Las historias que dejó María: Educators and Researchers Bearing Witness to the Coloniality of Displacement

Astrid Morales ,Bethzaida Morales Rivera,Myrmarie A Graw-Gonzalez,Jasmin Nuñez Tejada,Manuel Augusto Hernández Hernández ,Molly Hamm‐Rodríguez

doi:10.33011/assembly.v3i1.1007

Abstract

This article centers the experiences of two university researchers in Colorado and four public school educators from Florida as they engaged in a dialogic process of counter-storytelling to reject one-dimensional narratives and embrace contradictions and vulnerabilities throughout the process. The authors speak against the deficit stories and colonizing practices that have affected Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans pre- and post-Hurricane María. This collaborative project humanizes the ongoing experiences of multiple displacements resulting from U.S. colonialism, racism, white supremacy ideologies, and unnatural disasters. Using a series of letters as the basis for reflection, we trace three major themes across our collaborative sense-making: (1) a desire to resist systems of white supremacy and coloniality by positioning teachers, displaced students, and their families as agents rather than victims; (2) a sense of (un)belonging that transcends or exists beyond the storm’s landfall; and (3) the power of counter-storytelling as a humanizing, liberating act.

Highlights

This article centers the experiences of two university researchers in Colorado and four public school educators from Florida as they engaged in a dialogic process of counter-storytelling to reject one-dimensional narratives and embrace contradictions and vulnerabilities throughout the process
What Brought Us Together In September 2017, Hurricane María devastated the island of Puerto Rico, displacing 160,000 Puerto Ricans and forcing 11,500 students and their families to relocate to Central Florida (Hinojosa, Román, & Meléndez, 2018; Meléndez & Hinojosa, 2017)
This geographic location was selected due to the presence of a well-established Puerto Rican community and the metropolitan area’s designation as a FEMA relocation site. Findings from this pilot study highlighted teachers’ experiences and suggested, among other things, that 1) teachers desired additional resources to provide quality language supports and services to students displaced from Puerto Rico after the storm; 2) schools experienced a shortage of bilingual teachers, paraprofessionals, and counselors, and; 3) Puerto Rican and Latinx teachers played an active role in holistically supporting students and mediating differences between the school culture in Puerto Rico and mainland U.S public schools

Summary

Introduction

This article centers the experiences of two university researchers in Colorado and four public school educators from Florida as they engaged in a dialogic process of counter-storytelling to reject one-dimensional narratives and embrace contradictions and vulnerabilities throughout the process. This collaborative project humanizes the ongoing experiences of multiple displacements resulting from U.S colonialism, racism, white supremacy ideologies, and unnatural disasters. We agreed that another key component in fulfilling this goal—to realize our and our students’ human potential—is to disrupt and reject deficit stories and colonizing practices that have affected Puerto Ricans in general and displaced Puerto Ricans in particular These deficit stories, circulated in national media and shared by participants in the initial pilot study, included portrayals of Puerto Ricans as victims passively waiting for and exclusively relying on U.S assistance pre- and post- Hurricane María. Privatization, debt, and other forms of predatory capitalism have contributed to the conditions that have long forced displacement and created social abandonment in Puerto Rico (Bonilla & LeBrón, 2019)

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