“¿Cómo Sigue Con Su Estudio allá?”: An Inquiry into the Educational Involvement of Transnational Maya Families Across Guatemala and Oakland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes, and discusses Maya family narratives as they pertain to the educational perspectives and values they shared about their relatives in East Oakland, California. These were on display in ethnographic interview contexts conducted with families of Maya youth on their ancestral lands in the Guatemalan departments of Huehuetenango and San Marcos. The argument is presented that these educational perspectives constitute cultural practices of transnational family involvement that demonstrate educational values that educators should seek to understand as they work with youth from the Maya diaspora. Further, the study argues that the cultural practices of transnational family involvement can help us to think through the ways that approaches to strengths-based educational practice, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies can be improved by unpacking hidden deficit-orientations bound up with the idea that teachers, researchers, and activists need to be the ones to help sustain culture. Instead, these findings suggest that we need to be centering the ways that communities are already engaging in cultural sustenance as a starting point, rather than centering the attempts at cultural eradication that we face.