"Chicanas/os in Contested Spaces: Communal Forms of Resistance and the Creation of Underground Calmecacs." A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Reina Corina Rodríguez IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Dr. Edén E. Torres April 2016 © Reina Corina Rodríguez, April 2016 Acknowledgements There are so many people who deserve recognition in the completion of this project. I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Rose Brewer, Dr. Jimmy Patiño, Dr. Louis Mendoza, and Dr. Bianet Castellanos for the incredible support. You have all been so important to this collective process. My advisor and mentor Edén E. Torres deserves special recognition here. Edén, you have been such a source of strength and love during this entire process. I know I could not have survived without having you on campus. Thank you for being you and for giving so much of yourself so that we all can survive junt@s. Learning from you and being your student has been such a beautiful gift. I would like to thank Dr. Noro Andriamanalina and Dr. Patricia Jones Whyte for always guiding me with potential resources when things got rough. I would like to acknowledge my first year DOVE Fellowship, the DOVE Summer Research Fellowship as well as the ICGC fellowship for funding and support that allowed me to focus on my research. I would also like to acknowledge the CRES graduate student group for all of their support as well. I was fortunate to be part of many writing groups throughout the years at the U. The writing group we formed alongside Edén with Rene Esparza, Brittany Lewis and Daniel Topete is the reason I was able to pass my prelim exams. Writing and learning with you all was such a privilege. Britt, I am so thankful to have entered the program with you. You are such a driven scholar and you teach me so much. Rene, you are familia, boo. I am so lucky to have had the honor of taking classes with you and witnessing your genius. You are so special to me. Karla Padrón has been a great support since our Cal State LA days. Gracias por todo, kp. Speaking of Cal State LA, gracias to the other members of my co-hort, Steven Osuna, Michaela Mares-Tamayo, Erika Morales, Jasmin Morales, Darlene Calderon, and Luis Ramirez. Professors, Ester Hernandez, Dionne Espinoza, Francisco Balderrama and Valerie Talavera-Bustillos, gracias for planting the seed and allowing me to believe that I was capable of grad school. Idalia De León, it was such a blessing to meet you in that office. Knowing there was just one more MeXicana in Ford Hall was often enough to make me hold on. Irina Barrera and Joanna Núñez when you both arrived in Minneapolis it was like I had known you two my entire life. I admire you both for your passion and beautiful spirits. I will never be able to thank you enough for being amazing friends and also the best Tias to bebé. I love you both so much; somos familia. Mario Obando and Soham Patel, thank you for being so awesome, seriously. I love you guys. i I met so many people in Minneapolis whom offered me friendship, food, love, (who welcomed me and made space for me like family into their homes’, their radio shows, their charter schools!) and so much more. So many thankyous to Emilia Avalos, Daniel Del Toro, Miranda Del Toro, Danny Del Toro Jr., Don Emilio, Patty De León, Terrell Webb, Miguel Vargas, Maestra Norma Garces, Susana De León, all of the staff and students at El Colegio Charter High School and so many other community members from the South Minneapolis neighborhood. Gracias por todo. To my informants, thank your for sharing your stories with me. It was such a privilege to speak with other graduate students and hear the courage of your experiences. Your willingness to participate made this dissertation possible. Thank you so much. As my dissertation states, my blood family deserves so much recognition here. First, I would like to acknowledge my Tlatoani. It is you, mi bebé, who gave me the inspiration and drive to complete this dissertation. When we found out that you decided to make your appearance in our lives you gave us the strength to make it work. In between feedings, diapers, all of those middle of the night pumping sessions and snuggles—we managed to do it together. Thank you for your patience with a dissertating mamá and papá! This is all for you. To my Danny, there aren’t even enough words to adequately thank you for being my partner in every sense of the word. Thank you for being by my side these past 13 years. Only you and I know what went into these dissertations. I am so, SO proud of you. Gracias to Licha Talavera Topete and Sandra Fregoso Topete for always treating me like family. Gracias por estar con nosotros cuando llego nuestro bebé y por el apoyo que siempre nos han dado. Las quiero mucho. To my parents, Corina y Isaac Rodríguez gracias por siempre creer en mi. Thank you mom for sharing your name and fighting spirit with me. You are my first and most bad-ass teacher. Apa, este trabajo no lo pudiera haber hecho sin tu apoyo. Gracias por todos tus esfuerzos y por querer me y dejar me ser. My brother Isaac, you have inspired me every step of the way. My favorite sister, Letty, thanks for your letter and for inspiring me to always be a better me. You are my ultimate bestie and shero. My Thomas, I am so lucky to be your sister. You have an amazing soul. I can still hear your 11-year old voice asking me not to go away to school in Minnesota. Although we were physically far, you continued to give me strength. Thank you. To my extended family, mis abuelos, ti@s, primos: I cannot stress enough how pivotal you all were to making this dissertation happen. This is a true collective effort. Muchas gracias. ii Para mi bebé, Diego Tlatoani. Llegaste en el momento perfecto. Te amo. iii Abstract This dissertation focuses on how Chicana/o graduate students negotiate the need to feel connected to family, community and cultural ties while engaging in research and writing that acknowledges the contributions of all of their sources of knowledge—including those outside of the academy. This research is important because it offers critical interventions into how to improve equity and diversity for students of color and their communities in the university setting and also pushes the field of feminist studies by centering theories that embrace corporeal and material realities as central to feminist political ideology by insisting, as women of color feminists have, that family, community and culture cannot be separated from educational and academic spaces. It also introduces the concept of an Underground Calmecac Resistance as a means for survival for Chicana/o graduate students. This research is carried out through interviews, questionnaires, experiential knowledge and by highlighting the significance of mainstream (im)migration narratives and language for Chicana/Chicano graduate students while using work by key theorists, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and bell hooks. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents…………………………………………..……………………. v List of Figures……………………………………………..…………………….. vi-vii Chapter 1………………………………………………….……………………….. 1 Chapter 2……………………………………………….………………………… 35 Chapter 3……………………………………………..………………….….…….. 68 Chapter 4………………………………………….……………………………… 104 Chapter 5……………………………………….………………………………… 131 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………… 159 Appendix……………………………….…………………………….…………… 163 v List of Figures Figure 1. page 84 Image by Pat Oliphant found in The Orange County Register, October 22, 2006. vi Figure 2. page 84 Image by Daryl Cagle 10/16/2006 found online at www.cagle.com/news/2006Darkow/images/darkow8.gif vii Chicanas/os in Contested Spaces: Communal Forms of Resistance and the Creation of Underground Calmecacs “De que me sirve el dinero, si estoy como prisionero, dentro de esta gran prision. Cuando me acuerdo hasta lloro y aunque la jaula sea de oro, no deja de ser prision.”1 “This new racism has pounded hegemonic theories into us, making us feel like we don’t fit.”2 “It may feed your belly, but not your soul, I tell my Xicano students.”3 Chapter 1: Introduction Background Based on a talk given in 1992, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote about and for “the New Mestiza nation.” Anzaldúa stated: “For mestiza’s such as myself, the areas of study that professors want us to concentrate on do not appeal. We want new books, new areas of inquiry, and new methodologies….We struggle to make room for ourselves, to change the academy so that it does not invalidate, stamp out or crush our connections to the communities we come from.”4 In this address, I read Anzaldúa’s yearning for new books and new methods as a result of the complexity of Chicana/o subjectivities and a fear that if the various multiple and overlapping connections are not recognized, those connections will indeed be 1 Los Tigres del Norte from their song, “Jaula de Oro.” Translation: What good is money if I feel like a prisoner locked up in this huge prison? When I think about it, it makes me cry. Even if the bars are made of gold, it never ceases to be a prison.” 2 Gloria Anzaldúa, in the “New Mestiza Nation: A Multicultural Movement” in Keating, 206. 3 Cherríe Moraga on how “spiritually unrewarding Gringolandia is” in “A Xicanadyke Codex of Changing Conciousness, pg 7. 4 Keating, AnaLouise. Ed. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 208.