Acculturative Stress, Violence, and Resilience in the lives of Mexican-American Youth

Abstract

This article explores how Mexican-American youth experience stress and trauma in a variety of arenas. Such youth utilize their energy, creativity, and resilience in order to cope with cultural tensions that arise from acculturative processes, role conflicts with family and peers, school challenges, and identity formation processes. Violence, in the form of internalized colonialism, external oppression, and actual violent acts (e.g., gang fights, suicides, and physical and/or sexual abuse), can be a major risk factor for negative outcomes such as substance abuse. However, this ethnographic study demonstrates that many Mexican-American adolescents navigate stressors and traumas in such a way that transforms the potentially distressing events into life-affirming rites of passage. This article explores these issues through qualitative data analyses from a study of Mexican-American youth in a Southwestern city.