Indigenous Latinx Migrants: Intersections of Youth, Education, and Language

Dr. David Barillas-Chon is an Assistant Professor at Western University. His experiences as an undocumented Maya immigrant in the United States have shaped his research, writing, and teaching. Barillas-Chon currently studies educational issues related to Latinx and indigenous communities, coloniality, and immigration. Colectivo members Bianca Garcia and Sam Colvett had the opportunity to sit down with Barillas-Chon to learn a bit more about his work.

S = Sam, B = Bianca, C = Barillas-Chon

S: Could you begin by describing some of the work you’re committed to and your main focus areas within that work?

C: The focus of my work is on education. I look at issues of indigenous folks and Latinx folks and some of the issues that pertain to them, such as immigration, identity development, and language. My doctoral degree is in education with an emphasis on those communities.

B: What has been the most important aspect of your work for you personally?

C: For me, because I work with and focus on youth, from [ages] 12-21, I get to interact with them and see their experiences in schools and what they go through. For me that’s one of the most fulfilling aspects of the work that I do. Also, I started this focus many years ago, about 12 years ago, and back at that time there weren’t that many folks that were looking at indigenous peoples from Latin America and their experiences in schools, so I was really fascinated by that; why is there a lack of that? So I started to write about it way back then. I’m really glad that some of that earlier work had an impact on the field, and I’m really glad there are now folks looking more into it now and adding more to the experiences of indigenous Latinx folks in the United States in general and also in education. I’m really glad that there is more of an awareness of some of those issues that are specific to indigenous folks in schools. For me, that’s the impact and what I’m grateful for, that some people have worked to consider the significance of it, and also engaging in conversations with others who may not have that kind of experience or knowledge of indigenous Latinx students. Most of my teaching has been with teachers, so I prepare teachers. My aim is to bring awareness to them about the youth that they may be working with. So I’ve been really fortunate that I have met really amazing teachers and we’ve kept in touch over the years, and I see them take those issues of indigenous populations from Latin America more seriously.

S: Have you had any personal experiences that led you to devote your work to these areas?

C: I started the PhD when I was really young, I was 24 or 25. I moved to a city called Santa Cruz in Northern California. I started to get involved with the community there. Santa Cruz county has a large population of migrant workers, so they work in the fields picking strawberries, lettuce, artichokes, garlic, and all of that. So I started to volunteer at a local high school and I got to see how youth were being treated by their peers, and it resonated with a lot of my own experiences. That’s when I started to really dig more into my own personal reasons for pursuing a degree and being in education. And because I was relatively young, I started to deal with my own issues of identity, like what does it mean to be an immigrant? What does it mean to be considered Latinx? And then I always had an understanding that I did not fit into the Latinx category because it never felt good. I always felt like I was different in terms of my ethnic identity, I suppose. So I started to engage more with my own sense of who I was as an indigenous person from Guatemala. As I was getting to know the students and they were getting to know me, I was also digging into my own sense of who I was . . . In addition to being an immigrant, I was also dealing with my own sense of “what does it mean to be indigenous? Or, who is indigenous?” And all those questions that I think people who are in the beginning stages of understanding their identity deal with. In all of my writing, and all of the stuff that I publish, I begin with some that self acknowledgement. This is very personal to me; I am an immigrant, indigenous, and Latinx, and I was also undocumented, so all of that stuff is connected to my own personal sense of obligation to write and obligation to work with the communities I mentioned.

B: How do you see your work having an impact and through what context?

C: So it’s kind of hard for academics to realize or be aware of the impact that they have. Some of us don’t think we have any impact or anybody who follows our advice. I’ve been fortunate to know that there’s a range of people that have taken my work seriously--social workers, for example. Currently, I collaborate with a graduate school of social work. Educators, those who want to go into teacher preparation programs, administrators, cultural anthropologists, and others who deal with language and identity have also used my work. My work has impacted a range of communities and I’m really happy that’s the case. For me it’s about putting the work into practice. I’m glad that I get to work with teachers and bring them to understand some of these issues. I also [see an impact] on community members and involvement with community work. Hopefully the stuff I continue to produce impacts more local communities, because I’m not optimistic that policies will change based on the research that I do, and that’s not really my aim.

S: You mentioned that a lot of your work is with indigeneity and education, so what is one of the challenges in this specific area that most people might not be aware of but you think is important?

C: One of the biggest challenges is just a lack of awareness. [The folks I work with] are mainly from Latin America or Latinx individuals from the U.S. This group has a range of experiences, a range of languages, a range of classes, and racialized differences. For me, one of the challenges is bringing this kind of awareness to people, that Latin Americans are not one homogenous group. [People think] we all speak Spanish, but we don’t, or that we’re all immigrants, but we aren’t. That’s one of the first challenges; not everyone who is from Latin America is a Latinx person, and not everyone who is a Latinx person in the United States is Latin American… Within that, I think that another challenge for me is that in the United States, when we deal with race, we often think about the categories of race as Black, white and Latinx. It’s more complicated than that when it comes to Latinx folks. In the Latinx community, one of the issues we have to face is how we think about race and how we reproduce race in our own peoples. So for example, dealing with anti-Blackness, anti-Afroness, we have to know we are not separate from that. We are not immune to reproducing racism. There are also a lot of anti-indigenous sentiments within the Latinx community. So those are some of the larger issues. First, lack of awareness within the U.S. population, and then, lack of awareness in communities of teachers, and then, lack of awareness within our own communities. Those are big, big, big challenges we have to deal with. 

B: Recently a few indigenous people from Guatemala have made it into the news. We refer to this New York Times article discussing language barriers at the border and also within immigration courts. Why do you see language barriers as problematic and what do you see coming out of the future for this issue?

C: I know that in L.A. county over the last few years they have experienced a shortage of Mayan language interpreters . . . that reproduces inequality because you have people who don’t understand their own legal issues. They don’t know when to go to court, they don’t understand what’s going on, they don’t know what they’re agreeing to or not agreeing to. For me, that’s an issue of equity, because we can’t provide them with access to legal counseling in many ways. I think that’s just symptomatic of the larger society that we live in. Again, going back to what I was saying about teachers not knowing that their Latinx students may not be Spanish speakers-- Maybe if they’re from Guatemala they speak a range of Mayan languages like K’iche’ or Poqomam. In Mexico, we also have a range of languages. So teachers are at a loss for how to work with those students… It will continue to be an issue unless we have more folks who are well-prepared to go into the legal service sector as paralegals who may be from indigenous language groups. 

In California we know that there are a lot of Mixtecos and Zapatecos from Southern Mexico, so they may have more of an ability to provide to their communities. But in places like in Denver, for example, most of the [indigenous Latinx] population is made up of Mayan speakers. They don’t have services of interpretation in legal cases. So I really don’t know what the future will look like; I think that we just need more of those paralegals to be trained . . . As of right now, I don’t know how immigration has been impacted by COVID-19, but in 2019, more indigenous Latinx people were coming to the United States and speaking indigenous languages. We know this population is continuing to increase. We know, based on our research, that the longer immigrants are in the United States, the more likely it is that they are going to stop using their languages and learn English, and their kids will only learn English. So these indigenous languages are going to, in many ways, disappear. What I advocate for is indigenous people keeping their languages while they learn English — it’s not impossible. For me that’s really important… In the future, more indigenous people will come to the U.S. And, hopefully, we can work through the education system for them to keep their indigenous languages . . . that means that there could be more opportunities for people to have representation, in cases of deportation, for example.

S: Some people might not understand why losing some indigenous languages is a big deal, especially if people are moving and they don’t necessarily need the language. What connections do you see between indigenous language and culture and why is it important to keep that up?

C: Researchers and academics who write about indigenous languages know that it’s an important aspect of identity. It impacts the way that we see the world. I’ll give you an example in Spanish: In English, the word for a dot on your skin is “freckle,” the pigmentation is called “freckle.” In Spanish, it’s called “lunar,” meaning related to the moon, like a little, tiny moon. In English it doesn’t connote this image, like you have many little moons in your skin. So that just puts into perspective… This word has a poetic thing to it in Spanish. For me, it shifts the way that I think about a freckle. In English when I think about a freckle it’s a benign word, there are no emotions associated with it, but then when I switch to Spanish, and I say “lunar,” all these other things come up to mine. So we see how language shapes the way that we think and see.... It shapes the way that we see the world and the way that we interpret the world, and that’s part of our identity. We know that language has a big impact on these issues of identity development. Since indigenous languages are dying off, we know that’s going to affect the way that people relate to the world. For me, that’s an important issue.

I also want to make sure that people know that language is not the only indicator of identity, there are other things that impact identity, other things that come to mind. We know that there are people in the United States who identify as Chicano, Chicana, Chicanx, and we know that they may not speak Spanish, but that doesn’t make them any less Chicano, Chicana, Chicanx. If they want to identify as Mexican, it doesn’t make them any less Mexican. For example, I have a son, he’s seven years old. If he wants to identify as Guatemalan, he can . . . it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t speak Spanish or that he wasn’t born there. It’s because he has some kind of relationship with that through me. Language is one of those issues that’s really important, but for me, it’s not the only indicator of indigenous identification. I want to note that not everybody agrees with that; those issues are very contentious. There’s a lot of conflict with the way people think about who is or is not indigenous. It’s not an issue that’s easily resolved. We know that the United States has a very specific system for categorizing who is Native, and Canada is the same, it’s in their policies; they have specific checkmarks for who is a Native person, but in reality it doesn’t work like that. Identities are always changing, and for some people, language continues to matter. For me, language matters very much because it’s connected to the way we see the world.

B: Ok, we’re going to shift topics a little bit. Do you think certain immigrant experiences are more visible than others, and what would be the impact of that?

C: Over the last 60 years, Mexican immigrants have become more visible. Most people in the United States think about immigrants from the Southern border, and that’s the image that we get. If you see someone who speaks Spanish in the street, you may think that they’re Mexican, right?... Back in the day, I was asked by my peers where in Mexico I was from, assuming already that I was Mexican. Those are the immigrants that are [most visible], they’re who comes to mind right away... We tend to forget that the largest migrant group coming to the United States today are those from China... We’ve seen this spike in Asian immigrants. As the number of Asian immigrants is increasing, the number of Latinx immigrants is going down or staying steady.

In a larger discussion about immigrants, there are specific groups that are highlighted over others. A couple of years ago, the current president was speaking about immigrants, his emphasis on those from Latin American, and Central America specifically.. He was portraying immigrants as violent, as criminal. And within that, he was talking about a subset of immigrants, those from El Salvador. He was criminalizing them. But those are very small populations of immigrants that are coming into the U.S. from this larger group. He wasn’t talking about immigrants from China; he wasn’t talking about immigrants from Canada. We have a lot of Canadians who are coming to the U.S., and they’re coming to the United States in large numbers as undocumented immigrants. There’s no acknowledgement of that, and why is that the case? At least for me and other folks, the president is talking about race in very coded words. He’s mainly attacking immigrants of color, or potential immigrants of color here. We do see certain immigrants that are highlighted. Because I focus on indigenous Latinx folks, there’s very little acknowledgment [of these groups]. There’s no awareness of that; I don’t know if it's intentional or not. There’s layers of visibility.

S: In this context of indigeneity in the United States specifically, but in general as well, what do you think are some areas that need a more extensive body of research to help people understand it better?

C: One of the things we need to really think about is how our notions of who is or is not indigenous are changing. Specifically in the U.S context, we see more immigrants who are indigenous coming into the United States… Let’s say an indigenous person from Oaxaca, Mexico, comes to the United States. They won’t be identified as indigenous given the United States’ system for classifying indigenous people. So what does that mean? It means that they may not receive the services that other Native people may have. It may mean that their languages are not being accounted for or acknowledged. To me, it’s very layered because we know that indigenous folks in the U.S. don't have a lot of resources. We are all competing for scraps, every person of color, every minoritized group, every person who is from a poor and working class background; we are all competing for the same resources that are already limited. So you have another group that comes in. There might be some animosity. For indigenous folks, we have to think more carefully. How is it that an indigenous person from Guatemala is changing the way that we think about indigenous people in general? How is it that their languages or place of origin changes those conceptions? And I don't think the studies or research have really dug into that.

B: We just have a few closing questions to finish. You kind of answered this already, but what would be one main take away that you want people to know regarding immigrant experiences in the indigenous or Latinx community?

C: For me, one takeaway in the United States is that indigenous immigrants are here in the United States. We have been here for many, many years. It’s not a new thing. We tend to be made invisible by racialized projects both in the United States and Latin America. In Latin America, let’s say in Mexico, we tend to be invisibilized or ignored because of this idea of indigenismo or mestizo. So mestizo is the way of saying, we’re all from a mixture of Europeans and indigenous people. And what happens with that, it's a way of creating a multicultural society where everyone is the same. If everyone’s the same, we don’t have to focus on differences. If we do that, we erase indigenous people, we erase the rights that we should have because everyone is the same and should be treated the same. That’s one of the issues with the “melting pot.” Everyone is treated the same, why should we have specific rights for people of color? We know that society in the U.S. is differently racialized, too. Indigneous peoples continue to live in the United States under those conditions of being invisibilized. Once they come to the United States, for example from Mexico, those issues that they have experienced in Mexico of being ignored or discriminated against because of gender, race, languages, they continue to exist in the United States. They don’t magically go away… None of us leave biases behind when we move to a different place, we reproduce them. So imagine you’re an indigenous person in Mexico, you're discriminated against because of your language. You come to the United States, you meet other fellows, peers from Mexico. Those dynamics don’t go away, they continue to reproduce. You get discriminated against and taken advantage of in the United States by Spanish speakers.

So for me, those are the takeaway messages. We have to understand all these layers and complexities of discrimination. And in the face of that, we know that indigenous peoples continue to exist, continue to survive, and they do that very strategically. They learn English and they learn Spanish as a way of surviving. So we know that Spanish is a colonial language, it’s not a native language to the Americas. We know that English is a colonial language, but we learn it. It’s a way of surviving. It doesn’t mean we have to give up indigenous languages or indigenous identities. Those are outdated notions of what it means to be indigenous, that you only speak your indigenous language, or that you only wear your traditional clothing or regalia. Indigneous peoples have always adapted and have always changed… Honestly, I think this is where I am trying to figure out what it means to maintain an indigenous language in the United States in the face of you not having peers to talk your language with. My community spoke Poqomam, so that’s a Mayan language. There’s no one here who speaks Mam. But one of the things that’s happening is that everyone is having Zoom talks or Facetimes. I think that's a great tool for maintaining the language where you can connect with others, let's say in Mexico, and talk to them in Spanish, Mixteco, Nahuatl, or whatever. Those are possibilities for language maintenance.

S: To end this on a personal note, you mentioned before that you want to orient your work more towards focusing on colonialism, indigeneity, race, and immigration in the United States. Is there something that you’re working on right now or you hope to work on in the future?

C: Yeah, so I published an article last year and I deal with those issues. My article deals with how youth understand issues of power, race, language, and labor. To understand those things, we have to dig really deep into why it is that there are people from Guatemala coming to the United States. If we dig deep into that, we know that traditional immigration theories say that there are pushing factors, that we are being pushed because we may not have opportunities back home, and we are pulled into the United States because the U.S. has resources. Those are traditional theories for explaining immigration. That works and that makes sense for European immigration. When it comes to immigration from Latin America, those theories are limiting, because when we look into the history of colonialism, we know that one of the things that colonialism did in Latin America was that it extracted a lot of resources. You mine, you take all those resources, and you take it back to, let’s say, Canada. Canada has big mining operations in Latin America. You take all those resources and you take them back to Canada. So what happens to the community there if you take all those resources there? They’re left with nothing. What they may do is go up to the city, maybe the city doesn’t have any work for them. What do you do after that? You want to travel to a country that has those resources. Most countries would be like the United States, Canada, or Spain for example. So you go and you make your way up there. So the issues for immgiration are rooted in colonialism. 

I am working on two things right now that expand more on that. The kind of work that indigenous peoples in Latin America do in the United States, is very much different from the type of labor that other migrants do. The example that I write about is about the labor that’s done in California. I don’t know if you’ve seen current social media posts about thanking the farmworkers who are picking the produce for us. When we think about those produce workers, those vegetable and fruit pickers, our main image is of a Mexican immigrant. But if we look more carefully at who is doing that [work], we know that they are indigenous, too. The labor sector, for me, is one of those things that is also racialized. That’s another thing that I am looking at - how do we look at labor in terms of indigeneity and how it is changing conceptions of indigenous peoples. We often don’t think of indigenous peoples through a labor lens because in our talks, we talk about language, but we don’t talk about the work that indigenous and Native Americans do. 

I haven’t done this myself, but I would be curious to see what labor sectors Native Americans occupy in the United States. That would be really interesting. But if we look at the labor sector that Mexicans occupy, and this ranges by state-- I have more experience in California and Washington-- we know that they’re in agriculture, construction, and service work like restaurants. But who is doing the more difficult jobs in the restaurant work? If you go and see who is the dishwasher, you see that it is also racialized. Those are some of the things that I am writing about when it comes to race, indigeneity, and coloniality in immigration. That’s why it’s so hard to unpack them because they all contribute to one another. [I would] also acknowledge that I don’t talk about gender, that’s one of the limitations [of my work]. It’s not that I don’t consider it or acknowledge it, it’s just that I haven’t had the opportunity to dig into how gender affects indigeneity because my participants and the people that I mostly work with are young men. There’s limitations with that for sure. Hopefully others will pick up on that kind of work.