La Universidad de la Vida : a pedagogy built to last

Abstract

This article weaves the life of a Mexican laborer, who with his wife brought his family to the United States and mentored two university professors, as they became activists in their craft. The professors honor their father through a reflective process where they share and make sense of a series of stories that describe their Papi’s experience in La Universidad de la Vida. The narratives speak to ontology of research, the utility of stories, particularly as stories can shape identity, capture critical life moments, and can help us make meaning of lived experiences, a methodology not commonly explored in education research.

Full text

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tqse20
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
ISSN: 0951-8398 (Print) 1366-5898 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tqse20
La Universidad de la Vida: a pedagogy built to last
Miguel A. Guajardo & Francisco J. Guajardo
To cite this article: Miguel A. Guajardo & Francisco J. Guajardo (2017) La�Universidad�de�la�Vida:
a pedagogy built to last, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30:1, 6-21, DOI:
10.1080/09518398.2016.1242805
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1242805
Published online: 15 Nov 2016.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 298
View Crossmark data

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2017
VOL. 30, NO. 1, 621
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2016.1242805
La Universidad de la Vida: a pedagogy built to last
Miguel A. Guajardoa and Francisco J. Guajardob
aDepartment of Counseling, Leadership, Adult Education & School Psychology, Texas State University, San Marcos,
TX, USA; bDepartment of Organization & School Leadership, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA
ABSTRACT
This article weaves the life of a Mexican laborer, who with his wife brought his
family to the United States and mentored two university professors, as they
became activists in their craft. The professors honor their father through a
reective process where they share and make sense of a series of stories that
describe their Papi’s experience in La Universidad de la Vida. The narratives
speak to ontology of research, the utility of stories, particularly as stories can
shape identity, capture critical life moments, and can help us make meaning
of lived experiences, a methodology not commonly explored in education
research.
Introduction and context
Our activist academic work is rst and foremost grounded in our brotherhood, as we are separated
by only a little more than a year, and we both had the profound privilege of being raised by loving
parents and a caring community. Secondarily, our work as academics is a hybrid approach grounded
in pedagogy of place, identity formation, and asset building negotiated through a process that pays
careful attention to history and context. Mentors from dierent walks of life have privileged us with
wisdom, passion, and languages. As second language learners we have experienced the perpetual game
of ‘catch up,’ continuously grappling with the English language and trying to understand the values of
the dominant culture and its institutions. Along the way, we made the decision to stop playing ‘catch
up.’ This occurred before we arrived in academia, when we were high school teachers and community
activists. As we entered academia, we were drawn to Trueba’s pedagogy of hope (1999, 2004), Freire’s
concept of awareness and critical consciousness (1998, 2000, 2002), Valenzuela’s politics of cultural car-
ing (1999), Ah Nee-Benham’s identity and indigeneity (1998; Ah Nee-Benham & Cooper, 2000), Scribner’s
micropolitics (1999), Scheurich’s coloring epistemology (1997), Reyes’ embedded mentoring (1999),
and Delgado Bernal’s pedagogies of everyday life of Chican@s (2006). These mentors and their work
inuence our professional identity, but what we do is inspired most deeply by our parents and their life
stories. This essay takes the reader on a genealogical trip through the spaces and stages of our formation,
as it examines our identity and work as professors. This is a genealogy of stories that tell how we have
been shaped by individual and collective action in relationship with numerous people present in our
lives, the ecologies they bring with them, and most importantly the social DNA given by our parents
that spelled a compelling commitment to education and community.
A series of stories about our greatest mentor, our father, guides this autoethnography that is inter-
dependent and relational in nature. The stories are raw and authentic. We refer to him as our father, or
Papi; same with our mother, who we call Mami. The structure and rhythm call for storytelling, followed
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 21 April 2016
Accepted 6 June 2016
KEYWORDS
Educación; ontology;
storytelling;
autoethnography;
epistemology; place; activist
academic; Llano Grande
Center
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Miguel A. Guajardo maguajardo@txstate.edu

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 7
by critical self-reection to make sense of the story. We invite you to do the same, and encourage you to
not get stuck in the story, but to see it as a mechanism through which to explore your own journey. We
invite researchers and academics who might live on the margins to nd themselves within these spaces
of resistance, resilience, and struggle as we collectively develop a pedagogy and epistemology of the
self within our ecology. We have come to appreciate this experience for what it does to students in our
classrooms, and for the impact it has in our communities. Our research teaches us that pedagogies that
encourage the exploration of the self within their particular ecologies of knowing are transformational
for school leaders. We invite the reader to see these stories as circular, rather than linear. We organize
the text through identication of critical moments to demonstrate impact in our development as sons,
brothers, students, community builders, teachers, fathers, and researchers.
Our brand of activism mirrors our father’s public actions. He was radical by denition, and thereby
changed his life, changed his family, changed his community. He was a man of private action, not of
public demonstration. He was dierent than anyone we have known in his willingness to give: wisdom,
energy, time, humor, love, and whatever was needed to help. This was his gift to us, and to the world.
Through this essay, we can only attempt to mimic his actions, as we tell stories that have shaped who
we are as public people and activist academics. In Papi’s mind, the little things were important; dignity
and humility were essential in shaping the public person. Like him, we work to change our lives, to
change the lives of others, and to change organizations and communities. This change is grounded in
and informed by a micropolitical action that is at work every day. It is the commitment to get up daily
and do the right things for us, for our families, and for the public good. This is the lesson of our father,
who taught us a pedagogy built to last.
How to say adiós (good bye)
When our father died, we shared a video at the funeral from an oral history we conducted with him
ve years earlier. In the video, he responded to the question: Cómo quieres ser recordado? (‘How do
you want to be remembered?’) His answer appeared as if he were engaged in a plática with those who
came to pay respects. He posed questions, he reected on events, he generously spread wisdom, and
he did so as if speaking to multiple audiences: the camera, his children, the community, and posterity.
Most directly, he said he wanted to be remembered as someone who had been cumplido. To translate
ser cumplido is to describe a heightened state of being. It means to have integrity, to be someone who
can be counted on, and to show delity to the things one commits to. In his easy conversational way,
he told the community how he wanted to be remembered, and by extension he encouraged everyone
in attendance to ser cumplidos, y que hagan por el próximo (to be committed and generous to each
other). Our work as university professors stems from that direct piece of wisdom our father shared at
his funeral and is derived from the life we saw him live.
This essay is an opportunity to honor our father’s life, and to reect on the enduring inuence he
had on us as emerging academics, and as activist professors who learned from the life he modeled.
He was the quintessential mentor. He exercised a poetic quality that manifested itself until his last day,
when he waited to take his last breath on his birthday. José Ángel Guajardo died 19 May 2013, when
he turned 77, after a long battle with lung cancer. He lived a life of purpose, and he reected on the
purpose in an engaging and perpetual way. The frequent pláticas he shared with us, typically over un
cafecito, were things of beauty, as he curiously asked about our work, our travels, our own purpose.
He was born in a rural village in northern Mexico, lived an early life as a goat-herder, sojourned north
of the international border in his late teens in search of temporary work in South Texas, but returned
to Mexico every time. He married our mother in 1959 in the state of Tamaulipas, and they brought the
family to the United States in the late 1960s.
As brothers we reect deeply on his life through modalities that include our own journaling, an
autobiography our father wrote, ethnographic accounts we have produced, an elongated oral history
we conducted with him, and numerous other stories that give shape to him and the family narrative.
He did not have much formal schooling, though he was intensely proud of his fourth-grade education

8 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
in a rural school in the village of San Felipe, Nuevo León, in northern Mexico. The school did not oer
a fth grade, so he repeated the fourth grade twice; it’s how much he loved school. We learned a great
deal about our father because he raised us with stories, and shared numerous anécdotas, as he called
them in the title of his autobiography (Guajardo, 1988). The anécdotas covered a wide autoethnographic
range: from his early childhood, to his adolescence, to his adult life. We had a front row seat as witnesses
to his life as a Mexican immigrant father and husband, and we sought him out for counsel at every step
of our formative experiences. Shortly after he penned his autobiography, which he wrote upon our
request, we engaged him in an oral history that includes no less than a dozen installments. From one
of those installments, we took footage to use at his funeral.
It was surreal as relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances walked into the funeral home and
heard our father’s voice with crisp clarity. ‘He’s here,’ said one friend. Funerals incubate a host of human
emotion. Some in attendance felt relief, because Papi’s suering had ceased. Others felt loss. There was
great anxiety, too. When the video played, Papi’s voice calmed the collective anxiety. The video was a
product of our personal interest to know more, but it was also the result of our instincts as researchers
(Patton, 2002). Showing the video was an act of engagement, where our father could have a plática
with the community, where he could help friends and family understand how to remember him, and
where he could help them move on with their lives. So, the friend was correct. Papi was there, still teach-
ing, still mentoring. He taught us that pláticas were critical for educational purposes. Through pláticas
came stories. This was also an exercise in reciprocity, as we took the research and presented back to
relatives, friends, and the community at large. Through the stories in the video, Papi demonstrated the
commitment to his family, to his friends, and to his community. Those relationships fueled his spirit,
guided his public service, and revealed his public pedagogy. We felt compelled to use our research to
help our father say his last public good-bye, so he could deliver yet another lesson before leaving. As
Behar wrote, it became an anthropology that breaks the heart (1996).
Ser cumplido
When we were four and ve years old, respectively, our parents decided to make the move from Río
Bravo, Tamaulipas, to the United States. One day in the fall of 1968, Papi took us to Monterrey in the
neighboring state of Nuevo Leon to apply for legal residence through the Mexican Consulate (see
Figure 1). The federal oce was housed in a two-story building, and our father went into a room on
the second oor to present his application and to sit for an interview. We stayed outside the oce,
waiting, and playing; perhaps more accurately, we ‘horsed around.’ Our play soon turned rough, and
we found ourselves rolling down the stairway from outside the Consulate’s oce to the base of the
stairway on the rst oor.
About the time our downward rolling stopped, Papi stepped out of the oce, which we clearly
detected when we looked up as we lay on the oor. More worrisome, however, was his countenance –
he did not look happy. Without hesitation, our father made his way down to us. His form of discipline
was about to be exacted, when he was interrupted by a stranger who simultaneously approached us,
apparently to help us o the oor. The stranger also spoke to our father, and as he did so, pre-empted
the on-the-spot discipline our father would’ve assuredly dispensed. The man introduced himself as
Polo Medrano, and asked our father, ‘How was your interview?’ Papi responded that his application for
legal residency to the United States had been rejected. What happened next was a series of events
where Polo Medrano helped our family immigrate to the United States. He and his wife Amelia even
oered housing to our family for several months, so that our parents could earn and save enough to
nd a permanent place to live.
The Medrano family moved to Oregon in the early 1970s, and through the years our parents kept
up with them through the occasional phone call and a few personal visits when the Medranos traveled
to Texas. In 2010, Amelia died of cancer, and on her deathbed, she asked Polo for a personal favor. She
reminded Polo of the girl who had been his girl friend, before she and Polo had met and fallen in love.
She told Polo that she knew the girl had never married and asked him to nd her, and if she agreed, to

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 9
resume their relationship. Polo agreed he would, and within a year after Amelia’s death, Polo married
his old girlfriend.
Papi told us this story one morning over coee, when we asked him what had become of Polo and
Amelia. He told us Polo lived in Mexico, where he had found his new wife. When asked why he hadn’t
brought her to Texas, he said Polo was working through the immigration process for his wife. She was
a Mexican national, and it cost several thousand dollars to pay the application fee to bring her into the
country legally. But Polo didn’t have the money, and the bank would not give him a loan because Polo
did not have established credit. So our father explained that he had taken out a loan himself and had
given the money to Polo, so he could bring his new wife to Texas. Están esperando la carta de inmigración
(They’re waiting for the letter from immigration), he said.
At the time, our father was on a xed income, primarily living on a monthly Social Security check.
When he told us the story of the loan, we asked why he hadn’t asked us for the money. We told him
we would be happy to help. But our father explained that it was his responsibility to repay Polo for the
generosity he oered that fateful day in Monterrey, as they met while the two of us lay on the oor. He
reminded us that Polo had helped us get into the US, had given us refuge, and had been a kind friend.
He said that he had to cumplir con Polo.
Since we were undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin, we have volunteered in our
hometown in the Rio Grande Valley. We formalized the work and brought other local partners into it
through founding a non-prot named the Llano Grande Center for Research and Development (LGC), an
organization that allows us to harness and scale up the work. The most important source of inspiration
is the commitment to cumplir, the social responsibility of giving back to the community inculcated by
our parents. This has informed our work as teachers, community builders, researchers and activists.
Cumplir is at the core of our ontology as activist academics; it serves as a guidepost. It is what we teach
Figure 1.José Angel with three older sons, fall 1968.

10 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
our children and our students. But to cumplir is often at odds with the impulse of the institution, which
is often to pursue self-serving activities or to compete for the big grants. How to approach the dictates
of the academy warrants continual negotiation, but it is negotiation guided by core values. In our case,
it is guided by the need to cumplir.
La Universidad de la Vida
We knew Papi as a compulsive note-taker. He kept a notepad to keep track of bills he paid. He kept
one where he noted signicant events, people, celebrations, and funerals. He and Mami never missed
a funeral; being there when others most needed comfort was important to them. He started another
notepad in the early 1960s that recorded every job he took on. He worked on that notepad until the day
he retired as an elementary school janitor with the local school district. He often pointed to his 45-year
record of employment, where he never missed a day of work, save for the days when he underwent
major surgery – and the recovery, of course. During the four-and-a-half decades of his formal work
span, he was also never jobless, and he was very proud of that. In an understated way, he made sure
we knew. But his notepad only contained notes, no narratives.
While undergraduates at the University of Texas, we asked our father if he had written some of the
stories he and our mother told as part of how they raised us. We told him the stories had had such value
as guideposts for living the right kind of life, and they were an integral part of our emerging identity. He
said he had not, but by end of the year – that was 1986 – he turned his notepads into narratives, and
completed the rst installment of his autobiography, which he entitled Anécdotas de mi Vida (Guajardo,
1988). Through the exercise, he explained that he had become a more reective storyteller, as he trans-
formed his notes into stories, or anécdotas, as he liked to call them. One of his signature anécdotas is
a treatise on the process of his education. He recalled the richness of his early years in the rural school
in San Felipe, but he mostly focused on the critical nature of life experience as his core curriculum. The
most critical lessons learned, he learned through experience. When we became teachers, we had thus
been told by our father of the signicance of lived experience as an important part of personal and
professional development. Papi came to understand his life experience as the best schooling, and he
described the process as his Universidad de la Vida (The University of Life).
Papi had a fourth-grade education, and our mother had no formal schooling. But they were both
bién educados. Valenzuela (1999) and other Mexican American scholars use the Spanish term educación
to highlight the dierence between being schooled and being respectful and honorable. To be bién
educado is a signicant cultural acknowledgment, even accomplishment. It means one has achieved
mastery of respectful and gracious behavior. It means one speaks to elders in a respectful manner, and
communicates in Spanish in the presence of Mexicano elders. This has been a persistent tension that
has kept us grounded, particularly during times when we thought we were real smart. Like the time one
of us was knee-deep in dissertation writing, engulfed in books, and isolated from the outside world.
When our father paid a visit, he looked at all the books, the laptop on which the dissertation was being
written, and said, mijo, lo más educado, lo más pendejo (Son, the more educated, the more stupid you
become.) The context was that our mother had gotten sick, because one of us had not visited her in
weeks. Éso, es ser mál educado, (That is not being educado) was our father’s critique. Looking after our
mother was a basic measure of being bién educado. On occasions when we came back home during
semester breaks at the university, our father would keep us in check, particularly if we did not meet the
educado standard. When he detected a slip in our cultural competence, he would pose the question:
de que les sirve la educación? (What good is your education?)
Papi learned the metric of educación through his experience in the Universidad de la Vida. His curric-
ulum was life experience, and his organic forms of accountability proved a critical complement to our
university education. His Universidad de la Vida teachings added important texture and humanity to the
process of our educational development, and to our identity as emerging educators. En Casa Guajardo,
to be bién educado was also a form of resistance. It was a way our parents ensured we maintain the
Spanish language, the way we understood and respected the ways of the barrio. Like a modern day

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 11
Vygotsky (1978), our father used the zone of proximal development to scaold the necessary litera-
cies of life and order of the world. He understood issues of power, but he also knew how to negotiate
these spaces through a set of pedagogical tools. He needed his sons to know the value of hard work,
the utility behind saying please and thank you, and the wisdom to know when to walk away from
unhealthy conict – the latter has saved our careers several times. This brand of education has gifted
us the ability to engage in meaningful and sustained conversations with community partners, who in
their own context and culture are bién educados.
The parable of Pablito
Our father established a number of rituals intended as part of our upbringing: the regular visits to rela-
tives, the weekly trips into Rio Bravo for a haircut, and the regular reading of Pablito’s story. One of our
father’s most prized possessions was his library, a collection of old books he kept from his school years
in San Felipe. There was the book on geography that he often cited, the science book, the math book.
But the book on civismo (civics) was his favorite. That book had the story of Pablito, a parable that would
be etched in our collective consciousness. He would gather his four sons around him to deliver his best
rendition of the story of la escuela rural, where the protagonist was a Mexican boy named Pablito. The
boy grew up in the village, just like our father had, and he helped the family economy through goat
and sheepherding. Pablito loved his school and his village, and upon completing all the grades at the
school decided to leave the rural community to continue his education. He spent years studying in the
big city and often thought about the rural village he loved so dearly. Pablito soon nished his studies
in the city, and he had a decision to make. When Papi read this during our younger years, he would
pause at this point in the story to ask what we thought would happen next.
Two things happened next in this story: (1) Pablito returned to his rural home, and (2) he came back
with skills to help develop the village. That became the point of the story, but the moral was in our
father’s interpretation. Pablito’s decision was the denition of acting for the public good. He became
educated so he could help himself, yes, but the way our father saw it, the higher calling was to help the
village. The story, how it was directed and acted by our father, and the frequency and persistence of the
performance became a central part of how we were raised. A measure of its eectiveness is evidenced
in how all four brothers became educated, and all came back to help develop our community – in one
way or another.
This was our navigational tool, our moral and academic compass, and what has informed our research
agenda. If this is what was important to the most important man in our lives, it was what would be
important to us. The process is clearly more complicated than this facile analysis of the story, but the
point is that the foundation was set, and the space and place where we would give back was dened.
Our research became about this place that raised us, the issues that shaped us, and the challenges our
community faces daily. Pablito’s story showed us that through education and the process of breaking
out of our own isolation, we could change the world around us. The cycle of development played true in
the stories of Pablito and continues to play true today. The people in our world and the places we have
lived inuence our ontology and epistemology as researchers. They form our research agenda that is
grounded in practice and that pays attention to voices closest to the issues. This agenda is collaborative
in nature, and is guided by the public good.
This research carries a dierent responsibility that academia may not see as important. Like Pablito,
our impact is measured in multiple ways – through a focus on community, by the number of people who
read and discuss the work, and by the lives that are changed as a result. Which peer reviewed journal we
publish in, or what the acceptance rate may be, are not the most important measures we look at. Neither
the ctional Pablito, nor the real character that was our father would consider academic journals as the
most authentic measures. Pablito’s narrative of education for community change is the standard, the
foundation on which our work as teachers, researchers, and community builders is based. Pablito’s story
shaped our lives, guides our work, and has changed our community. It informs the research methods
our students employ in their work, both in graduate school and in their communities.

12 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
‘Si es veterano, no es veterano’
Our parents curated their living room walls with family photographs, memorabilia of their children and
grandchildren, a shrine adorned by university diplomas of the Guajardo boys, a variety of Virgens of
Guadalupe. And then there was the wood carved portrait of Papi in military uniform (see Figure 2). The
wooden image commemorated his time in mandatory ‘marching camp,’ a rite of passage for every able
bodied young man during the post-Revolutionary time in twentieth-century Mexico. The older among
us, Miguel, understood the story of that wooden picture from an early age, but for some reason one of
us did not get the real story, until an experience we had in 1974 in Holland, Michigan.
Our family became part of the migrant farm-working stream during the spring of 1974. The destination
was a labor camp in Keeler, Michigan, and strawberry elds in and around Van Buren County. We arrived in
April and found snowing, winter-like weather, which meant we could not work until the weather improved.
Our modest resources would not last long, so our father went looking for other work, and for assistance to
make ends meet. Every place he went, he took us, or our older brother Pepe, to help translate, because our
father did not know English, and we quickly realized most local Michiganders did not know Spanish. We
made a stop with our father at the food stamps oce in Holland, where the social worker that tended to our
food stamps application did not know Spanish, so the two of us were pressed into translation duty. We deftly
handled questions such as name, address, date of birth, and ages of the children. But the question, ‘Are you
a veteran, Mr. Guajardo?’ elicited split responses. The give-and-take went something like this:
Miguel: ‘No, my father is not a veteran.’
Francisco: ‘Yes, he is! Remember the wooden picture at the house? He’s in a soldier’s uniform. He’s a veteran!’
Figure 2.José Angel in wood carved image, ca. 1957.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 13
So we turned to our father: Papi, el señor quiere saber que si eres veterano de guerra? (The man wants
to know if you’re a war veteran?) Papi conrmed that he was not, and he asked why the confusion. When
we told him the source of the debate, he broke out in laughter, then composed himself and said, Díganle
al señor que no soy veterano, pero que sí marché, cómo fué mi deber cómo Mexicano. (Tell the gentleman
I am not a veteran, but I did March as part of my national duty in Mexico.)
The veterano experience became one of Papi’s favorite stories. He laughed heartily every time he told
it, but it was an intriguing laughter, as our father was wont to have fun with stories. He found stories
to be a vital source of social and cultural transmission. Related to the veterano story, he expressed joy
at how funny the moment was, celebrated our innocence, and recognized the weighty responsibility
we assumed as brokers of important family moments. At prepubescent ages, we were in the middle
of negotiating labor contracts with Anglo farmers, lled out medical applications and translated and
interpreted communication with nurses, doctors, and other health professionals, and even debated
whether our father was a veteran of a foreign war. Our parents trusted us as we engaged in all these
functions. Though they must have been humbled by the experiences, they never showed weakness;
to the contrary, they were elegant and nurturing in giving us the space to exercise our own agency as
sons, and as valuable members of the family. This is an important source of our strength.
We were raised in the borderlands, a playground that nurtures the imagination (Anzaldúa, 1987).
We were gifted with two languages, negotiated dierent cultures, and learned which knowledge and
language were valued in given situations (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Life along the border is
about contextual and dynamic spaces. In these spaces our parents needed us, and we needed them.
A critical skill set our parents developed was the ability to negotiate the shifting variables of culture,
institution, home, and language. They were the original social constructivists in our lives. They adapted
to their surroundings in ways that were dignied, respectful, and as it turns out, sustainable (Guajardo
& Guajardo, 2002, 2004, 2008). They listened to us as school children and valued our knowledge as we
brought academic and other life experiences into the home. They listened to us when we were intro-
duced into the sometimes-violent world of sports in high school, when we went to college, when we
became teachers. Listening to their children was something they took seriously. Our parents then lived
and learned vicariously when we began to travel the world. They always worried when we traveled and
demonstrated deep curiosity upon our returns. Our father reminded us of the rst time he saw a train,
when he ran to hide behind Abuelita Virginia, frightened of this strange iron machine. When we grew
up, he was happy to see the world through our own travels.
As our parents shifted their ways of being based on lived experiences, they frequently engaged us
in conversations on understanding power dynamics. Our father’s frame of reference was as a laborer,
our mother’s as a housewife, but they knew abundantly from the relationships they had experienced
through family, community, and work. They taught us that without dignity and respect, power could
be a very violent thing. They gave us the power to make important decisions when necessary and
trusted us unconditionally. We wrote checks for them, translated and interpreted language for them,
and when they were not around we negotiated this power with each other. We were not always right,
and like the veterano story, we were often hilariously wrong, but we always felt supported. The range
of experiences constitutes the core of our development process as teachers, researchers, and activists.
Building el barrio
Two years after arriving from Mexico, our parents got a tip from Toñita Rodríguez, an elderly woman
from our new hometown of Elsa. Toñita looked after people, especially families that were just looking
for a break. Our family appeared to meet the criteria, and as someone who understood systems, Toñita
suggested to our parents that we apply for federal housing, otherwise known as Los Proyectos, or the
Projects. We did, and in the summer of 1971, we moved into 302 West 3rd Street in Elsa, a federal housing
apartment where we would live for the next eight-and-a-half years. In return, Toñita earned the loyalty
and life-long friendship from our family. Years later, her grandkids would become our students at the
high school, and we made sure to help them get into good colleges. Toñita taught our parents how to

14 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
look for opportunities in this new country and showed them how to navigate their new environment.
We taught her grandchildren how to do the same.
Growing up in the Projects was magical. Our parents t the old model of the gendered spheres of
inuence, as our father worked outside the home, behaved as the public face and voice of the family,
and often engaged in political and other public discourse with guests and with those we visited. Our
mother administered domestic duties, oered the preponderance of the nurturing, and looked after
the day-to-day activity of the kids inside and outside the home. As Papi modeled the gainful employ-
ment outside the home, Mami managed our leadership development, particularly in relation to our
interaction with the dozen or so other youth from the neighborhood, or what we referred to as el barrio.
By the time we were eight and nine, we were organizing our own baseball league during the summer,
football games during the fall, basketball in the winter, and canica (marbles) and trompo (tops) tour-
naments year round. We salvaged throw-away sticks as baseball bats, old tire rims as basketball hoops,
shared gloves and other equipment, and even carved the base paths for the make-shift baseball eld
with hoes borrowed from a neighbor. All the while, Mami (and other neighboring mothers) made sure
everyone was safe, and well-fed. She oered advice when needed and ensured conditions were ripe
so that kids in the barrio could play and grow up in happy and healthy ways. Mami supervised this
leadership development process and allowed us the space to navigate our own world.
After about ve years living in the projects, our parents began to think about the eventuality of
moving out. The Housing Authority director often spoke of the purpose of federal housing as an oppor-
tunity to help families during times of need, but with the intent to also help families move into home
ownership, at some point. Our parents listened carefully, and they looked around the area and found
an aordable lot in a colonia (unincorporated community) outside of Elsa, just a few miles from the
Projects. They gave a down payment, a nominal amount according to Papi’s records, on an acre of land
and began their monthly payments on a 10-year loan from the property owner – our father documented
every payment in one of his notepads. When the director of the Projects raised our monthly rent by
over 300%, we made the move to our new property in the colonia. First angered by news of the rent
increase, Papi eventually took solace in knowing the family had been preparing for the transition. We
began the transition by buying a mobile home on credit, and we then worked with another family that
had purchased an adjoining lot to dig the ditches to lay down the water pipes to access water from the
local water district. There was an interdependent quality to our rst 10 years in our new country. Our
parents learned from Toñita, they built community with kids and neighbors, and we all learned that
being there for each other was a better way to live, and a better way to be good neighbors.
Contrary to the prevailing narrative of poverty as a decit in this country, we grew up in a space and
place of privilege, love, and hope. The economic conditions were dicult, to be sure, but our parents
modeled how these social conditions were not determinants to what their children could become.
They modeled how hard work and how the need for community were needed to change these con-
ditions. Their work as community builders gave us an insight into how to do the work with a sense of
gratitude. We learned about the importance of weaving a social fabric within the barrio. We learned
about the availability of clothing closets at the local Sacred Heart Catholic church. We learned about
free lunch at the school, about where we could take a shower and maintain good hygiene when we
did not have running water or warm water during the winters during our rst years in the colonia. Our
training ground for life was dened by these conditions and by learning from our parents, and others
such as Toñita Rodríguez, how to develop our own agency.
Moving from federal housing to a home with no potable running water, with no paved roads, nor
the necessary heating to warm the home during the winter became a place for tense learning. We
helped our father secure running water; we helped him seek electricity from the local power company;
and we stood by as he lobbied the county commissioner to pave the road in our colonia. When the old
mobile home we moved with us to the colonia began to fall apart, we built our own house, with our
own hands, one cinder block at a time. We built the house in strategic steps as we secured the materi-
als, the resources, and then enlisted assistance from local talent such as roofers and plumbers to lend
a helping hand, even if they were fairly compensated. These community-building experiences in the

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 15
barrio guide how we build community in the classroom, in our communities, and through our research
enterprise. We attempt to do this with the dignity, respect, humor, and gratitude that our father and
mother taught us. The day our father passed, he died in the house we built, and his four sons (three
PhDs among us, and all four with university degrees) standing by our mother, in love, in community,
and in solidarity. We learned all this from our two most important mentors: Papi y Mami (see Figure 3).
Threats and the issue of race
Papi lived by the rule of responsibility to his family and to his community. His love of learning, his curios-
ity, and the constant change in life created the necessary tension for his own growth. Day-to-day activity
in our living room, at the local coee shop, or at the post oce was the classroom experience that was
part of his Universidad de la Vida. His curriculum was his lived experience, which he shared generously
with everyone, primarily through his frequent pláticas. These experiences were not always noble or safe;
he shared stories of hardship, stories of grief, and stories of tension that we would eventually face in
public schools, as academics, or simply in life. He shared the story of the ight from Mexico because of
a threat to his life. The story goes that when he was a canalero and was charged with dispensing water
to farmers, a large landowner threatened to kill him if Papi did not allot the farmer more water for his
elds. Papi refused to apportion more water, and rather than risk his life, he and Mami transplanted the
family. Years later, he intimated that he could not imagine his young wife raising three small children
by herself. Their instinct to leave the homeland and extended family was one of survivals. They had to
trust that the alternative would be more sustainable in the long run, though not necessarily easier. It
was a dramatic move, but our parents’ actions tended toward the dramatic, in some cases even poetic.
We came from Mexico the last day of 1968, the year historians claim changed the world – it was indeed
the year that changed our lives. Every year, at the end of the year, Papi retold the story of the family
migration. Each time he told it, he suggested it was a revolutionary act, moving from relative comfort,
albeit in humble and low economic conditions, to a place of wild uncertainty. He made it seem biblical,
as if something out of Exodus. Papi was given to hyperbole; it was part of his pedagogy. The power of the
story was clear, and the powerful nature of storytelling became a central part of our own pedagogical
approach (Behar, 1996; Delgado, 1989).
Figure 3.José Angel and Julia Guajardo 2005.

16 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
Even with the separation from our mother country and introduction to the United States, it was
always clear to us that we were Mexicanos. We communicated in the language of Mexicanos. The
aroma, the colors, the décor, and everything about our home mused the Mexican senses. Our home
culture became our oxygen. Our parents continually reinforced the cultural traditions in proud ways,
so we became proud ourselves. Issues of race and class were also part of home conversations, though
Papi was always careful to share with us only lessons we were ready for – timing was important to him.
One day we shared a story from school over the dinner table about use of language and racial identity
that was the focus of a classroom discussion. Our experiences as migrant farm workers had exposed
us to dierent racial dynamics in other parts of the country, and we had been able to compare racial
treatment in South Texas to treatment in other places. When the school story came up, Papi felt it was
the right time to share a troubling encounter he had experienced just a year before.
He rst set the context by describing the farm where he worked, the Anglo patrón, his Mexicano
co-workers, the workload, and equity in pay. He said that he earned $1 per hour while others earned
signicantly more than he did, even though he believed he worked harder and longer hours than the
others. We recalled the time he worked 100h in a week managing the irrigation of a eld, and brought
home $100 in wages. Nobody could question Papi’s work ethic, but he felt he was in an exploitative
circumstance. He said that after he and Mami had a series of pláticas about this issue, he found the
courage to ask the Anglo farmer about his wages. As Papi told the story, he noted the Anglo farmer’s
prominent place in community life. The family had come to the area early in the twentieth century
and had played a role in founding the town site. The family had a long established dairy farm, where
Papi was employed during the time of this story. The day he approached the Anglo farmer with the
question on wages, the farmer seemed annoyed. ‘What is it you want to talk to me about,’ the farmer
said in Spanish – the Anglo farmer was uently bilingual. Papi asked the farmer if he would consider
paying a fairer wage. The farmer snickered, then responded:
Guajardo, what gives you the right to ask me this question? Do you know that if I wanted to, I could kill you and
throw you in the canal? The sad thing is that nobody would care, but your family.
With that, the conversation ended, abruptly.
An endearing quality of Papi’s was that he thought people were mostly good, and if they said
something cruel, they likely did not mean any harm. He asked the patrón a question to know if it were
possible to make a little more money for his hard work. The threat ended the conversation, but this
time he and Mami weren’t leaving. They were in their new community to stay, and they stayed forever.
Papi knew he had to be careful con el gringo, and he understood that he had to take the high road
during tense and contentious times. He felt he could not challenge the white farmer fully, at least not
in directly overt ways. Papi’s resistance was dierent, and he exercised it by proving to the gringo that
there was value in his life, and in the life of his family. In the ensuing decades, Papi and the farmer
saw each other frequently, at the post oce, the grocery store, and even drank coee together at the
local coee shop and reminisced about old times. Papi used to say that in their old age, the old gringo
came to appreciate him for the hard work he had done, and likely for the aggressions he endured. The
gringo came to value the relationship enough that he sat for an oral history where our father himself
conducted the interview. On this occasion, Papi was a lead researcher for a team of graduate students
from our respective universities engaged in an oral history project on the Bracero Program. Papi lled
the role the grad students could not, as he knew where the elders (the braceros and the farmers) were
and knew how to get them to the interview. The old gringo had contracted many braceros between the
1940s and the early 1960s, and Papi sought him out and arranged to interview him. The interview was a
thing of beauty, even if Papi could not get the gringo to accept that race relations were a critical issue in
the history of the community. Posthumously, Papi became co-author in an article we wrote (Guajardo
et al., 2014) on that oral history project on the Bracero Program. In the end, a profound expression of
his resistance is that he authored his story and helped others tell theirs, including the gringo’s, and in
a peer-reviewed journal.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 17
Papi modeled eective and relevant pedagogies throughout his life. He helped us develop our
research, informed our teaching, and politicized our service. The politic we choose to practice is a
behavior of engagement, one that is for the public good and in the interest of those who have little
access to power. This also guides the way we negotiate our positions in the academy. We know what
the powers and gatekeepers within the institution are capable of, and we respond to these challenges
in a dignied and arming way. Our father’s experience with threats and the vulnerability they created
is instructive. As much as academia is a place of great privilege, it is similarly a place rife with threats.
Scholars of color particularly experience repeated micro-aggressions in their day-to-day life, a reality
we have been privy to on countless occasions. Papi and Mami taught us how to deal with these aggres-
sions, and they taught us the importance of healing … when people are ready. We have been rejected
for promotion at one time or another, but we know that whatever our experience is, it is nowhere as
challenging as the one Papi and Mami faced as young parents raising a family. We nd hope, love, and
healing in Papi’s stories, as challenging and painful as they may be. Our parents even introduced us to
micro-aggressions well before they were common in the literature. Their stories give direction to our
work and give us permission to dream, and to be hopeful.
Curioso y preguntón
Mami has been the best mentor in dealing with people. Her inuence touches everything we do in life,
especially in our work as university professors. The ‘go-to’ question that often guides decision-making,
particularly during times that require mediation, is ‘what would Mami do?’ Her ubiquitous presence
gives clarity to our work, and to life. The other two mentors most consequential in showing us how to
navigate academic life were Papi, and Enrique ‘Henry’ Trueba. Our father had a fourth-grade education
in rural Mexico, but the Universidad de la Vida he attended provided the global experience he parlayed
as mentor. Trueba came into our lives when we were in the doctoral program at the University of Texas
in the late 1990s. He arrived in Austin with a distinguished record in education anthropology and
educational leadership. A former Mexican Jesuit Priest, Trueba entered higher education in the United
States in the mid 1960s. His academic stops included tenures as Dean at the University of Wisconsin,
Provost at the University of Houston, and he was a member of the National Academy of Education. When
he arrived in Austin in the late 1990s, he was in search of spiritual and emotional grounding, a place
he could point to as the community of practice where he once said, ‘That’s how education for Latino
children should be happening.’ He found it, he said to us, when he began to read of our work with Llano
Grande. At rst, he believed Llano Grande was a mythical place, where rural Mexican American students
who t the prole as mostly low income, or immigrants or farm workers, were being prepared to attend
the most competitive universities, many of them Ivy League schools, and a number of the students
were graduating and coming back home to rural South Texas. We wrote about this narrative born out
of Edcouch-Elsa High School and through the leadership of the Llano Grande Center for Research and
Development, an organization we had founded (Guajardo & Guajardo, 2002, 2004, 2008; Guajardo,
Guajardo, & Casaperalta, 2008; Guajardo, Guajardo, Janson, & Militello, 2016).
‘I love this mythical place you guys call Llano Grande,’ Trueba commented on one of our papers.
When we convinced him the place was real, he told us he had to see it with his own eyes. So we brought
Henry to South Texas, and after two days in situ, he called his wife Ardie to tell her they were leaving
Austin, he was retiring from UT, and they were moving to the small town of Elsa, the physical home
of the Llano Grande Center. Trueba bought an old historic home that sat on ve acres, just north of
Elsa, and quickly befriended our father. Papi had just retired as an elementary school janitor and along
with building a close friendship with Trueba, he also took a job as his groundskeeper. But keeping the
grounds was only the second responsibility he kept. Early in their relationship it became apparent that
Trueba needed Papi more for the cultural and social energy he gave him, and Papi needed Trueba to
get us through our PhD programs. They understood each other in those ways, but the deeper level of
understanding vis-à-vis the cultural and emotional energy they provided each other was special. They

18 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
appreciated each other’s curious nature. Papi looked forward to Trueba’s daily questions, and Trueba
used to say that our father was curioso y preguntón, which translates into funny and curious (curioso as
amusing). Trueba loved that Papi resembled himself as a curious ethnographer, which was how Trueba
saw our father. He said our father was the only person he knew who asked more questions than he.
Trueba saw Papi as a homegrown anthropologist, and he fed Papi by responding to his every question.
Trueba found Papi to be especially funny. The daily ritual was when he walked out of his house
to call out: Señor Guajardo, pase a tomar café, y a contarme un chiste or dos. (Mr. Guajardo, come
inside for a cup of coffee, and to share a joke or two.) Papi was happy to oblige, and he was always
‘ready.’ That was one of the truths about Papi, he was always ‘ready,’ y siempre presente. Trueba
appreciated that Papi was always in the moment, and always ready to offer a story, or anécdota, to
connect to whatever conversation. Trueba most loved Papi’s humor, and he would laugh heartily.
Trueba loved to laugh, and Papi’s wide repertoire of Mexican chistes provoked Trueba’s laughter,
and fueled his anthropological sensibilities. When Trueba died in 2004, after a lengthy battle with
cancer, he had just published his last book, The New Americans. He wrote the entire book at his
new home in Elsa, and in between chiste sessions with our father. In his opening credits, Trueba
honored Papi by calling him ‘an organic intellectual,’ and told the publisher to include a picture
of Papi on the back cover. From cover-to-cover the celebrated anthropologist and his friend who
was curioso y preguntón became part of the same book.
Henry Trueba theorized about pedagogy of hope and about organic intellectuals, and he found both
in our father. In the South Texas space they shared together, Trueba came to see our father as more
than a subject for an ethnographic study. He wrote about others he came across in the region, but with
our father he kept the relationship more personal, as they found kinship in their life experiences as
Mexicanos who had come to the United States. They were close in age, so that helped. They connected
through sharing stories and memories of the homeland, even if the dierences between the two were
stark in terms of educational attainment and professional achievement. Trueba authored more than a
dozen books, and was distinguished in his eld. But he found a kindred soul in our father, because they
cared about the same things. They cared about family, community, learning, and they loved to laugh.
During the nal years of his life, Trueba nally saw his theories come to life.
Trueba jokingly complained about Papi’s inquisitive nature, but from the other side of his mouth,
he praised it. He also joked that this same curiosity was the source of his own humor, and even
scholarship. That same trait helps us understand the balance between intellect, relevance, humor,
and respect. We didn’t have this awareness as kids. We learned it later in life as we pursued our
graduate studies, though humor and play as cornerstones of effective learning theory were dynam-
ics we saw while growing up. We saw it in full display through the interactions of our father and
Trueba. A lasting legacy left by our father is that as much as we may think our academic work is
important, if we do not have fun with it, it probably is not worth what we think it is. Our father
taught us that humor is as much personality as it is the product of investing in relationships. It is
easier to have fun with those who trust you, and it is important to laugh with everyone. Trueba
and Papi used to have extemporaneous laugh sessions, where their laughter begat more laughter.
Those rich experiences also teach us that humor is important as we help others build their own
agency and resilience during difficult social, cultural, and economic times.
The power of question is the act of curiosity. Papi taught us this skill through his behavior, and it
became an eective tool that we use to teach, research, lead, and guide change processes. Trueba nur-
tured this in a higher education environment. We saw the praxis of curiosity and humor when our two
mentors joined forces. In August 2002, one of us (Miguel) defended his dissertation at the University
of Texas-Austin. Our parents and friends traveled for the event – Trueba joined us from his home in
Houston. He was weak as he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. Still, he participated fully. A
profound moment transpired in the middle of the formal defense, when Trueba called ‘timeout’ and
began to explain to our parents what was happening. As monolingual Spanish speakers, our parents
did not understand most of the presentation, which was delivered in English. But Trueba sensed the

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 19
curiosity in our parents, and in an act of great respect, he stopped the proceeding and translated the
defense into Spanish. At that point, everyone was able to share in the learning process, an important
lesson we employ with our students when they defend. It is important that everyone be aware what
is taking place, especially parents and grandparents who attend dissertation defenses and who may
not understand the language.
Upon completion of the defense, and as we left the classroom, Trueba leaned to Papi and said, Señor
Guajardo, ahora sigue Paco! (Mr. Guajardo, now Paco is next [to defend his dissertation].) One year later,
Francisco defended his dissertation in the same classroom and through the same Trueba-led translated
process. For the rst time in his academic career, Trueba brought his wife Ardie to a dissertation defense.
It was the last defense Trueba would attend, as he would pass on months later. He was prophetic in
his work, as he told our father after the last dissertation defense, Señor Guajardo, ya cumplimos. Sus dos
hijos se graduaron. Ya puedo morir en paz. (Mr. Guajardo, we have fullled our goal, both your sons have
graduated. I can now die in peace.)
Learning from dying, a theory of change
Through the life and death of our father, we glean key components of a theory of change and action.
The model he presented through the years demonstrates how relationships, assets, stories, place, pol-
itic, and action come together. The vitality of relationships comes from every story; it can be taken
amply from the value Papi held toward his relationship with Polo. The assets are found in the personal
qualities of being cumplido, of framing life experience as rich curriculum, of the books he kept from
grade school, of understanding that he and his family held high value. The parables in his stories serve
as deep lessons for how to live, how to teach, how to learn. He appreciated his village in rural Mexico
Figure 4.José Angel hovers over grave of his brother, Pedro Guajardo, 1995.

20 M. A. GUAJARDO AND F. J. GUAJARDO
because he reected on how it had shaped his sense of self, and he found value in the place, just as we
have found our place where we were raised as a treasure land. He behaved in honest ways, and lived
a life of integrity as he practiced a politic for the public good. And he acted on things, with or without
others, though he mostly understood that with others he could accomplish far more.
Papi modeled a life of integrity as a public citizen. It is why our work bends toward academic activism.
The lessons he taught us as children inspire how we practice our research, how we teach our classes,
and how we engage in service. We do community work because it strengthens our spirit, informs our
research, and guides our teaching. The work is interwoven into the three strands, and manifests itself
as a hybrid brand of research in action that allows us to work at the university, in public schools, and in
communities. We give back, just like our father did. Being a public person is about helping out, about
ayudando al próxima (helping your neighbor) – a lesson our father learned from his mother. The wisdom
from his mother, our Abuela Virginia, echoes in much of what we do, as they laid out the model for
reciprocity in a simple axiom: ayer fuí yo, hoy son mis vecinos, y mañana son mis hijos (yesterday it was
me, today it is our neighbors, and tomorrow it will be my children).
For Papi, working for the public good began with his children. He gave to others because at
some point in life his children would need a hand. We struggle with the currency and the values
of academia, but we find strength in knowing the work we do is based on working for the pub-
lic good. We will negotiate the priorities of the institution, because our academic positions and
training dictate we do so, but helping communities grow stronger and sustainable is at the heart
of the work. We are committed to living a life of tensions where we face challenges, but we also
celebrate victories, special occasions, and cultural experiences, like we did the last day of our
father’s life. He also had a dramatic quality in his personality, and in the way he lived life. He was
a master storyteller, an effective community builder, and a public performer. He died on the same
day he turned 77, on the 19 May 2013. The day his family said goodbye was the same day we sang
happy birthday and ate cake. It was a day to celebrate a life, a legacy, and a spirit that lives in the
teaching, service, and research we practice. Papi’s way was revolutionary and transformational.
We only attempt to be like him (Figure 4).
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Miguel A. Guajardo is a professor whose research interests are community building, community youth development,
leadership development, race and ethnicity, university and community partnerships, research epistemologies, and Latino
youth and families.
Francisco J. Guajardo is a professor and the executive director at B3 Institute at UTRGV. His research interests are curric-
ulum development, community leadership, youth community leadership, Latino epistemology, Latino education, rural
education, college access, leadership in the arts.
References
Ah Nee-Benham, M. K. P. (1998). Culture and educational policy in Hawai’i: The silencing of native voices. Mahwah, NJ: L.
Erlbaum Associates.
Ah Nee-Benham, M. K. P., & Cooper, J. E. (Eds.). (2000). Indigenous educational models for contemporary practice: In our
mother’s voice. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands – La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Press.
Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87, 411–441.
Delgado-Bernal, D., Elenes, C. A., Godinez, F. E., & Villenas, S. (Eds.). (2006). Chicana/Latina education in everyday life: Feminista
perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. New York, NY: Rowman and Littleeld.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 21
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniv. ed.). New York, NY: Continuum.
Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of hope. New York, NY: Continuum. (Original work published 1992)
González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practice in households, communities, and
classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.
Guajardo, J. A. (1988). Ancedotas de mi vida. Unpublished autobiography of José Ángel Guajardo. Elsa, TX.
Guajardo, F., Alvarez, S., Guajardo, M., Garcia, S., Guajardo, J. A., & Marquez, J. (2014). Braceros, Mexicans, American, and
Schools: Re-imagining teaching and learning in Mexican America. Rio Bravo Journal, 23, 9–41.
Guajardo, M., & Guajardo, F. (2002). Critical ethnography and community change. In H. Trueba, & Y. Zou (Eds.), Ethnography
and schools: Qualitative approaches to the study of education (pp. 281–304). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld.
Guajardo, M., & Guajardo, F. (2004). The impact of Brown on the Brown of South Texas: A micropolitical perspective on
the education of Mexican Americans in a small rural community. American Educational Research Journal, 41, 501–526.
Guajardo, M., & Guajardo, F. (2008). Two brothers in higher education: Weaving a social fabric for service in academia. In K.
P. González & R. V. Padilla (Eds.), Doing the public good: Latina/o scholars engage civic participation (pp. 74–98). Sterling,
VA: Stylus Publications.
Guajardo, M., Guajardo, F., & Casaperalta, E. (2008). Transformative education: Chronicling a pedagogy for social change.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 39, 3–22.
Guajardo, M., Guajardo, F., Janson, C. & Militello, M. (2016). Reframing community partnerships in education: Uniting the power
of place and wisdom of people. New York, NY: Routledge.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Reyes, P., Scribner, J. D., & Paredes-Scribner, A. (1999). Lessons from high performing Hispanic school: Creating learning
communities. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Scheurich, J. J., & Young, M. D. (1997). Coloring epistemologies: Are our research epistemologies racially biased? Educational
Researcher, 26, 4–16.
Trueba, E. T. (1999). Latinos unidos: From cultural diversity to the politics of solidarity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld.
Trueba, E. T. (2004). The new Americans: Immigrants and transnationals at work. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld Publishers.
Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.