This article demonstrates how language revitalization through Indigenous Mexican hip hop can continue to Indigenize decolonial pedagogical spaces, help strengthen Black/Indigenous solidarity, and aid in building the infrastructures for Indigenous futures. First, I assert that using and transmitting Indigenous languages through hip hop can…

This paper examines the ways Indigenous Mexican educators navigate paradoxical institutional and community discourses around Indigenous language and cultural reclamation as negotiated forms of survivance and decolonial thinking in and around schools. Using ethnographic and Indigenous methodologies, we focus on the experiences of elementary…

The creation of "universidades interculturales" (intercultural universities, UIs) in Mexico at the start of the 21st century was not only a policy response to the need for more accessible higher education for historically underrepresented students, but also to the call for more culturally and linguistically relevant education and…

Analyzing three sets of video data collected in one Maya community, we examined apprenticeship and learning of backstrap loom weaving over three generations spanning the years 1970 to 2012. Like many cultural groups, the Maya of Chiapas are experiencing rapid sociodemographic shifts. Three generations of girls (N = 134) were observed at their…

The border, as defined by Gloria Anzaldúa, is conceptually marked by an ideological site called "nepantla"--a Nahuatl word that refers to a space existing in-between worlds. Nepantla is a performative site for visual art and writing. Making borderlands foods is an active space that exists in-between worlds. Using a performative approach…

This paper sets forth the idea that a critical aspect of the socialization process of Mexican communities is to maintain and carry-out traditional knowledge passed down from generations of indigenous ancestors. The relationship between Mexican communities and the land creates a window through which we can see how traditional indigenous knowledge…

The world's cultural heritage (customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions, and values that signify a legacy of the history of humanity) provides identity to communities. In Mexico, the case of the World Heritage City of Xochimilco involves a sustainable agroecological system designed by its ancient inhabitants more than 500 years…

In this paper we provide a critical account of selected key linguistic and cultural revitalisation experiences in Mexico. For this aim, the project entitled Proyecto de Revitalización, Mantenimiento y Desarrollo Lingüístico y Cultural (Linguistic and Cultural Revitalisation, Maintenance and Development Project), which has been developed for over…

Yucatec Maya theory of learning may be thought of as Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours. Children learn everyday and specialized tasks by observing and pitching in. This mode of learning is embedded in children's developmental niche in which parental ethnotheories play the central role. I present results from…

Language revitalization efforts have been critiqued for creating and reproducing linguistic, epistemological, and pedagogical hierarchies that might run counter to a community's needs and interests. Drawing on a seven-year ethnographic and collaborative research with the Maya cultural promoters of the Caste War Museum in Tihosuco, Mexico, we…

Initially written in the form of an essay, this letter is written to my children from a place called Land. It unveils the entanglements coloniality creates in young, racialized, and gendered lives through the colonial logics structuring childhood, memory, and borders. From a diasporic perspective, Land emerges as "flesh" rooted in the…

Little research has been dedicated to Indigenous Mexican students' education and their sociocultural adaptation to U.S. schools, which includes their ethnic identity as significant to their schooling experiences. This study examines Zapotec-origin youth, original to the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, and how their Indigenous identity can positively…

In this research article, Cati V. de los Ríos examines US-Mexican transnational youths' engagement with the Mexican musical genre corridos, border folk ballads, and its subgenre, narcocorridos, folk ballads that illuminate elements of the drug trade and often glamorize drug cartels. She draws from ethnographic methods to present empirical…

In Mexican higher education, the spread of English has become a tool in the internationalization process of universities. However, language has been sidelined in the discourses of globalization and internationalization. Hence, this ethnographic case study aims to look at the spread of English in Mexican higher education through two private…

Although more than a million people still speak Nahuatl, this number is rapidly diminishing. Historically, Nahuatl was the dominant language of Coatepec de los Costales, a small village in Guerrero, Mexico. The last 50 years have seen a pronounced shift there from Nahuatl to Spanish. The ultimate cause of language shift is a disruption in…