Educational Considerations
Volume 35
Number 1
Article 7
9-1-2007
Latinas in College: Contra Viento y Marea (Against Winds and
Tides)
Gabriela Díaz de Sabatés
Kansas State University
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de Sabatés: Latinas in College: Contra Viento y Marea (Against Winds and Tide
Latinas in College:
Contra Viento y Marea
(Against Winds
and Tides)
Gabriela Díaz de Sabatés
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.
You cannot uneducate the person who has learned how to read.
You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride.
You cannot oppress people who are not afraid anymore.”
César Chávez
Introduction
With the rapid demographic changes that we are experiencing in
the United States in general and in the state of Kansas in particular,
our educational institutions are challenged with a gigantic task: to
educate a very diverse population with multifaceted linguistic and
cultural backgrounds, needs, and challenges that is growing exponentially. To illustrate this demographic “earthquake”, I will use data
from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. census. From 1990 to 2000, the total
U.S. population grew 13.2 % while the Hispanic population grew
57.9%. In the state of Kansas during the same period of time, the
total population increased 8.5 % while Hispanic population experienced a 101% growth. In its 2006 estimate, the U.S. Census Bureau
projected that from 2000 to 2006 Kansas’s population will grow by
approximately 70,000 inhabitants of which 49,200 will be Hispanic,
10,000 Asians, and 10,000 of other races.
It is essential that we respond in a timely and adequate manner to the multifaceted needs of our growing, diverse population. If
we want to provide an excelling learning environment, the change
must start at home. We educators must become learners ourselves,
diving into and exploring others’ realities. Now is the prime time
for creativity and openness to detect outdated educational recipes
that only constrain people in rigid and dehumanizing categories and
replace them for appropriate educational policies and practices. In
this study, I focus our attention on the college experiences lived by
Latina women in a Midwest state university campus. Latinas’ voices
are brought to the surface with the aim of opening a window into
their lives, strengths, and unique abilities, needs and wants, hopes
and dreams, with the ultimate purpose of learning about and from
them so we can build a more comprehensive and equitable socioeducational environment in our institutions of higher learning.
Gabriela Díaz de Sabatés is a specialist in recruitment and
retention of college students. She is Director of the PILOTS
Program at Kansas State University, which provides academic
services to at-risk freshman students. One of her main areas of
research is the situation of Latina women within educational
settings in the United States with special emphasis on
immigration and cultural identity. She was born and raised
in Argentina.
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Published by New Prairie Press, 2017
Latinas’ College Experiences
Latinas suffer some degree of academic and social oppression while
in college. In my experience, it is the general assumption of many
institutions of higher education that Latinas come to college underprepared, have no clear goals, and are surely bound for academic
failure. It is ingrained in the minds and actions of many administrators, professors, and majority students that Latinas always have
“problems,” that they are students inevitably bound for academic
failure. Commonly claimed reasons for Latinas’ social and educational
“problems” are:
- Coming from a different culture;
- Being females;
- Speaking English as a second language;
- Coming from poor socioeconomic backgrounds;
- Lacking understanding of the U.S. educational system;
- Lacking intelligence and preparation;
- Being lazy;
- Not having the motivation and determination to succeed.
These attributed factors offer an overly simplistic and often
stereotypical diagnosis of a complex socioeconomic and educational
reality that Latinas inhabit on a daily basis. Clearly, this is not a
one-sided problematic. The reality is that Latinas’ college attrition is
not the result of one isolated factor, but a triad where institutional,
academic, and student elements interplay intimately effecting either
centrifugal (expelling) or centripetal (bringing in) forces. According
to Jalomo (1995), institutional and academic factors that influenced
Latino student attrition were:
limited class offerings, few Latino faculty, a curriculum
which often ignores multicultural perspectives, antiquated
teaching styles, and restricted tutoring assistance…rising
tuition and registration fees, inadequate financial aid offerings, improper counseling and advising, few Latino student
service personnel…and an over-reliance on student-initiated
involvement in academic and social activities occurring on
campus. (p. 7)
Student-related factors were: “poverty, unemployment, lower social class origins…inadequate preparation in high school, weak study
habits and the lack of clarity in defining academic goals, self-doubt,
low self esteem, anxiety and cultural separation” (p.7).
Such a lethal combination of multilayered obstacles acts as a selffulfilling prophecy. In addition to the socioeconomic and educational
barriers Latinas face, they are also often times treated as lacking
students and beings where very little is expected from them socially
and academically. Their culture and language are constantly devalued
and considered inferior. Consequently, Latinas lower their academic
standards because no matter what they do, they will never get an
“A”; they will never graduate. In turn, they expect very little of this
academic experience, feel isolated and diminished, therefore removing themselves from a hostile environment by dropping out.
In an educational system where the concept of academic success
is univocally understood as a high GPA (Grade Point Average), where
true leadership only applies to those who exhibit traditional White
European male individualistic traits, where being different from the
norm is penalized, and where the Latino culture is viewed as inferior,
there is no doubt that Latinas are seen as lacking something. They
are perceived as failures because they do not comply with what is
expected from a typical student. They are seen as burdens rather
than as individuals who have a traditional and nontraditional wealth
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Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1 [2007], Art. 7
of knowledge ready to be shared, who question the status quo,
and challenge institutions to advance in non-traditional directions.
González (2001) illustrated very well this complex interplay:
What is problematic is the…pervasive view about Mexicana/
Chicana/Latina students as ‘Hispanics dropout problem’
[President’s Advisory Commission, 1996]. Rather than
looking at the ideological and structural realities manifesting inequities, the gaze is filtered through a conventional
wisdom about Chicana and Chicano’s students’ incapability
of higher level intellectual thought, the deficit of the Chicano/Mexicano culture, a history of social marginality and
economic exploitation, and Chicano/Mexicano parents’ lack
of regard for education. (p.642)
In the end, layers and more layers of constant and relentless
oppression instill in Latinas’ minds that no matter how well they
do, they are not worth it. Further, I fully agree with González (2001)
when she asserted:
I situate my research with an affirmation for a contestatory
critique of hegemonic laws and practices prescribing social
formations, identities, and cultural narratives to one shifting
the focus from a pathological view of Chicano/Mexicano/
Latino youth to a critical view of discriminatory educational
and social practices guised by prevailing notions of educational fairness and neutrality in educational and social
research, policy and practice. (pp. 642-643)
Along similar lines, Yarbro-Bejarano (1999) went further and
stated:
The need for an analysis of multiple oppressions and multiple privileges in racial/ethnic identity is greater than ever,
in order to help channel the energies of cultural nationalism
… [to an] awareness of the ways both our social formations
and ourselves as subjects are structured in and through the
overlapping experience of race, class, sexuality, culture and
gender. (p. 340)
Latinas’ Voices, this Study, and Myself
There is an increasing body of literature around Latinas, dealing
primarily with issues related to their personal experiences in college, educational successes and limitations, bilingualism, and cultural
roles. I present this study as a tool to learn about Latinas’ multifaceted realities while they pursue their education at a Midwest state
university. There is a scarcity of spaces at our institutions and the
surrounding communities for Latinas to openly express their selves,
to voice their knowledge and opinions, to learn and to teach us, to
thrive and to bloom. Instead, they are frequently captive within the
externally imposed pobrecita syndrome (“you poor little thing”) selffulfilling prophecy, where it is pressed upon them since the beginning
that Latinas are not college material.
The purpose of this analysis is to open up a space where Latinas’
voices can be heard. This space is constructed as a major avenue to
validate their experiences by encouraging them to present themselves
the way the want to do so, without suffering the imposition of a
biased way of understanding of their realities, needs and goals. These
Latinas’ voices bring awareness about something so obvious and at
the same time so invisible and complex to grasp: people’s multilayered and dynamic cultural frameworks.
For many years, I have been involved in the education and lives
of Latinas who decided to attend Kansas State University to further
Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1,
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DOI: 10.4148/0146-9282.1177
Fall 2007
their education. They are my students, advisees, acquaintances, and
friends. Some are also my colleagues, professors, and mentors. The
experiences lived by Latinas are fully intertwined with my own, a
Latina, creating a rich, complex, and powerful reality that we all
inhabit every day. Therefore, this study does not intend to attain
aseptic objectivity. Rather, I am professionally and personally involved
in Latinas’ issues; thus I write from my own point of view, that of
a middle class Latina woman, born and raised in South America,
mother, spouse, daughter, sister, friend, doctoral student, and colleague. I am a Latina who came to the U.S. 16 years ago with very
limited proficiency in English, who attended an Ivy League university
when her mastering of the English language was still shaky, a mother
who raised a daughter bridging two cultures, a woman who is still
existing in and within two different cultural worlds, a person who
deeply believes in true collaboration and communication.
Study Format
In order to find out about Latinas’ college experiences, Jeff
Zacharakis and I conducted a two hour-long focus group with
six Latina/Hispanic undergraduate senior students at Kansas State
University (KSU). These Latinas were individually chosen and invited
to participate in this focus group and received a thorough explanation of its objectives and methodology. Five of the students were
majors in elementary or secondary education with an emphasis in
English as a Second Language (ESL), and one student was changing
majors at the time from education to anthropology. Three had
entered the United States illegally crossing the Rio Grande River.
Three first learned English in adult learning centers and earned
their GED (General Educational Development) degree in southwest
Kansas. Two had worked in meatpacking plants, and only one was
born in the United States—her father and mother immigrated here
before she was born, and her father attended English classes at their
local adult learning center.
The purpose of the focus group was to learn about the realities of
Latinas on campus, their personal educational experiences (including
that of their families), their college experiences, their dreams for the
future, and their advice to other Latinas on campus. All students in
the focus group spoke Spanish as their first language, and all of them
were bilingual with different levels of English proficiency. During the
focus group they were welcomed to speak in Spanish or English,
whichever language they most comfortable, expressing their issues
and perspectives. The meeting was conducted on a Thursday night
on campus after classes were over, and the women were provided
with a culturally sensitive dinner (not pizza, but a generous offering of quality Mexican dishes selected upon their requests). The six
women signed an agreement to participate in the focus group, and
were aware of their right to withdraw from the group and conversation at any time without being penalized for it.
Prior to our Thursday meeting, we developed questions that would
guide our conversation. The students knew each other and felt comfortable enough to share experiences, comments, and opinions, so
the conversation flowed easily. There was very little need on the part
of the interviewers to elicit answers. The analysis of the audiotapes
identified six main themes that were repeatedly mentioned by the
Latinas: (1)Their families; (2) their education and that of their parents; (3) their reasons for coming to college; (4) their self-determination; (5) how they felt oppressed; and (6) their college experience.
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Latinas’ Voices
Theme One: Families
Voice A: I’m from Mexico, I’m a mother of three children, the two
older ones are already grown-up, one is 19 and the other one is 17,
the other one is only one year old. I’m returning to school after more
than 15 years, I stopped school when I was just starting ninth grade,
and from then I came here to this country and I worked for three
years and went back to school.
Voice B: My family consists of my parents, and then I have two
older brothers, and younger brother, and myself. I was the only girl…
so that was fun (laughs). My dad completed all the way to middle
school, and my mom got to … sixth grade I believe. My older brother
graduated from high school and went to tech school and got his degree there, and I’m here and my little brother is going to tech school
as well. So I’m probably the only one that’s going into higher education. Both of my parents studied in Mexico.
Voice C: My family is my parents, and my two sisters, and one
brother, and myself. My dad made it to third grade, and that’s it,
when he was 13 he came here to work on the field. My mom, she
only did second grade, and it’s even to this day that she still has
trouble writing. It’s really hard for all of us. My other two sisters got
all the way to high school. One of them graduated from high school
and got married right away (at 18) so she could not continue her
education. The other one got married when she was 16 and had a
baby, so all she completed was high school as well. And my little
brother, he’s 14- so he’s finishing middle school right now, so he’s
going to be in high school next year, and he wants to be a policeman, so we’ll see how that goes.
Voice D: My family is going to be big (laughs). I have two brothers
and three sisters, and my mom and my dad. My mom never went to
school, and my dad … I think he only went up to second grade, so
he knows how to read and write and do some simple math. My dad
studied those two years in Mexico and we moved here at different
times. The men came first and then we came. The first one to go
to school was my sister, the one that’s younger than me, so she’s
a nurse. She didn’t study every year here in the United States. She
started in Mexico until ninth grade and then she continued here.
The other one, she started at a younger age, she was ten when she
came to this country. So I’m actually the oldest of them all, I was also
the last one going to school. None of my brothers have any degrees,
the oldest started in Mexico, but that’s it and that was many years
ago. So actually only the girls are…or we only have some kind of
education. My sister has a Bachelors and my other sister has a nursing degree. I have three kids, and my oldest daughter is here at the
university. This is her second semester, my other daughter is in high
school, she’s in the eleventh grade, and my son is in third grade.
Theme Two: Parents’ Education and Their Own
Voice A: I have two younger brothers, my mom and my dad. My
dad … I think he completed up until sixth grade, in Mexico. My mom
only made it through … I think it was fifth grade. She had a really,
really bad time, and I think if she had to write a letter, I don’t think
she could do that, it would take her a lot to do that. Even if it’s just
writing down a simple phone number she’ll take forever, and we have
to repeat the numbers, like 50 times. My dad, even though he just
completed to sixth grade, I see him as a smart, smart man, sadly he
didn’t have the opportunity to go to school because he got married
at a very young age. It was 15 years when they got married. Then
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Published by New Prairie Press, 2017
they moved here, I came here when I was eleven, for like a year, and
went back to Mexico, and then came back when I was 18, I believe. I
went to high school for a couple of months I think, then got married,
forgot about school, worked for…what was it?..for about eight years,
and then came back and got my GED, and went to a community
college in Garden City, and now I’m here. I am the only one that has
reached this far, my youngest brother, he completed his high school
and I think he did two semesters of … business, some type of business. That was it, he got married and he had to work for his family,
and he had to quit school. I think that that is pretty much it, I can
go a little bit further … my mom and my dad have big families, like
eight to ten kids in each one, and I believe that just two of us out of
the whole family are actually attending school. The other one is my
cousin, he’s in the army and he’s trying to be an officer. That’s pretty
much it, out of a big family only two of us are going to school.
Theme Three: Coming to College
Voice A: The reason that I decided to come to school was because
I always liked school. Before that I had the experience of working
at a meatpacking plant. It was hard, and even the simplest job that
you can see there, is a very hard job. So I just thought of myself, I
was like: “do I want to do this the whole time or do I want to get
out and at least get my GED. first, and, you know, continue with
my education?” That was basically the thing that encouraged me to
come to school, because I noticed that I needed to be educated so
that I could set a good model for my daughter, and I didn’t just want
to spend the rest of my life working eight hours a day and pretty
much 24/7.
Voice B: I didn’t know anything about college. We’re from a small
town in southwest Kansas. Everybody knows everybody, and there
was one girl who made it to college who was Latina-Mexicana, and
other than that nobody knew anything else. And it was … “This is
just a girl who wanted to leave and wanted to be crazy” … it is pretty
much what they thought of me. My parents were open about me
going to school because obviously they wanted me to get a better
education, and the reason I really wanted to go is because my parents
would come home and something would hurt just from working so
hard, and so my mom would tell me “you don’t want to end up like
me.” But you know they didn’t really have a choice there, so it wasn’t
like my parents did everything that they did just for me to end up in
the same position. But my parents wanted me to go to a JUCO (a
local junior college), just so I could stay close to home, and drive
30-45 minutes everyday back and forth, just so they could keep
me close. But I came to K-State anyway, and that’s why I’m here, I
didn’t really know anybody but it was good. It’s been an awesome
experience.
Theme Four: Self-Determination
Voice A: That I’m crazy! Now they really like it, because even back
home there’s probably like three or four girls that are still in college,
because like I said, everybody knows everybody, and other than that
… like I’ll go home and the girls that I used to baby sit have kids now,
it’s just crazy to go to church and I’m the only one that doesn’t have
a kid. And some people might be like “well, you’re still not married?
How old are you?” And I’ll be like “No” and it’s not just my parents
anymore, it’s like the whole town and community that is like “you
keep going forward, because look at these girls,” and it’s not so much
them sitting there and saying somebody’s better than somebody else
or not, it’s just that even when I go home, and I see the position that
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Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1 [2007], Art. 7
some of the girls that I grew up with, or that I babysat, and I listen
to their stories, and like I think that I’m better off than what I would
have been staying there, even if it sucks being away from my family,
but at least I’m not in that position.
Voice B: I always knew I was going to come to college, I always
knew. Since I was nine, I’ve always talked about when I was going to
go to college. I just knew I was going to. Whatever I could do to get
in I would do. When I got out of high school … well that summer I
won a scholarship, and that summer the president of WSU (Wichita
State University) called me and told me that I had a scholarship to
go to WSU, and my mother said I had to take it. She said “you
can’t go to K-State, and so if you go to WSU you’ll be closer to us.”
But my dad told me to go to Texas because he knew their schools.
I came here … because in Mexico it’s just hard (gets emotional, cries
silently) … it’s so hard to talk about, I’ve been talking about it for
years, and it’s so hard to see my dad go to work not wearing a tie,
instead he has a helmet or boots and it just kills me. So that’s why
I came here, because I thought, “you know what, they did this for
us, so I’m going to go to school.” My brother and sister did not have
an option, they had to go to school, and they talked to me about ...
“well, you know, I’m going to go and I’m going to work for about a
year and make some money and then maybe I’ll go to school.” And
I said no. And I literally had to drag them here. They did not want
to go to school.
Theme Five: Experiencing Oppression
Voice A: A lot of girls in my senior class are married now with kids,
and I didn’t want to see my siblings just stay in that environment and
to just kind of follow the example that was being set for them. So I
told them that we had to do whatever it takes to get them here, and
they hated it when they got here, they hated it, and now they love
it! Especially my brother because he’s been here for longer, and it’s
just my sister’s second semester, and she’s getting used to it. But I
told them, “Our parents made such a big sacrifice and now they are
working at a meatpacking plant” … and I just can’t wait until they
walk out of that place and they don’t go back. And their work just
gets harder, and it’s just really hard to see them like that. It was really
hard for me seeing them walking around with their work uniforms
on, all dirty, and all bloody. Especially in the summertime, I mean
seriously and honestly I avoided them. It was may be two times out
of eight years, maybe, that I actually saw them walking out of there.
They worked “A” shift, and I worked “B” shift, so I knew the time
that they would get out, and I went to the locker rooms, I went to
the office, I went anywhere else, but never where I knew they were
going to be. Not because I felt embarrassed, but because it was really
hard for me to see them walking out of there and just imagine, the
summer here is really, really bad, but imagine being in a small space
where it’s over 100 degrees, yeah! … and they walk out of there all
sweaty and you can see that their clothes are all sweated through,
and it’s just really, really hard. My father always asked me why he
never saw me at work, and I would always tell him that I was busy.
And he would say, “Well, I saw you, I saw you walking out”, and I
would say: “I didn’t see you.”
Voice B: When I came here, I worked for many years, and as I said,
I worked in many different places. I first came here as an illegal, it
was really hard. Working so many hours, I remember I used to work
in a restaurant in Topeka from 7 a.m.-12 a.m., so it was more than
twelve hours. They paid us the minimum wage at that time, and I
Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1,
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DOI: 10.4148/0146-9282.1177
Fall 2007
used to make four dollars an hour. That was more than ten years
ago, but they didn’t pay us overtime or anything, so you couldn’t say
anything because you’re an illegal. You just have to take it. And then
after that, I worked in the plants for more than ten years, and it’s
really, really hard working there. The people treat you really bad. They
don’t care if you have a life, you just have to work there whether you
like it or not, and if not go work somewhere else. So that and seeing
my sisters—who went to college and are starting their career—I said
to myself, I don’t want to stay here all my life working like this. And
when I was working at the plant it was really hard, the easiest job
that you see is really, really hard. You don’t have breaks like if you’re
sitting in a chair, or anything, you have to stay there working at the
speed of the machines. That’s the problem, working at the speed
of the machines, not your speed. So I thought that if I was having
problems in this work, what was going to happen when I was going
to be 40? They would kick me out because they wouldn’t need me
anymore. So I said I need to go back to school, and I know it’s going
to be really hard because I need to start from the very, very bottom
learning English, and I only did school until ninth grade, and I also
need to show my mother that she was right, and I’m going to show
her that not only my sisters listen to her, but that I do too. And that
it is important and even for my children that I keep telling them go
to school, how come you didn’t go to school? So that way they can’t
say, well if you say school is so important, how come you didn’t go
to school? So many reasons!
Voice C: When we were in Mexico we were poor, and I came here
and I didn’t have a chance. So I had three jobs, and that was really
hard. But then I started to go back to school, because my son was
embarrassed that his Mom didn’t speak any English, and that I spoke
Spanish in front of his friends. And helping him with homework and
talking with his teachers … it just was the barrier right there. So that’s
why I decided to go back to school. So I could learn the language
and do something that I wanted to do when I was in Mexico but
couldn’t. So I took the chance now that I was here and I did it.
Voice D: I got only to seventh grade in Mexico, and then I came
here and started eighth grade, and eighth grade was difficult, it was
the hardest year in school. Pretty much because I didn’t know the
language, so at that point I decided not to come to college, and I
thought I’ll do what I have to do and get done what the law requires
me to. And I got to high school and it was a complete difference
when I was there, and I never said I wanted to go to college, because
for me I didn’t want to say something that I would not complete.
I was scared that I wasn’t going to make it. And my senior year I
was done with my classes, I only needed one credit hour. And I got
a really good GPA, so I was able to go to cosmetology school, so I
went to cosmetology school, I went to high school for one hour, and
I worked two jobs. I worked at restaurants, so I would close one and
go to the other and open it. My eleventh year my older sister left the
house, because of problems, and when I was a senior my little sister
got married, so when that happened my parents decided not to let
me continue my education. So they told me “you’re done with high
school, and you have to work most of the time.” Well, I didn’t want
to do that. Before my sister left they were pushing me to go to college
and they would say, “go to college to get an education. We don’t
want you to be like us.” And my mom was more of the one that said
that, because even though she can read she has troubles writing.
So she always told me “I don’t want you to struggle like I did– go
to college, get an education.” And when my second sister left the
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house it was completely different, my parents couldn’t go anywhere.
They needed someone to be there with them all the time. And I told
them that I was decided to go to college, and that’s when I decided
to come here. But they turned their backs to me and they told me:
“You’re leaving us! You are not our daughter anymore.” So it was
really hard to start coming here without my parents’ support, because
of money, even though I worked two jobs, so I could get money to
come here. Now … it’s different now … they are like, “O.K. you’re
there, you should get it done. But it’s like I don’t have their support
like I used to when I was little.”
Voice E: When I was in Mexico I got married at a very young age,
I was 15. I always wanted to go to school but sometimes traditions
get in the way, like, if you got married you had to stay at your house,
plus then the father of my girls didn’t let me go back to school. I
always wanted to go to school, and especially because my mom
always told us that we had to go to school.
Theme Six: College Experiences
Voice A: I had no idea that the dorms were so small, and I had
no idea that there were six of us, girls, in one room. And we used
to joke about it, “oh, we’re Mexicans so they think that we can pack
us in everywhere” and we would just joke about it. And we were
all paying for the exact same thing (as everybody else in the dorms)
but six of us would have to be in one room. I guess when you don’t
have an expectation, then you really can’t say that it was or wasn’t
what you expected.
Voice B: I was born here and I grew up here, so my English
proficiency is a lot better than my Spanish one, but around here
it’s just like appearances, like if you look one way … like even to
this day I can’t go anywhere without at least one person being
like, “Hola, cómo estás?” and I’m like, “Why do you automatically
assume this, or that?” And I am very defensive about it, and when
we go out and people are like, “What’s your name?” I just say María,
or Juana [not her real name]. And it’s just like people expect you
to be like this and that, and like all of my roommates are Hispanic
and we all go through the same experiences, we can’t walk through
somewhere without people turning around looking at you because
I’m not Caucasian or Black, or whatever. And that like almost never
happened when I lived in southwest Kansas. There, Mexican and
American kids grow up speaking English and Spanish, whereas here
[Manhattan] when I speak English people are like, “Where did you
learn to speak English?” And I’m like, “Southwest Kansas”, and they
are like, “No, but where are you from?” And I’ll say: “I was born in
southwest Kansas.”
Voice C: I was taking a summer Kansas’ history class, and there
was a bunch of students in my class and we were talking about immigrants coming into Kansas. In southwest Kansas, where I grew
up, it was almost all immigrants. So I hear my class talking about
them, and not in a good way. I’m just standing there listening,
and the teacher is doing nothing about it. We got points for being
active in our class, and we had like a chat room type thing where you
could post things on the internet and it was just ridiculous. People
were just like “English is the first language they shouldn’t be doing
this, they shouldn’t be doing that.” I was in a class full of people
that were totally ignorant, and the sad thing was that most of them
were education students (preparing to be teachers). They would sit
there and argue about the dumbest comments and then, when I said
something, they would say that I was different, and I would say, “You
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Published by New Prairie Press, 2017
don’t know me, how am I different?” I would get so upset about it,
and I ended up walking out of class because of that. We had a field
trip in Topeka where we had to go in a canoe and I didn’t even go
because I was like, “I’m not going in a canoe with any of you.”
Voice D: Having kids and being a single parent is really hard. You
have to manage your time with your children, your house, with the
school and with a job, because you have to find a way to support
your family also.
Observations (just to get started)
Even though what was transcribed above is a fraction of what was
said during this focus group, the Latinas’ voices eloquently illuminate the complexities of their educational experiences. They reflected
upon the continuous strength that they must have to braid the multiple cultural realities that they face with patience and perseverance
while tending to their daily responsibilities. The more I read the transcription of the focus group, the more it amazes me how much these
women had to go through and against in order to be where they are
and to project themselves, contra viento y marea into a future life
quite different from what they were told they were destined.
Most of the Latinas’ parents didn’t attend school beyond sixth
grade in their home countries, and yet these parents managed to
give a clear message to their daughters about the value of learning:
that getting an education was extremely valuable and worthy to be
pursued; that education is possibly the only way out of social oppression and poverty. Yet, even though the ideal was a positive one, the
Latinas’ journeys were paved with surprises, improvisations, lack of
support, misunderstandings, and devaluing circumstances emanating
from the college environment and their own families and communities.
Due to the lack of schooling, Latinas’ parents were unable to guide
them through the educational system in the U.S., leaving these
women to find help and guidance on their own. Also, because their
families were unaware of the rigors of higher education, the familial
requirements many times clashed with the academic ones, creating
conflicting sociocultural and educational situations for Latinas that
they had to confront and resolve to stay in college. One student
mentioned that she had to choose between keeping a relationship
with their parents and staying in college, and she chose the latter
in spite of the negative psychological and economical consequences
for herself. “Latino students often break, not continue, their family
‘traditions’ when they enroll in college … College going for them
means coming to terms with sometimes difficult and painful issues
such as changing their identity, being perceived as different, leaving
old friends behind, separating from their families, breaking cultural
ties, and breaking family codes of loyalty and unity” (Jalomo, 1995,
p.8).
One student spoke about her fight against being labeled in
college, revolting against academic traditional expectations of a Latina
woman. She did not want to be identified as someone who spoke
only Spanish, or a woman whose name had to be a Spanish one, or a
recent immigrant, or a Latina because of the way she looked. Another
student was outraged at the open xenophobic feelings expressed and
the sheer ignorance that her classmates expressed in front of her in
a history class regarding Latinos and her teacher’s inaction about the
verbal abuse that she was suffering. This experience alienated her to
the point of not only dropping the class but also changing majors
altogether, and she was most eloquent when she said, “We had a
Educational Considerations
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Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1 [2007], Art. 7
field trip to Topeka where we had to go in a canoe and I didn’t even
go because I was like, I’m not going in a canoe with any of you.”
If the canoe is taken as a symbol or metaphor for community, this
woman was clearly expressing her feelings of isolation, oppression,
and her preference to being alone rather than in bad company. She
obviously felt alienated, rejected, and devalued, which generated in
her a total lack of trust in her fellow community members and an
absolute lack of desire to belong to the community.
A crucial element to note in everyone’s experience is that every
single Latina spoke of a person or group of people whose support
was instrumental for the Latina’s academic perseverance. These
Latinas maximized the utilization of every bit of encouragement to
push forward. They also openly acknowledged this supportive network because it is understood as strength rather than weakness in
their personalities. This shows the important role that collaboration
and true support play in Latinas’ advancement, and how they use this
help to attain their goals in a collaborative way.
Conclusions
The voices of these Latinas are multilayered vehicles through which
their experiences are validated. Listening intently and effecting positive change further asserts the value of Latinas’ lived experiences.
Listening to Latinas also provides the opportunity for people around
them to reflect upon their own cultures, assumptions, and prejudices;
to be more conscious about diversity around us; and to become
dynamic social actors that strive toward social justice and educational equity. These voices are not, by any means, the voices of
victims. Through their experiences, Latinas ascertain the importance
of “doing” in collaboration with and for others, of fighting peacefully
with a clear goal, of giving life, of raising children, of governing and
working in the fields or packing plants, of studying and empowering
others to do the same, of fighting inequalities, extreme poverty, and
oppression.
The violence of the institutional interpretation resides in the imposition of an external “understanding” as if it were an objective tool—
which we know is always culturally and socioeconomically biased—
of a reality that can speak by itself. In this case, Latinas’ voices
belong to women who are active pensadoras (thinkers) (González,
2001, p.641). Latinas, immersed in a world which they are making
into their own, are brave enough to open their mouths and minds to
express themselves. They have strong self-determination to create a
new place of thinking and doing for their own and everybody else’s
benefit. They are defying the status quo and cultural “assumptions”
with tenacity, revolting against oppressing social order and searching for purpose. Their only option is to assert their right to be in
school and to bring their distinctive cultural assets to it. In sum,
these women are “power-plants”, relentless generators of wisdom,
imagination, and courage.
Therefore, we must develop new, creative ways in which we will
respect, understand, and educate our current learners with equity and
purpose to ensure social justice for all. Equally important to this ongoing process, we must as advisors and teachers continually educate
the university community about the realities of our students. Educators within this university community are ingrained with el lugar del
saber (we have “the knowledge”), and the belief that education is,
for the most part, a one-way street—teacher to student. In order to
have a campus where meaningful educational exchanges continu-
Educational Considerations, Vol. 35, No. 1, Fall 2007
https://newprairiepress.org/edconsiderations/vol35/iss1/7
DOI: 10.4148/0146-9282.1177
ously flow among its individuals, we need true communication and
collaboration among students, faculty, and administration.
If we really open up and make Latinas and other disenfranchised
groups participate in their own education, we will have an educational institution that acts upon its commitment to our communities and
which serves its purpose with dignity and courage. This, of course,
implies moving ourselves from the “place of knowledge” and surely
involves risks that we cannot even foresee, but that will surely yield
gains for all of us that now we can only dream of.
References
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worldview and academia achievement: Braiding cultural knowledge
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Qualitative Studies in Education, 14, 641-655.
Jalomo, R. E. (1995). Latino students in transition: An analysis of
the first year experience in community college. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University.
President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for
Hispanic Americans. (1996). Our nation on the fault line: Hispanic
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U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1990). 1990 census lookup. Retrieved
August 15, 2007, from http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen1990.
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