The Struggle to Decolonize Official Knowledge in Texas’ State Curriculum: Side-Stepping the Colonial Matrix of Power

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article relies primarily on both postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies to demonstrate how the Mexican American Studies (MAS) PreK-12 Committee of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco, or chapter, successfully waged battle in getting the Texas State Board of Education to officially incorporate Ethnic Studies, generally, and MAS, specifically, into state curriculum. I situate this struggle in Texas against the backdrop of the fight for MAS in the Tucscon Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona, and make the case for the valuable role that a collectively-shared, Chicana feminist mestiza consciousness played in our ultimate victory, even as we faced, a formidable “colonial matrix of power” embedded in official, social studies curriculum. Drawing on both postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies, I develop the argument that this colonial matrix of power has deep roots that find expression today in vexed Anglo-Mexican race relations in both Texas and Arizona. In Texas, this has been historically manifest in social studies curricula, alongside deep-seated white supremacist ideology and state structures like the Texas State Board of Education and the Texas State Legislature. Via an Anzaldúan Chicana feminist mestiza consciousness, this article further situates MAS at a theoretical crossroads of postcolonial theory and Critical Indigenous Studies.