Journal of Latinos and Education

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A Tejana testimonio: Language experiences and the

impact for teaching and learning

Martha Elena Garza

To cite this article: Martha Elena Garza (2018): A Tejana testimonio: Language experiences
and the impact for teaching and learning, Journal of Latinos and Education, DOI:
10.1080/15348431.2018.1478298

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2018.1478298

Published online: 11 Jun 2018.

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JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2018.1478298

A Tejana testimonio: Language experiences and the impact for

teaching and learning
Martha Elena Garza

Graduate College Curriculum & Instruction, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This paper explores my experiences as a Latina/Chicana educator from the Testimonio; cuentos;
borderlands of South Texas and acknowledges my innermost battle with dialogues; transformation;
identity through my own testimonio. The purpose is to re-examine admin- borderlands
istrator and teacher language ideologies and the detrimental effect on
curriculum development for all students learning in more than one lan-
guage. It explores the challenges of my battle and possibilities of profes-
sional development using narrative inquiry, testimonios, autobiographies
and other critical, pedagogical instructional dialogues as a path to discovery
for teachers and administrators to harness their own multilingual language
experiences as they support teaching and learning for English learners.

Introduction
Testimonios and autohistorias have created a deep awareness of who we are and how our experiences
have influenced how we work with others. This testimonio takes readers through my life and my language
experiences with my mother, relatives, and others across the borderlands of South Texas. In sharing these
language experiences, I hope that curriculum, instruction, bilingual, and ESL administrators can harness
the multilingual language experiences of pre-service and current classroom teachers to enhance teaching
practices and strengthen advocacy for English learners (ELs).
Language ideologies interfere with implementation of bilingual programs, most being the English-only
paradigms and language panics plaguing educators, parents, and students. According to Arias and Faltis
(2012), pre-service teachers’ ideologies support the “notion that the purpose of education is to ‘teach
children to become model citizens’, demonstrating their lack of any understanding of the social, political or
economic inequalities that exist for particular disadvantaged students” (p. 172). Trainings need to begin
with connecting to teacher backgrounds and their own language experiences in their childhood, school,
and higher education. Until the teachers recognize and identify their own ideologies and reconnect with
their own identidad y experiencas, they will not understand the “multiple experiencias transpiring in the
classroom and community” (Saavedra, 2011, p. 261). In addition, Mills argued that an “individual can
understand his own experiences and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within this period” (p. 5). I
found the importance of connecting to my own experiences as I navigated my career and how I fit into the
sociological context of power, race, class, and gender inequality. For far too long, it has been a struggle for
me to be a Chicana, Tex-Mex, Hispanic, Mexican American, and fourth-generation American from the
borderlands of South Texas. My beginnings in education started in a bilingual class 24 years ago; this was
the launch of my transformation from who I was as a Chicana, to an educator, and now as an advocate for
ELs. The purpose of this article is to bring forth an understanding, through my own testimonio, of what may
be interfering with the education of all students along the borders of South Texas, especially ELs. Often,

CONTACT Martha Elena Garza martha.e.garza01@utrgv.edu University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Graduate College
Curriculum & Instruction, 1201 West University Drive, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 M. E. GARZA

administrators and teachers struggle with their own challenges within a culture of “monoglossic and
monolingual orientations to language” (Valdés, 2015, p. 255), which along the borderlands seems to be
more magnified than in other areas across the state of Texas.
My roots are in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) and of course, like many, we are caught between two
worlds as Anzaldúa (1987) states, “…a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or
Angloness” (p. 63). The inner battles of identity and culture manifest in the business of educating children
in the RGV and have enormous repercussions for ELs. I am living proof of this tragic turmoil of not being
“…able to find… a place in Standard English… and create the ruptured, broken, unruly speech of the
vernacular” (Hooks, 1994), The repercussion is not that teachers teach the Standard English; it is that they
deny ELs the opportunity to use their language to make meaning. As a community of educators, especially
along the borderlands, where speaking Spanish at school was met with a knock on the head, slap on the
hand or, even worse, humiliation in front of the class with words a child should never hear, we should not
forget or pretend it did not happen. South Texas educators, parents, and students have a rich history and
beautiful language, unlike any other region. According to Bowman (2015), “as colonialism unfolded in
twentieth-century South Texas, it shaped the lives of everyone who lived in the region. It was the underlying
driver in the major components of the region’s modern history: race, farming, rebellion, and social justice”
(p. 341). Bowman also stated, “South Texas Mexicans negotiated their colonization in a borderlands space
where national and transnational histories overlap” (p. 351). These shared experiences, states Bowman,
situated by the colonization of the area, “transcend the nation-state, making South Texas a new borderlands
history” (p. 351). This place is my home, a place which shaped my identity, culture, and language and, most
of all, where my mother told her stories as tools to encapsulate history for generations.
So, as a community, we can transform curriculum in South Texas by providing quality
dual-language/bilingual programs which provide a multilingual education from pre-kindergarten to
college and beyond. This transformation can occur because we “…are not built in silence, but in word,
in work, in action-reflection” (Freire, 2009, p. 147), and together we can become strong advocates for
curricular change to retain our language and culture for the children in schools today and for the future
of students in a multicultural, multilingual world. Through this process of curricular action-reflection,
the transformation of teachers and administrators along the borderlands can certainly lead to a path of
embracing identity, language, and regaining the power we have lost for far too long. As director of
bilingual programs, I must demonstrate, through my own testimonio, how my own struggles with
language ideologies “influenced, challenged, and transformed” my educational career and exposed my
“miseducation about immigrants, minorities, and marginalized students” (Saavedra, 2011, p. 261).

Theoretical frameworks
Testimonio framework
This literature review is guided by testimonio and critical race theory (CRT) frameworks. The use of
testimonio, as Saavedra (2011) states, is to “present nuevas posibilidades for using testimonio with
children as a tool to center their stories, experiences and identidades” (p. 261). The framework of
testimonio as a pedagogical approach incorporates political, social, historical, and cultural histories
which connect our personal life’s experiences to “bring about change through consciousness-raising”
(Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012, p. 363). The stories of the borderlands are
unique. The process of testimonios is about the sharing of collective experiences where the speaker
and audience are sharing in the tool for sharing mutual struggles, creating new knowledge, bringing
together critical consciousness and will to take action—“transcending pain toward healing and
societal transformation” (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, p. 368). Living in the margins of the border-
lands is an experience rich in culture, heritage, loyalty, and deep-rooted spaces of language rebellion.
The people in this area have difficulty with change; many fight the invasion of modernism, while
others use language as a weapon to fight and at times succumb to language ideologies and panic.
Most of the rebellion, sadly, may be manifested in various ways, one being by denying their own
 JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION 3

children the native language of their communities and ancestors. It is important for educators to talk
about their culture, their families, the stories of their families and communities. Testimonios are an
avenue to reconnect to the history of the borderlands and the language of their past, present, and
future. Testimonio “is a first-person narrative whose speaker was a real protagonist of the events
recounted” and there is a real “urgency to reveal an oppressive situation, such as repression, poverty,
subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival, and so on” (Marinescu, 2013, p. 137). Testimonios
are a pathway for Chicana/Latinas to bring forth their stories and find solidarity with others who
share in their struggles (Saavedra, p. 262). In the study of Te Kotahitanga, testimonios of students’
experiences were provided to teachers as a means of critically reflecting on teachers’ positioning in
respect to deficit thinking and racism” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 130) Through my testimonio of
language experiences as a child, young adult, and career educator, I bring forth a first-hand account
of my struggles to connect to my Chicana and Latina roots. “Testimonio requires a deep learning,
necessitating an openness to give oneself to the other” (Alarcon et al., 2011, p. 370). My story and
personal experiences serve to “strip away at these inscriptions of race, poverty, violence, and
homophobia: with every spoken word we heal” (Alarcon et al., 2011, p. 370). As a result, they
may also support the collective healing of educators along the borderlands who struggle with the
challenges of serving second-language learners and inadvertently imposing their own English-only
paradigms on the children and parents. The South Texas linguistic and cultural landscape, as Roy
(2015) states, is a place where a variety of linguistic repertoires are offered, such as Spanish,
Spanglish, Tex-Mex, and varieties of English used in private, public, and informal and formal spaces
(p. 62). It is quite important because, in the space of the 180-mile-long by 50-mile-wide geographic
territory of South Texas, there are strong familias who have lived there for over a hundred years, as
well as recent immigrants seeking a better life in los Estados Unidos. Here is where I have my roots,
this is the place I call home and where I learned to become educada.

Latcrit framework
Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education provides researchers with a tool to examine how multiple forms of
oppression can intersect within the lives of people of color and how they “manifest in our daily experiences
to mediate our education” (Huber, 2010, p. 77). This framework of testimonio as a pedagogical approach
incorporates political, social, and cultural histories which connect our personal life’s experiences to “bring
about change through consciousness-raising” (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, 363). Another theoretical
framework stemming from “CRT is Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) which examines experiences
unique to the Latina/o community such as immigration status, language, ethnicity, and culture (Huber,
2010, p. 77). The conceptual framework for this research will be LatCrit theory, which is a new genre, a
category of contemporary scholarship including critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race
theory, critical race feminism, Asian American legal scholarship, and queer theory. DeNicolo, González,
Morales, and Romaní (2015) state that a central tenet of CRT is that race and racism are a prevalent part of
U.S. society (p. 1). In addition, CRT scholars have created strands which focus on the experiences of ethnic
groups, such as LatCrit, which encompasses what has affected Latinas/os, such as immigration but,
specifically in this testimonio, language (DeNicolo et al., 2005, p. 3).
My language experiences with my mother, family, amigas/os y conocidos contributed to my awakening
as a Latina, Tejana, and Chicana, and framed my relationship with my family and community. Soon, I
began my journey to discover who I was and with which side of the social, political, and educational
arenas I chose to stand. Within the theory of LatCrit which grounds my experiences, the critical feminists
of color “charge us as educators to continue to look beyond these apolitical, interpersonal, and feminized
frameworks of care in the education of students of color” (Sosa-Provencia, 2016, p. 4).
4 M. E. GARZA

Los cuentos de Tencha

As a child of migrant parents, raised in a small ranching community in South Texas, I was the youngest of
11 children. My mother was the matriarch, not just for my family, but also for the other families still left
in the rancho El Rincon. This small community was once surrounded my miles and miles of fertile land
where cotton, corn, onions, carrots, and other crops were farmed. I grew up running through the long
mounds of dirt across the dirt fields, chasing butterflies or chasing friends. This was our playground, and
there was plenty of it. A long tradition in our community was to gather at our house outside in the large,
outdoor courtyard to listen to my mother’s stories. My home was once a well-known hacienda belonging
to an ancestor who owned many acres of land used for farming and raising animals. People walked from
nearby homes and others drove from nearby communities to participate in los cuentos de Tencha. My
mother was a great storyteller; she enjoyed sharing her past and the past of the people of El Granjeno and
El Rincon. Relatives, friends, and neighbors gathered around a large fire to quietly listen as my mother
recounted stories of people, events, traditions, and folktales. Her voice was strong and funny, yet it was
soft and caring. The stories never changed; she may have repeated them at times, but no one complained.
What they really were looking for was to be a part of the group—to participate in the connectedness of
familia. As Kellas (2005) states, the stories people tell work as reflections of family culture to teach about
identity and encapsulate a moral or message about the family norms, values, goals and, most importantly,
identity (p. 366). Unbeknown to my mother, she was a teacher, not just to her children, but to all in these
close-knit communities. Her role was to maintain cultural traditions, teach moral frameworks, and
demonstrate the interrelationships resulting from linking her life to others through the stories shared
(Falconi, 2013, pp. 623–624). Tencha was, without knowing, engaging in testimonios and providing a
“space to self-author… to use one’s voice and know it will be heard” (Monzó, 2015, p. 379). She, as
Monzó states, was liberated and empowered as she interviewed and listened with raw openness and
moved those around her into action. I was moved with each cuento, testimonio, and/or story, and so were
those who joined in this social engagement of “sharing in these painful stories in support and solidarity
with the testimonialista” (Monzó, 2015, p. 379)—my mother.
As a child of the Great Depression, she told cuentos that recalled her pain, poverty, struggle, racism,
oppression, and deep-rooted traditions of las familias del rancho. I recalled a story she shared about caring
for her siblings while her mother washed clothes for neighbors and her father was off on a journey of
contrabando. The family lived in an old, one-room shack and was penniless, but they knew how to survive.
Surviving in the borderlands meant, in some cases, avoiding los rinches (Texas Rangers), who dragged
contrabandistas by the feet for the community to witness and fear. It was policing at its best, or was it? Los
rinches were ruthless, mostly White men on tall, majestic, beautiful horses, as my mother described,
determined to stop smugglers, like my great-grandfather, who transported illegal liquor and food products
from Mexico to sell in the U.S. There were no government handouts during these years, and if there were
any, her family either did not where to ask or no one bothered to ask for fear of the law interfering in their
private lives. There was plenty of orgullo to go around. Loyalty is strong in these communities; people kept
each other’s secrets—silence was respected and expected. The stories she shared were methods to relay
consejos (advice) which were passed down from generation to generation. Some conversations were
difficult for working mothers and fathers; storytelling was a way to open the communication channels
between children and parents. The support and words of wisdom received were essential for their
engagement and participation in school and in life in general (DeNicolo et al., 2015, p. 12). At the
conclusion of each cuento, she always ended with a ghost story; it was a folktale about la llorona, a headless
horseman, or the ghost of a woman peeking through windows at night looking for her missing child. These
nightly rituals of storytelling ended with conversations about who would walk with whom down the pitch-
dark country roads or drive the two-mile stretch to the next rancho where they lived. The darkness of the
mesquite trees and the sounds of the owls or las brujas (the witches), as my mother called them, whistling
through the air made my mother’s cuentos more credible year after year. These stories united families and
children; it was not kitchen table talk, it was a large circle of people around the testimonialista which bound
them forever. Her stories about struggles and survival connected us and, for a short moment, people forgot
 JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION 5

about the long hours out in the hot fields or the struggles to salir adelante. In that moment, bonds formed
and remained unbroken generation to generation.

Significance
Gilmetdinova and Burdick (2016) state that “in terms of language, specifically, curriculum develop-
ment… has produced a historical shift toward monolingual curriculum policies” (p. 77) which have
significant impact on every aspect of teaching and learning regarding ELs and also for native English
speakers. Counterintuitively perhaps, in the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas from where I write
this, monolingual curricularization is magnified. It seems that it should be the opposite. We should be the
flagship of multilingualism, translanguaging, and dual-language education. Public schools and higher
education should band together and work collaboratively, not counteractively, towards educating
students in many languages to promote social justice and function as a “setting for language reclama-
tion…supporting students’ developing consciousness of language” (Chew, Greendeer, & Keliiaa,
2015, p. 77).
A useful curricular point of departure might be that bilingual teachers across the borderlands of the
RGV, regardless of their own background and dialect, are taking inventory of their students’ language
proficiency and using what they bring to enrich the learning. However, Gilmetdinova and Burdick (2016)
state that it is “no longer enough to simply understand the needs of linguistically diverse students”; we
must “embrace the use of multiple languages in the classroom and recognize the potential of transferring
between languages” (p. 77). Language is power, yet bilingual teachers often, as I sometimes did, withhold
the native language because of their own “shame… and low estimation of self” caused by negative
experiences in their own childhood (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 58). Hooks (1994) refers to Adrienne Rich’s
words to emphasize the pain of losing a language: “I know that it is not the English language that hurts
me… it is the way the oppressors… make it a weapon that can shame, humiliate, colonize.” Anzaldúa
(1987) notes, “So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language” (p. 168). These words are
painful for me as I recall being a teacher and doing the same to my students, because I was afraid of
admitting to myself that denying their language was a way to deny mine as well.
Our own self-conceptions, like those described by Anzaldúa (1987), are shaped by our environment
and the policies aimed at attacking our identity, culture, and language. The intent of teachers is not to
harm students but to teach them, love them, and care for them; however, even in the process of doing
what is best, our own insecurities and oppressive behavior surface and cause irreparable damage to the
learning process of ELs. Pinar, Taubman, Slattery, and Reynolds (2008) borrow from Freirean
language to explain the role played by schools in this process. He states that “schooling is not neutral
politically; it takes place in an institution designed and operated by those in power; to serve those who
will come into power, to teach each child his preassigned place” (Pinar et al., 2008, p. 223).

Warrants for argument

Freire (2009) discusses dialogue as “the encounter between men, mediated by the world, to name the
world” (p. 147). He also states that dialogue is the key to opening the door of communication so that
the oppressed, “in speaking their word… transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which
men achieve significance as men… thus an existential necessity.” If we cannot reflect on our own
practices and then discuss our own stories, testimonios, narratives, and/or autobiographies, then how
can we transform our thinking and the concomitant curriculum?
Teacher and administrator education should include activities to bring forth the voices of the educators,
thus impacting curriculum and language program implementation. As Moreira (2016) writes regarding
teacher voice and narrative, “In teacher education, narrative inquiry is situated as the study of personal
experience and of teacher thinking” (Moreira, 2016, p. 666), to reveal the circumstances that either “oppress
or alienate them and their students, but they also explore venues of change and transformation” (p. 667) as
they address their challenges as educators. As Pinar (2011) writes, “Autobiography is the new pedagogical
6 M. E. GARZA

political practice of the 21st century and it is a way of bringing out an existing individual in society in
historical time” (Pinar, 2011, p. 38). The narrative practices Moreira (2016) and Pinar (2011) describe aim
at reconstructing the past and applying it to the present, not just to replay the events or to recreate
oppressive memories, but to self-reflect as a process of self-realization and, ultimately, transformation. In
this manner, administrators and teachers will re-discover their own self, their own identity, and become the
educator they themselves longed for when they were younger. Now that they can influence curriculum and
programs for all students, their new self may make better decisions aimed at serving the diverse populations
of today.
Likewise, the tradition of testimonios has provided a pathway, especially for Chicana/Latinas, to bring
forth their stories and find solidarity with others who share in their struggles (Saavedra, 2011, p. 262). In
the study of Te Kotahitanga, teachers were provided student testimonios as a means of critically reflecting
on teachers’ positioning in respect to deficit thinking and racism (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 30). The
South Texas linguistic and cultural landscape, as Roy (2015) states, is a place where a variety of linguistic
repertoires are offered, such as Spanish, Spanglish, Tex-Mex, and varieties of English used in private,
public, and informal and formal spaces (p. 62).

Conclusions
If we cannot involve our administrators and teachers in dialogue using testimonios or other narratives, they
will continue to silence students. These continued efforts of the English-only paradigm and language panics
across this country “fracture students’ cultural and ethnic identities” (Díaz, 2011, p. 287). By placing a
diversity of “languaging” practices at the heart of the curriculum, we can promote multilingualism in all
schools, bringing forth the realm of multilingual curriculum theorizing (Gilmetdinova & Burdick, 2016,
p. 78). Garcia and Wei (2014) discuss the potential for bilingual students to leverage “their entire linguistic
repertoire in meaning-making and in the process transforming it as well” (p. 69) which supports the
simultaneous movement between languages. It is unfortunate that our school leaders stand in the way
between language and learning. Their target is the learning, but they fail to understand that language is the
key. Our bilingual learners, as Garcia and Wei (2014) state in their book Translanguaging, “…shuttle
between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system,” which
can be difficult for classroom teachers to understand (Garcia & Wei, 2014, pp. 26–69)—not because they do
not know it is happening, but because their own inadequacies and fears impede the work of educating such
uniqueness. The RGV has complex demographics; we are a mixture of people. The diversity of Chicano,
monolingual Spanish speakers, and multi-generational English learners in this area adds to the instructional
complexity facing our teachers. It is not that simple to manage bilingual minds; the co-existence of two
languages (Garcia & Wei, 2014, p. 26) constantly in action creates havoc for teachers and administrators,
who are under pressure to meet assessment standards. Language is used as a weapon, not just from the
standpoint of school staff and policymakers, but also from the students themselves as they resist the
oppressive behaviors of those who are trying to help them learn. Angela Valenzuela’s critique of subtractive
schooling pedagogy argues that by “subtracting the student’s native language and cultural experiences… it
is an instrument of oppression and the subjection of one culture by another” (Díaz, 2011, p. 290).

Discursive practices for teachers

In today’s classroom, teachers can harness the “complex nature of students’ language brokering in their
homes and communities” (DeNicolo et al., 2015, p. 12) to build on their experiences as they negotiate
meaning and build language. Kellas (2005) states that there is a large body of research on narrative,
across disciplines, which positions identity construction as one of the central functions of stories
(p. 367). The themes or lessons learned through the shared family stories “affect and reflect rules for
behavior inside and outside the family, such as how to deal with obstacles and persevere during times
of hardship” (Kellas, 2005, p. 367). The themes of my mother’s cuentos included “accomplishment, fun,
tradition/culture, togetherness, separateness, child mischief, and stress” (Kellas, 2005, p. 383). These
 JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION 7

discursive practices hold the key for teachers to build strong relationships with their students, capture
the funds of knowledge that each brings to the classroom, and use the authenticity of their stories in
their academic writing.
The integration of testimonios, storytelling, and cuentos into the training of pre-service and current
teachers, as well as school leaders, will ensure that these practices are used for classroom instruction. These
are “rich sources of knowledge teachers can tap into for learning about their students and families”
(Sanchez, 2009, p. 162). Sanchez (2009) also states that these practices develop “students’ literacy skills
through a culturally and linguistically relevant approach” (Sanchez, 2009, p. 162). There is still much to be
learned about the deep-rooted pain of many educators who are working in schools along the border, much
of which is revealed in the form of oppressive instructional practices and denial of well-implemented
bilingual programs to the young children attending schools. Despite much training on federal and state
requirements for English learners, accountability and assessment dominate the conversations among
educators, while the voices of the students are still being silenced. Testimonios offer a way for “one of the
most revolutionary acts—the revolution within the self” (Saavedra & Salazar-Perez, 2012, p. 441), which is
the toughest to unveil. Educators play an important role in the lives of children; with each passing day,
personalities and identities are forming, and culture and language play major roles in this process. Saavedra
and Salazar-Perez (2012) state that healing our fragmented “we” and “I” is the basis for testimonios which
can lead to identity transformation—not just for the children, but also for those who hold the power in the
schools: teachers and school leaders.

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