration (Barajas). The genesisof our collaboration came from a request from the Office of Migrant Education, CaliforniaState Department of Education, of Dr. Ruiz to develop a professional development module forCalifornia teachers with increasing numbers of Mexican indigenous students in their classrooms.Following the advice of a well-known Mexican scholar of transnational education, Victor Zúñiga(Zúñiga & Hernández-León, 2011), to work with sociologists of migration, Dr. Ruiz invitedDr. Barajas to collaborate with her and two other educators, Irene McGinty and Dana Romo, indesigning a professional development module and accompanying teacher units (Ruiz et al., inpress). Building from that applied project is this article where, as a team of education and migra-tion researchers, we attempt to provide an examination of the schooling of Mexican indigenousstudents from multiple perspectives, including indigenous families residing in California andschool personnel from the United States and Mexico.

Our principal objectives in this collaboration were: (a) to link the work of migration scholarswith educational researchers to more fully understand and explain the schooling circumstancesof Mexican indigenous students; and (b) to begin to identify recurring issues of importance, frommultiple perspectives, regarding the schooling of Mexican indigenous students in the U.S.

CONCEPTUAL BASE

We chose to focus on transnationalism as the key concept underlying the development of thisstudy. Transnationalism can be defined in a restricted sense, i.e., with a simple focus on people’smovement and networks across borders. Alternately, the concept can be expanded to encom-pass the complex historical, structural, and sociocultural factors at work in the process of peoplecrossing multiple borders. It is within this latter characterization that transnationalism served asa working conceptual framework to explain the unique experiences of Mexican indigenous stu-dents. We primarily relied on the conception of transnationalism by two scholars of transnationalcommunities, Barajas (2009) and Lynn Stephen (2007). Barajas (2009) undertook an extensiveethnography of a transnational community with roots in Michoacán, México, and in Stockton,California. Stephen (2007) also carried out a multiyear ethnography of indigenous Mexicansand Mexican Americans, focusing on migrant communities from the southern state of Oaxaca,Mexico, who migrated to California and Oregon.

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SCHOOLING OF MEXICAN INDIGENOUS STUDENTS IN THE U.S. 127

Our working definition of transnationalism conceives of communities whose social fabric—e.g., cultural, economic, political, emotional relations—extends across national borders.Transnational communities are networks of families who have migrated because multiplestructural forces, primarily political and economic, have made staying within their home commu-nities relatively difficult for well-being, for survival, and for their children’s future. The socialfabric of transnationalism is so strong in its reach and impact that for members of the homecommunity, actual migration is not necessary to acquire transnational funds of knowledge or tofeel its effects on the community’s culture, language, and a range of social structures (Stephen,2007). Furthermore, racial dynamics shape the process of transnationalism in powerful ways(Barajas, 2012). When transnational migrants arrive to the new communities, racial hierarchiesfrom the home and receiving communities affect their treatment and the degree of incorpora-tion possible. This process includes discrimination against lo indio (indigenous forms) amongboth transnational and nonmigrant coethnics who identify more closely as Mexican or MexicanAmerican than with their specific indigenous heritage (Barajas, 2009; Pick et al., 2011). But farfrom being passive recipients of racist beliefs and behaviors, indigenous transnational communi-ties bring with them cultural wealth, such as viewing well-being in terms of the collective group,rather than as individuals, which would leave them vulnerable to damaging stereotypes, isola-tion, and low self-esteem (see Barajas’ explanation of convivencia (2009) and Martínez Luna’sdescription of comunalidad (2010) as examples of the collective cultural pattern). Employingthis wealth of indigenous social and cultural capital, they build new communities that supportboth established residents and newcomers (Fox & Gois, 2010).

An important caveat in the discussion of transnationalism is to explicitly acknowledge thatthe concept does not imply that crossing nation borders is either fluid or easy for indigenousMexican families (Barajas, 2012). Though the social fabric of indigenous communities spans theU.S. and Mexico, actual migration between the countries for indigenous Mexicans is normallydifficult and dangerous and becoming less possible in the current political and economic contextsof both countries (Pew Hispanic Center, 2011). The increasing difficulty weighs especially heavyupon migrant indigenous communities, given their traditional responsibilities for collective par-ticipation in their home cities that call upon them to periodically return from the U.S. to carryout those duties (Stephen, 2007).

To date we have located only one data-based study on the schooling of Mexican indigenousstudents. In terms of the conceptual base we have developed for our own research, this study, con-ducted by Barillas-Chón (2010) at a U.S. high school in California, provides corroboration for theexplanatory power of transnationalism in relation to Mexican indigenous education. The Barillas-Chón study also offers an initial look at the schooling experienced by recently immigrated (lessthan two years) adolescent indigenous students from Oaxaca, México.

Barillas-Chón (2010) conducted a series of interviews and observations of four Oaxacan stu-dents and of several school personnel over the course of six months at a California high schoolwith a student body that was 92% Latino. Building upon a welcoming/unwelcoming frameworkfor immigrant students (Gitlin, Buendía, Crosland, & Doumbia, 2003), Barillas-Chón found thatthe Oaxacan students appreciated various indicators of welcome provided by the school: “safe”spaces such as a Newcomer Center where they and other recent immigrant students could gather;specialized English Language Development classes; and key school personnel on site who spokeSpanish, such as the Migrant Education Coordinator. At the same time, these well-intentionedwelcoming practices were not mediated by school personnel or peers to move the Oaxacan

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students from the outskirts of academic and social life at the high school to the center; theyremained socially and instructionally marginalized. Further, a dramatic “unwelcoming” practicewithin this study’s context was the discriminatory behaviors directed to the Oaxacan students bytheir peers, largely Mexican American students who did not identify as indigenous, and who, inthe case of this study, were the majority group at the high school. The Oaxacan students reportedthat peers mocked them for several reasons: their use of indigenous languages, their lack ofproficiency in Spanish and English, and their physical features such as short stature and darkskin. After several recountings of these discriminatory interactions, Barillas-Chón summed upthe effect:

These examples show that being from Oaxaca results in being perceived as “dummies” and inferior;conversely, being perceived as dummies means being from Oaxaca. Using the term Oaxaquito/a (thediminuitive of a person from Oaxaca) then becomes a derogatory term. (Barillas-Chón, 2010, p. 314)

Barillas-Chón further noted that the mistreatment of the Oaxacan students took the form ofa repeating cycle: first, mocking of the indigenous students by peers, then a silencing of theOaxacan students, followed by continuing mocking by peers who interpreted the Oaxacan’ssilence as an inability to understand or evidence of being a “dummy.” Consequently, it is notsurprising that the only female student in the study dropped out of high school over the course ofthe research.

Our conceptual framework of transnationalism predicts the difficulty of incorporation toU.S. schools by the Oaxacan students in the Barillas-Chón study, as well as the discrimina-tory behaviors by not only European American students, but nonmigrant, Mexican Americanor Mexican-origin peers, given that Mexico’s racial hierarchy is so similar to that of the U.S.Though he is very clear about the small scope of his study, Barillas-Chón closes his article withseveral recommendations to schools. One is to provide school personnel and students with infor-mation about indigenous peoples’ histories of oppression, survival, resistance, and success, bothin Mexico and the U.S. Our present study can be viewed as a response to that recommendation,as well as an effort to add to the fledgling knowledge base regarding the education of Mexicanindigenous students in the U.S.

METHODS

Because of the limited research about schooling experiences of Mexican indigenous students,we employed a variety of methods, and a nontraditional conception of results, to begin to iden-tify areas for further investigation. First, in our collaboration, we discovered it was necessarythat sociologists of migration provide educators with a succinct review of theory and history ofMexican indigenous migration. Consequently, for this manuscript, we report Barajas’ work inthis area as a “result,” not background, to our collaboration.

As another method of study of our topic we used a qualitative approach to analyzing 10 inter-views with indigenous families and U.S. school personnel. In California, all interviews tookplace in agricultural areas where there were significant numbers of Mexican indigenous families,primarily, in California’s Central Coast area. Interviewees consisted of two elementary schoolprincipals, two Migrant Education teachers, an indigenous instructional aide who also respondedas a mother of children in U.S. schools, and a Oaxacan family of a father and mother withseveral children, including a 19-year-old who worked in the fields and an elementary-school-agedaughter. The responses of the parents and older son were included in this study. We also

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elicited and analyzed responses to questionnaires administered to four Mexican indigenousteachers participating in a summer, binational program with the California State Departmentof Education. The Mexican indigenous teachers worked with migrant indigenous students andfamilies in the Central Coast area of California during the summer of 2011. Essentially, all inter-views and questionnaires addressed three general categories of information: (a) strengths thatMexican indigenous students and families brought with them to schools; (b) challenges that stu-dents, families, and educators faced in schools and the community; and (c) recommendations toimprove schooling based on participant experiences and perspectives. Interviews were recorded,transcribed, and reviewed multiple times for reporting the results.

Though the number of interviews and questionnaires is quite limited, and generalizationsfrom this small sample cannot be made, we briefly provide here a description of our data set.Participant responses were divided into discourse units called stanzas (Gee, 2011), i.e., meaning-parsed utterances/propositions, in order to quantify participant responses and look for patterns.Our discourse unit, stanza, is associated with a single idea or proposition and can range in lengthfrom a short phrase to multiple sentences. Overall, we identified 79 stanzas among the partici-pant responses. We then examined each stanza, analyzing them for similarities and differences,until nine categories emerged accounting for over 70% of the data. (The remaining 30% wereresponses that occurred less frequently in the data set.) We then reanalyzed the responses, codingeach stanza according to the categories generated from the data. Finally, because we wanted toexamine the data in light of our working conceptual base of transnationalism, we took a step backfrom our frequency coding and viewed our analyzed data set as recurring themes. For this sectionof the study, we report those themes in order of their frequency of recurrence and illustrate themwith direct quotes from the participants.

Our third approach to reporting results for this manuscript was to include emerging workfrom a group of teacher researchers. The group began their investigation in response to the pro-fessional development module mentioned as the beginning of this article and entitled, WeavingLearning Communities Across Borders: Mexican Indigenous Students and Their Families (Ruizet al., in press). We present this ongoing study as one of the first to tackle the issue of languageof instruction for Mexican migrant children who speak an indigenous language.

In summary, reacting to the limited amount of research in this area, we took a broad andintegrative approach to conceptualizing the results of our collaboration as education researcherand migration scholar.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Theory, a qualitative study, and ongoing teacher research served to triangulate our new under-standings about the schooling of Mexican indigenous students in the U.S. We report our resultsin three sections: Critical Understandings of Mexican-Origin Migration for U.S. Educators,Emerging Issues in the Research and Practice of the Education of Mexican Indigenous MigrantStudents, and An Initial Study of Language Instruction for Mexican Indigenous MigrantChildren.

Critical Understandings of Mexican-Origin Migration for U.S. Educators

When we first began work together on the education of Mexican indigenous children in the U.S.,we made sure that our scanning of the available literature included research from Mexico as well

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as the U.S. From the U.S., we were fortunate to find the Barillas-Chón (2010) study reviewed ear-lier in this article. From the Mexican Ministry of Education, we discovered the work of a team ofMexican and U.S. researchers, Victor Zúñiga, Edward Hamann, and Juan Sánchez García. Thisteam had published several studies and reports on alumnos transnacionales (transnational stu-dents), i.e., students who had experienced schooling in both U.S. and Mexican schools (Zúñiga,Hamann, & Sánchez, 2008). In our professional development module for teachers (Ruiz et al, inpress), we described the Zúñiga et al. major findings because of their relationship to transnationalstudents in general, even though their work was not directly related to indigenous students inthe U.S. In addition, we attended several professional talks by the team and their colleagueswhere Zúñiga especially emphasized the need for educational researchers to work side by sidewith sociologists of migration on questions of schooling for transnational children. In short, atransnational team of U.S.–Mexico researchers first alerted us to the fact that interdisciplinarycollaboration was needed at the research level.

Through our own collaboration over the past year, we have seen firsthand the need for schoolpersonnel to understand immigration to the U.S. by multiethnic Mexican migrants at a deeperlevel. We have observed that if educators are not provided the opportunity to obtain both basic andnuanced understandings of migration, conceptions of “unsuccessful” Mexican migrants seekingresources from a resource-strained country such as the United States— a frequent historical view,and certainly intensified during the current recession—continue. Furthermore, additional blameis then ascribed to migrant students and their families for their present educational challengesinstead of searching for needed changes in school and classroom contexts. As noted previously,we rely on Barajas’ (2011, 2012) work to summarize key points about Mexican migration foreducators.

As background to discussions with educators on Mexican migration to the U.S., we share withthem data on the flow of migration into the U.S. from both Europe and Mexico. For example,we present information such as that provided by Figure 1. The horizontal lines in the figure trackthe percentage of immigrants to the U.S. from two locations, Europe and Latin America, fromthe beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century. This figure and others that weemploy in our workshops for teachers make the point that it was not until the 1980s that thenumbers of foreign-born Latinos in the U.S. outpaced foreign-born Europeans (Figure 1). Withthat often-surprising fact established, we are able to assess the explanatory power of varioustheories of migration.

One of the most prevalent theories of migration holds widespread, commonsense appeal: thepush–pull theory of migration. This theory posits that a lack of resources in the home coun-try “pushes” people to migrate to countries that have a “pull” factor, i.e., countries with moreresources, especially in terms of labor opportunities. When considering Mexican-origin migra-tion, however, flaws in this theory immediately emerge. As Barajas (2012) notes regardingmigration patterns in the early part of the 20th century, European migration to the U.S. hugelyoutpaced Mexican migration, despite the fact that push–pull factors were exceedingly strong inMexico at that time and perhaps even more compelling than European reasons for migration,e.g., Mexico’s proximity to the U.S., its extreme levels of poverty, and its population’s disloca-tion due to war, politics, and economics. The push–pull theory fails to explain why the U.S. didnot experience a surge of migration from Mexico much earlier than it did.

Another theory or set of theories regarding migration is often described as taking a struc-tural perspective. This perspective analyzes the influence of economic and political structures on

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FIGURE 1 Comparing percent of European and Latino foreign-bornin U.S. from 1830 to 2000. Sources: www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/...tables/tab02.xls; U.S. Census; Number of AlienPassengers Arrived in the United States from Foreign Countries October1, 1819, to December 31, 1970, Table 127.

migration, especially those that are coconstructed between the sending and receiving nations. Forexample, Europe’s shift from a feudal/subsistence-based economy at the beginning of the 19thcentury to capitalism and manufacturing displaced peasants from farms to wage-based industries.Common destinations were Northern Europe and the U.S. at this time. (See Barajas, 2012, foradditional components of structural theories of migration.) Analyzing these structural relation-ships, Barajas writes: “Political, economic, and military interventions of dominant nations createthe conditions for emigration in the sending country” (Barajas PowerPoint, slide 15, Ruiz et al.,in press). In actual fact, then, it is the presence and domination of the receiving nation (e.g., GreatBritain) in the sending nation (e.g., Ireland) that takes place first in the migration sequence. As aconsequence of the receiving nation’s presence and its effects in the sending nation, dislocationoccurs, and people migrate.

The structural theory goes a long way in better capturing the actual factors creating large-scalemigration flows. Yet once again, this theory falls short in describing Mexican migration to theU.S. Structural changes paralleling those between our previous example of Ireland and GreatBritain occurred between Mexico and the U.S. during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but theincidence of Mexican migration to the U.S. was almost nonexistent at this time when comparedto European migration to the U.S.

In search of a theory with greater exploratory power for Mexican migration, Barajas suggesteda historical-integrated framework (2009, 2012). Absent from previous theories of migration wasa critical examination of sending and receiving countries’ racial and gendered patterns of migra-tion. Again, we refer readers to a much more detailed explanation of the historical-integratedtheory in Barajas’ works, but two examples here serve to illustrate the greater explanatory powerof this theory in terms of Mexican migration.

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The first example concerns the United States’ early policy of permitting citizenship only to“free white persons” through the 1790 Naturalization Act. This policy explains White Europeans’long record of greater access to the U.S. than people of color, e.g., Asians and Latinos. A sec-ond example of unequal access to national membership is the Bracero program in the mid-20thcentury. In contrast to the Homestead Act and Immigration Act of 1864 where whole Europeanand immigrant families were encouraged to migrate and become citizens of the U.S., Mexicanmen were desired only for temporary labor and not for settlement nor full democratic participa-tion. Of course, with indigenous Mexican migrants, U.S. exclusionary forces to their integrationonly grow greater and more intense. Knowing historically that Mexican-origin people are largelyindigenous people who have been “de-Indianized” or more commonly understood as “mesti-zoized” over the past century (Bonfil Batalla, 1996; Leon-Portilla, 1990; Menchaca, 1993; Wolf,1959), it begins to make sense why Mexicans form about 60% of the undocumented population,when they are a mere one third of the immigrant population (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006).

In our professional development module for teachers on this subject, Barajas includes adescription of the structural forces that, indeed, caused the dramatic increase of Mexicanmigration to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, as depicted in Figure 1. He provides a discussion ofU.S.–Mexico collaboration in the liberalization of the Mexican economy beginning in the 1980sand intensifying in the early 1990s with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).These economic agreements significantly disadvantaged Mexico’s domestic industries in manu-facturing and agriculture, hitting indigenous communities from the southern states like Oaxacaparticularly hard. With the deregulation and privatization of markets and trade, indigenous farm-ers lost legal protections for their communal lands; experienced a drop in an already-minimalfarm subsidy program (when compared to the U.S. subsidies for its farmers); saw the price oftheir mainstay crop, corn, drop by half in the 10 years after NAFTA; observed the flood of cheapU.S. corn into Mexico; and so on. (See the short documentary “Corn Country/Sin maiz no haypais” where the effect of these free trade agreements is viewed as causing a “deportation” ofMexicans from Mexico into the U.S.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YexMYrGCIqY).

Adding race and gender factors from a historical-integrated perspective to economic con-ditions, Barajas concludes the migration section of the module with a succinct list of keyunderstandings for educators about Mexican indigenous migration:

• Mexican-origin immigrants, particularly indigenous people, have a long history in the U.S.and have been among the most disadvantaged in terms of occupational mobility, per capitaincome, health coverage, and educational attainment.

• Popular explanations of migration suggest indigenous communities’ low status in society isa result of their individual decision to migrate and their inability to fully assimilate into thehost society. However, as we have reviewed, these theories blame migrants for processesbeyond their reach.

• A historical analysis of what causes indigenous migration and how they have beendifferentially incorporated in the nation can help dismantle such misconceptions and biases.

• By listening to their voices of why they come, what they aspire to, and what barriers theyface, society can better inform policies and programs that permit indigenous students andfamilies to succeed and pursue their dreams.

• Among the most significant barriers they face are their immigration status, which blockstheir integration, and the political scapegoating that blames them for the problems of

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a global system. Moreover, indigenous cultures and physical appearances have becomeassociated with “aliens” that threaten the nation.

• The challenge in our ever-interconnected world is to create relationships of equality andrespect across racial-ethnic differences and to construct standards that include and reflectuniversal experiences and advance the quality of life for all (Barajas PowerPoint, slide 40,Ruiz et al., in press).

In summary, through our work together on a professional development module, and thisexploratory study, we have come to believe in the importance of educators’ access to criti-cal understandings about the reasons for the presence of Mexican indigenous students in theirclassrooms. Such understandings seem to help “clear the way” of blame or recrimination,especially when each country’s role in migration is illuminated and analyzed. These understand-ings, in turn, facilitate a focus on improving U.S. educational contexts for Mexican indigenousstudents.

Emerging Issues in the Research and Practice of the Educationof Mexican Indigenous Migrant Students

Nine themes accounting for over 70% of the data emerged from the interviews and questionnairesexamined for this article. Table 1 lists those themes, in order of frequency, and provides a shortdescription. In this article we discuss the first five in depth. With regard to the remaining four

TABLE 1Themes in Order of Frequency

Category Description

1. Discrimination against Mexican IndigenousMigrants

2. Lack of/Need for English Proficiency (tied forhighest frequency of responses)

Discrimination category: Negative behaviors and attitudesdirected toward Mexican indigenous students for racial,cultural, and linguistic differences. English LanguageProficiency category: Hardships of not knowing English andabsolute necessity of acquiring English proficiency.

3. Recognition of Cultural Strengths Strengths that are tied to indigenous cultures, e.g., a concern forthe collective.

4. Need for Spanish Instruction Importance of Spanish–English instruction for Mexicanindigenous students vs. English-only instruction

5. Commitment to a Future in the U.S. Indigenous families’ affirmations of their willingness to workhard to be successful in the U.S.

6. Importance of Meaningful InstructionalActivities

Personally relevant and engaging instruction for Mexicanindigenous students.

7. Importance of Teaching Indigenous Languages Striving to maintain indigenous languages here in the U.S. infamily, community, and school contexts.

8. Importance of Binational Teachers Workingwith Indigenous Students and Families

Contributions of the Mexico–U.S. summer program bringingMexican indigenous teachers to work with indigenous familiesand students.

9. Affirmation of Mexican Indigenous Children’sIdentities

Importance of families and educators building pride in Mexicanindigenous students’ identity, especially as a way to buildresistance to discrimination.

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categories of responses in our data, themes 6–9, we are interested in seeing if future research alsodiscovers these themes in their investigations.

Discrimination Against Mexican Indigenous Migrants

The theme of discrimination, along with the recognition of the importance of English-language proficiency, appeared most frequently in the data. All groups of respondents—U.S. andMexican educators and the indigenous families themselves—cited the harsh prejudice shownMexican indigenous migrants. The following quote from a Mexican indigenous teacher workingin California through the summer binational teacher program was representative of the responsesin this category. Here she notes that children are first rejected for being Mexican and thenOaxacan.

Indigenous Teacher from Mexico Working in a

Summer Binational Program

. . . el trabajar con ellos en comunidadescalifornianas es mucho más difícil, ya quese enfrentan a una situación social, cul-tural, etc., más distinta; donde no sólo todoes nuevo, sino además sufren de discrimi-nación, primero por ser mexicanos, despuésya de manera más cruel, por ser oaxaque-ños [indígenas]. Esto provoca en ellos unsentimiento de vergüenza, de rechazo haciasu propia identidad racial, lo que conll-eva una negación, primero parcial, luegototal, a continuar reproduciendo costumbresancestrales.

English Translation

. . . working with [Mexican indigenousmigrants in California] is a lot more diffi-cult because they face a very different socialand cultural context, not only where all isnew to them, but where they also suffer dis-crimination, first for being Mexican, and then,in the most cruel way, for being Oaxacans[indigenous]. This provokes in them a feelingof shame, of rejection of their own racial iden-tity; which, in turn, is accompanied by first, apartial, then total, refusal to continue ancestralcustoms.

Teachers and others not familiar with Mexico may not differentiate between the indigenousand nonindigenous children, because in appearance the children may look similar. However, theMexican indigenous teacher quoted here perceived the discrimination of persons from Oaxacaas more cruel, possibly because of their marginalization by conationals who feel superior to loindio (the Indian forms, culture, and styles).

Many of the reports of discrimination centered around the use or silencing of their indigenouslanguages, as in the following quotes from, respectively, a U.S. Migrant Educator, a Mexicanindigenous teacher, and a 19-year-old farmworker:

Migrant Educator

Yo me siento triste porque hay niños que susmamás hablan mixteco, pero los niños medicen, “Nosotros no hablamos mixteco. . . . Yono soy de Oaxaca.”

English Translation

I feel sad because there are children whosemothers speak Mixtec, but the children tellme, “We don’t speak Mixtec. . . . We’re notfrom Oaxaca.”

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. . . [a] padres de Ahuejutla que ya llevan8 y 10 años en [California] cuando nos invi-taron a su casa les pregunté que si ellos siguenenseñando su lengua materna a sus hijos, yla respuesta fue que no. Volví a preguntarles¿por qué no les enseñan? Los papás dicen quelos niños no quieren aprender por la siguienterazón: que los americanos los discriminan.Les dicen “Oaxaquita,” “Oaxaca.” . . .

English Translation

I asked [indigenous families from Oaxaca]who have been in the U.S. for 8–10 years,when they invited us to their homes, if theywere teaching their mother tongue to theirchildren, and the answer was no. I asked themwhy that was, and they said that their childrendo not want to learn because of the fact thatU.S. children discriminate against them. Theycall them “Oaxaquita, Oaxaca.”

Young Adult Mixtec Farmworker

Ves, que cuando los niños van a la escuelase sienten miedo. Se discriman entre ellosmismos y les da vergüenza hablar el idioma[indígena]. Mejor dicen que no hablan.

English Translation

You see, when the [indigenous] childrenget to school, they are afraid. Their peersdiscriminate against them and they areashamed to speak the [indigenous] language.So they choose to say that they don’tspeak it.

One of the binational indigenous teachers from Mexico noted, however, that discrimina-tion against indigenous students is indeed transnational, that is, occurring in Mexico as it doesin California. Mexico has a long history of nationalization in terms of the Spanish languageand national identity as Mexican, rather than efforts to preserve indigenous languages andcultures.

Indigenous Teacher from Mexico

Algo semejante [en México] fue el sentimientode vergüenza que tienen los alumnos al acep-tar que provienen de alguna comunidad indí-gena y el hablar el idioma nativo de eselugar. Este sentimiento, en México, se hacemás fuerte al ingresar en las escuelas, tal vezpor la imposición de programas nacionalesque tienen como objetivo el desaparecerlas particularidades culturales, e imponenuna global, lo que hace que los niños yano quieran ser diferentes, sino ser simi-lares a los modelos que se manejan enlos libros de texto; ya no quieran vivir,hablar, comer, etc., en la manera que susantepasados, sino imitar formas diferentesde vida.

English Translation

Something similar [in Mexico] was the feelingof shame that children have when they acceptthe idea that they come from an indigenouscommunity and speak the native language.This feeling, in Mexico, becomes all thestronger when children enter schools, proba-bly because of national programs which haveas their objective to wipe out specific culturaldifferences and impose the global, which inturn makes the children not want to be dif-ferent, but instead similar to the models thatthey’re seeing in the text books; the childrenno longer want to live, speak, eat, and so on,in the way that their ancestors did; insteadthey want to imitate ways of life different thantheir own.

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An instructional aide of Mixtec background who immigrated to California 17 years ago linkeddiscrimination on both sides of the borders, recalling her own transnational experiences:

Mixtec Indigenous Instructional Aide/Mother

En Oaxaca, muchos no sabemos el español,llegamos aquí y no sabemos hablar inglés,¿entonces, qué es lo que hacemos? Lo quehacemos es agachar. Y lo que hacen los niños[indígenas] es agachar.

English Translation

In Oaxaca, many of us don’t know Spanish,and when we get here [to the U.S.], wedon’t speak English. So what do we do?We duck and hide. That’s what indige-nous students do: They duck, and try to gounnoticed.

This same Mixtec instructional aide is also a mother of two children whom she is raising inCalifornia. She explains what some indigenous parents may feel about teaching their childrentheir native indigenous language in the face of transnational discrimination.

Mixtec Instructional Aide/Mother

Otra de las razones que también comonosotros de padres ya no queremos que nues-tra primera lengua siga [es] porque pensamosque esa lengua no nos dio nada y no dejó nadabueno. Y quizás por un mal entendido o por nopensar bien el consejo que les damos a nue-stros hijos, les decimos, “¿Para qué quiere elmixteco si el mixteco—fíjate en mí, míramea mí—si yo hubiera aprendido el español, siyo hubiera sido otra persona? Yo no quieroque eso te pase. Yo no quiero que hablesmixteco.”

English Translation

One of the reasons that we as [indigenous]parents don’t want our first language to con-tinue is that we think that this languagedidn’t give us anything, it didn’t leave uswith anything good. So perhaps not under-standing, or not really thinking about ouradvice to our children, we say to them, “Whywould you want to speak Mixtec if Mixtec—think about me, look at me—if I wouldhave learned Spanish, if I would have beena different person? I don’t what that tohappen to you. I don’t want you to speakMixtec.”

The historical-integrated migration framework presented earlier helps explain why the themeof discrimination surfaced as one of the most frequent in our interviews with participants, just asit did in the Barillas-Chón study. It also predicts that discriminatory behaviors directed towardindigenous migrants not only come from the European American population, but from Mexicanimmigrants and Mexican Americans. Those reports surfaced in our interviews, as in the followingexample:

Young Mixtec Adult Who Is a Farmworker

Pues bien, los que se discriminan es entre unomismo, los mismos mexicanos.

English Translation

Within our own group of Mexicans, there isdiscrimination.

It is clear from our data that discrimination from both conationals (Mexican Spanish-speakers) and European Americans create formidable barriers for indigenous children andfamilies. These nativistic forces, reflecting ethnocentric and racist dimensions, communicate

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to the more recent immigrants that they are not welcomed at school, work, and community.As we have seen through the quotes associated with this theme in the data, the pressuresare such that some indigenous parents and children feel the need to reject and devalue theirindigenous heritage, language, and identity. Some indigenous people over time may identifyas Mexican, but others may resent the abuse from their mestizoized conationals and desire tosurpass or override mestizo culture (especially, the mestizo language, Spanish) and go straightto the dominant culture (especially, the dominant language, English), which is associated withhigher rewards and opportunities. Indeed, this issue of English acquisition, Lack of/Need forEnglish Proficiency, occurred with equal frequency as the Discrimination theme discussed in thissection.

Lack of/Need for English Proficiency

The responses constituting the theme on the importance of English are not unlike those onewould hear from any recent immigrant to the U.S. For example, a Mixtec farmworker in his 50sexpressed to us the difficulty of not speaking English: “One comes to this country feeling useless,broken, because there is not communication” [translated from Mixtec to Spanish to English]. Hisson expanded on the importance of learning English and added his resolve to speak the newlanguage:


Quiero aprender el inglés y superarme . . .

uno que no habla inglés no va a poder unoigual como el que sí lo habla.

English Translation

I want to learn English and overcomeobstacles. . . . Someone who doesn’t knowEnglish is not going to be able to do as wellas someone who does.

Perhaps one difference in the responses of this study’s participants is the link between lack ofEnglish proficiency and discrimination directed towards them.


Porque cuando unos mexicanos van a laescuela y aprenden inglés, entre unos mis-mos se discriminan, porque uno no puedehablar [inglés]. Nos bajan porque uno nosabe hablar el inglés.

English Translation

When children go to school, they’reafraid. They discriminate against each otherand they’re ashamed of speaking their lan-guage. They’re told that it’s better not to speakit. They put us down because one doesn’tknow English.

Recognition of Cultural Strengths

In contrast to the first two categories revolving around very negative aspects of Mexicanindigenous incorporation to the U.S., the third theme in the data is positive. Here, partici-pants pointed out that indigenous students and their families brought resources to schools suchpotential trilingualism, community organization, and parent support for education.

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Mexican Indigenous Instructional Aide/Mother

En [la ciudad local] hay mucha migración, ylos conocidos siguen migrando juntos, comode Greenfield, Delano, Fresno, [ciudad local],Santa María. . . . Esta migración y conviven-cia facilita la retención de cultura [indígena].

English Translation

In [the local city] here’s a lot of migrationof indigenous peoples. Those who know eachother migrate together to places like Delano,Fresno, (local city), and Santa Maria. Thismigration and mutual social support helpretain the [indigenous] culture.

U.S. school personnel also cited strengths of the indigenous students and their families:Migrant Education Teacher: “The families bring their cultural patterns of working collectivelyand organizing to help others. They have a strong social network. They are hard workers.”School Principal: “[Mexican indigenous families] bring a new culture and new language toour school. The families are tight knit. They have a clear goal for their children: education.”School Principal: “When we invite [indigenous] parents to school, they show up! They valueeducation.”

Interestingly, a few of the U.S. school personnel also cited an aptitude for English on the partof the indigenous children. School Principal: “My impression is that, relative to other Englishlearners, the [indigenous] students seem to acquire English faster.” Future studies may want toinvestigate this observation. In doing so it will be important to separate out a linguistic aptitudeon the part of indigenous children, which is certainly plausible, given the exposure to multipleand disparate languages (e.g., Mixtec is a tonal language while Spanish is not), from the immensepressure to learn English rapidly, stemming from severe discrimination directed toward them byboth European Americans and conational Spanish-speakers.

Need for Spanish Instruction

Next in order of frequency of responses was the theme of the need for Mexican indigenouschildren to learn Spanish, in addition to English, while in the U.S. The U.S. school personnelin our study made clear to us that the issue of bilingual education or English-only instructionwas a pressing question and that there were people supporting each position. However, in ourdata set, which included migrant educators who routinely use Spanish in addition to English intheir instruction, there was a clear preference for a dual-language approach. Their preferenceseemed linked to their view that if the indigenous children either understood Spanish, or wereencouraged to learn it, then the Spanish-speaking personnel had a better opportunity to help thechildren integrate into the school context, and progress academically.

Migrant Educator

Como para mí, el director me pregunta queporqué no le enseño a [nombre de un estudi-ante indígena] y otros niños nuevos en inglés.Y yo le digo me puedo comunicar mejor conellos en español. Entienden en español, y esmás fácil enseñarles los sonidos en español.

English Translation

The principal has asked me why don’t Iteach [name of an indigenous student] andthe other new students in English. And I tellhim that I can communicate with them betterin Spanish. They understand Spanish, and it’seasier to teach them their sounds in Spanish.

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También su maestra [nombre de una maestrabilingüe] se comunica con ella porque hableespañol. Yo pienso que sí es un puente.

Also, [name of a bilingual teacher] communi-cates with her in Spanish because she speaksSpanish. So yes, I think that Spanish is abridge.

The indigenous instructional aide in our study also spoke about the importance of Mexicanindigenous children in the U.S. learning Spanish. She stressed that learning Spanish is a modelto retaining the children’s and families’ indigenous languages.

Mixtec Instructional Aide Working in the

U.S./Mother

El español es importante de aprenderloporque es el primer guía que nosotros, esuna guía para poder seguir avanzando, noquitar, sino atraer hacia nosotros. Y esos sonlos primeros pasos para nosotros. [Aprenderespañol] también es un ejemplo, que no deje-mos nuestro primer idioma. . . . El español esun guía para nosotros poder comenzar a cam-inar y para nosotros también apreciar nuestroprimer idioma.

English Translation

Spanish is important to learn because it’s ourfirst guide, a guide so that we continue toadvance and add on to what we know, nottake away. And those are the first steps forus. [Learning Spanish] is also an example forus, that we shouldn’t stop using our first lan-guage. . . . Spanish is a guide for us to be ableto begin to go forward, and a model that weshould appreciate our own first language.

The indigenous families in our interviews were consistent in their wish for their children to betrilingual, that is, learn English and Spanish in addition to their home language. Moreover, therewas an understanding that by embracing multiple languages, e.g., English and Spanish, that theyalso moved forward a culture of embracing diversity, including their indigenous language.

Young Mixtec Farmworker

Lo mejor que hablen los dos idiomas por siacaso hay una pregunta que le hagan la pre-gunta en español y pues poder contestar eninglés.

English Translation

It’s best that they speak two languages in casea question is asked in Spanish, and then beable to answer it in English.

In the following quote, a Mixtec mother cited another functional reason behind her wishthat her children learn Spanish. She first spoke of the discrimination directed toward indige-nous children whose reactions were usually to try to be invisible. To us, the mother seemed toconvey the idea that proficiency in Spanish may be a tool to help to resolve differences amonggroups, especially if, after repeated teasing and bullying, the children’s reactions took a moreheated form.

Mixtec Instructional Aide Working in the

U.S./Mother

Yo creo que la escuela debería de dar la opor-tunidad [de aprender español] a esos niños,

English Translation

I think that schools should give the oppor-tunity [to learn Spanish] to the children so

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para que esos niños logren pensar positiva-mente y vivir sanamente, y también para queese niño pueda defender no con golpes perocon hecho y con palabras.

that they can think positively, live straightfor-wardly, and also be able to defend themselves,not with blows, but with deeds and words.

Commitment to a Future in the U.S

The fifth theme we discuss here is the affirmation by the indigenous participants that theirfuture is here in their new country. As a Mixtec mother in her 50s expressed this idea in Mixtec:“I would like to make my family’s life here. The first reason is that my children were born here.The second reason is that there are more possibilities. My children have dreams of becomingsomeone in life.”

Parents in our sample talked about better work opportunities in the U.S., as would be explainedby the structural theory of migration. One of the Mexican indigenous teachers participating inthe summer Migrant Education program, however, expanded on the reasons she felt were behindthe parents’ very palpable hope for a better future in the U.S. She used her own experiences asa Zapotec woman, and her years of teaching other indigenous students in Mexico, to suggest anexplanation for the recurrence of this theme:



Algo bastante diferente entre alumnos indíge-nas en México y California es el hecho que enel estado norteamericano éstos tiene la opor-tunidad, si trabajan fuerte, de una vida mejor,de comer aunque sea una vez al día, de imag-inar que algún día las cosas cambiarán paraellos y que tal vez en un futuro, sus hijos yano sufrirán de la manera que ellos lo hacen.Creo que parte del sueño de estas [personasindígenas] es el de imaginar que sus hijosdejarán de vistos como indígenas, que se lesborrará todo rastro que los identifique como“los otros mexicanos.” En cambio, en México,estos indígenas sienten que nunca dejarán deserlo y que todas sus generaciones posteriorescargarán con el estigma de ser eso: indígena.

English Translation

Something substantially different betweenindigenous students in Mexico and Californiais that in the U.S. they have the opportunity,if they work hard enough, of having a betterlife, of eating, even if it’s just once a day, ofimagining that someday things will change forthem and that maybe in the future their chil-dren will not suffer as they have. I believethat part of this dream is that their childrenwill stop being viewed as indigenous, andthat every feature that identifies them as “theother Mexicans” will be erased. In contrast,in Mexico the indigenous feel that they willnever be viewed as anything else but indige-nous, and that all future generations will beburdened with the stigma of being just that:indigenous.

As predicted by a historical-integrated perspective on migration, racial hierarchies aretransnational, stretching across borders. They are also felt deeply, extending through manygenerations.

Contextualizing these perceptions is important in understanding indigenous families’ migra-tion and incorporation experiences. In Mexico, stratification has grown over the past 30 years, andsocial oppression is experienced most acutely by indigenous communities. However, indigenouscommunities in Mexico experience double oppression: first, from within their nation, and second,from living in a subordinated nation in a larger system of global inequalities. By migrating they

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escape one layer of oppression (Barajas, 2009). The participants in our interviews, as well as theparents observed by our Mexican indigenous teacher colleagues, maintain hope that their lives intheir new country will disrupt these patterns of discrimination.

In summary, participant responses in our interviews and questionnaires revealed a numberof themes. We discussed the five themes that appeared most frequently within our data set.Future research is needed to see if some of the themes are particular to our target geographi-cal region, i.e., the Central Coast of California; or to cities and schools with high numbers ofmestizoized Mexicans and Mexican Americans, bilingual programs, bilingual school personnel,and indigenous Mexican migrants. What strikes us as very important thus far in our work is howa historical-integrated theory of indigenous migration to the U.S. has predictive and explanatorypower in terms of our participants’ responses.

An Initial Study of Language Instruction Options for MexicanIndigenous Migrant Children

As we began our collaboration, we were struck by the lack of available research on the educationof Mexican indigenous students in the U.S. In response to an almost futile search for information,especially at the elementary level, our school partners in the professional development projectwere moved to action (Unruhe, Díaz, & Salazar, 2012). The local Migrant Education servicearea and its partner school district in the Central Coast area of California began collaboration toexplore a question that had been circulating among the local schools in recent years, and certainlyemerged in our interviews with school personnel: What is the best language of instruction forMexican indigenous students in U.S. classrooms?

This teacher research group rightly cautioned against any strong interpretations of their initialfindings until further research has been conducted using larger student sample sizes (Unruhe,personal communication). We briefly summarize their work here, however, because their ongoingwork is precisely the type of research that is needed to improve the educational circumstances ofMexican indigenous children.

Essentially, Unruhe et al. (2012) have begun to compare the English-language development ofindigenous students in English-only classrooms and in bilingual (Spanish–English) classrooms.Their efforts thus far have had to cope with a common characteristic of much classroom researchwith migrant children, that is, family mobility for work, and therefore, limited and decreasingsamples of children participating in the study over time. Furthermore, the team is waiting toinclude the results of additional children to run statistical tests of significance. With those caveatsfirmly in place, we believe that it is worthwhile to summarize their findings thus far.

The team first conducted observations of indigenous children and interviews of their teach-ers regarding language use among the children. It is important to note that the schools wherethe observations took place are Latino-majority schools. Early results from these observationsindicated that indigenous children were using their indigenous mother tongue with other indige-nous children outside of the classroom in informal contexts at school such as recess. With theirother classmates, however, the indigenous children often used conversational Spanish to commu-nicate. Initial explanations for their use of Spanish seemed to be related to both students’ needto navigate informal school classroom contexts with high numbers of Spanish-speaking Latinostudents and more limited access to native English-speaking students, resulting in less Englishusage in these same informal contexts.

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Spurred on by the initial results from their observational protocols, the teacher-researcherteam, in collaboration with the local district and Migrant Education administration, identified theMexican indigenous students among the 16 district schools (n = 148). We would note here thateven what seems to be a straightforward process—to count the number of Mexican indigenousstudents in a district—would be extremely difficult for almost any other school district. To us,the reporting of these data is highly indicative of the commitment of local migrant and districteducators to take action on behalf of the Mexican indigenous population (Benson & GracidaCruz, 2012). The team then explored whether the indigenous families had chosen to place theirchildren in Spanish-English bilingual classrooms or all/overwhelmingly English classrooms.(The majority of the district bilingual programs were transitional bilingual programs, that is,using Spanish for instruction in grades K–2 only. Even for transitional bilingual programs, theCalifornia Education Code requires parents to fill out a waiver from all-English instruction toplacement in a bilingual classroom.)

Keeping in mind all the caveats for interpreting findings from this ongoing project, the teamfound that the majority of indigenous parents signed waivers to allow their children to participatein the bilingual programs. This finding supports the pattern that we found in the family interviewswhere they stated their wish that their children learn both English and Spanish. The teacherresearch team then began the next phase of their study, which compared the English-languagedevelopment of Mexican indigenous students in bilingual classrooms with Mexican indigenousstudents in English-only classrooms. As a measure of that development they used students’ scoresfrom the state English-language proficiency test.

An initial look at the data showed that Mexican indigenous students in bilingual classrooms,where there is less exposure to English due to Spanish-language instruction, did slightly bet-ter on the English-proficiency test at two grade levels, kindergarten and third grade (n = 86),and slightly worse at the first- and second-grade levels (n = 62). In general, then, at this verybeginning stage of analysis, it seems that Mexican indigenous students in bilingual classroomsdo about as well on English-language development as those students in all-English classrooms,despite many fewer hours of English instruction; basic tenets of bilingual education seem to holdtrue in this context (Thomas & Colliers, 2002). In addition, it is important to keep in mind thatMexican indigenous students in bilingual programs have a sociolinguistic leg up on students inall-English classrooms: the opportunity to acquire Spanish.

Related to the bilingual program’s additive nature in terms of language repertoire, the teamalso noted during their observations that the indigenous-speaking students in the bilingual classeswere much more willing to acknowledge that they spoke another language than the students inthe Structured English Immersion classrooms. One theory the team put forth was that students inthe all-English classrooms felt that speaking other languages was not promoted and consequentlynot an asset. In contrast, students in the bilingual classrooms saw that speaking two languageswas valued and therefore concluded that speaking a third language must also be a benefit.

So far in their work, the team has also discovered that indigenous parents attending MigrantEducation meetings verbally corroborate the preference for Spanish–English bilingual schoolingfor their children, as shown by the numbers of students placed in dual-language programs. Theparents cite as the number one reason behind this preference the fact that they can use theirown Spanish proficiency, albeit sometimes quite limited, to help their children with homework.Furthermore, Migrant Education personnel report that they have been approached multiple timesby Mexican indigenous parents to assist in moving their children to a bilingual program if thechildren were originally placed in an English-only classroom. Again, the research team is quick

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to point out that their sample of parent preferences does not include parents who do not attendmeetings. In addition, they report that a number of families do choose the English-only option fortheir children’s schooling, and those parents have not yet been interviewed to hear their thoughtsbehind their decision.

The ongoing study reviewed here has additional rich findings regarding the team’s explorationof indigenous students’ and families’ language preferences across various contexts. We shareone example here to illustrate how language choices are sometimes based on harsh realitiesthat would not automatically appear on a questionnaire. A member of the teacher research teamreported that in the case of deportation of Mexican indigenous parents—and she spoke at lengthof one family’s case—they would need to interact with Mexican border officials who speakSpanish. These grounded findings, often based on real-life challenges such as the current admin-istration’s increase in deportation of heads of families, spur us on in sharing the important workof this team. We strongly feel that research efforts like the Unruhe et al. study are needed to beginto improve the educational contexts offered to Mexican indigenous students in U.S. classrooms.

CONCLUSION

We designed this exploratory study to add to the fledgling knowledge base regarding the school-ing experiences of Mexican indigenous children. Essentially, our interviews with Californiaschool personnel, and with indigenous families and educators, combined with the ongoing studyundertaken by the teacher research team from California’s central coast, have generated initialidentification and discussion of issues for future research in the area. Another result of this studywas confirmation that work in this area is enhanced by the collaboration between education andmigration scholars. Such collaboration provides a more complete description and explanation ofthe current educational circumstances of Mexican indigenous students. Without an explicit con-sideration of the forces and circumstances of indigenous migration from Mexico, there is a dangerof viewing the principal reason for migrants’ move to the U.S. to be their lack of success in thehome country. The result is a worsening of the deficit conception of migrant indigenous familiesthat already permeates schools and communities. We consider this collaborative research as crit-ical in beginning to understand how to change the deficit perspectives, racial discrimination, andineffective educational contexts experienced by Mexican indigenous students and instead buildupon the unique linguistic and cultural resources they bring to U.S. schools.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Officeof English Language Acquisition: The California Bi-National Teacher Education Project. Allopinions herein, however, are those of the authors and not the granting institution.

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Multiple Perspectives on the Schooling of Mexican Indigenous Students in the U.S.: Issues for Future...

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