Cutting Out Their Tongues: Mujeres’ Testimonios and the Malintzin Researcher

Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies

2014, 6(2), 113-124

I begin this article by situating my

positionality—how I became the translator and

later the Malintzin researcher. First, I share about

becoming the cultural broker in my family and

later in my community. It is important for me to

share these identities as they illustrate how our

researcher identities begin to get shaped, to take

form in our communal and familial experiences

along our educational trajectories. I was born in

Veracruz, Mexico, raised partly in Puebla, Mexico

and crossed the Mexico-U.S. borderlands when I

was almost 11 years old (Flores Carmona, 2011).

As soon as I learned English I became the

translator, the interpreter, the cultural broker in my

family (Jones & Trickett, 2005; Suarez-Orozco &

Suarez-Orozco, 2001). I was perhaps 12 years old,

and as the oldest daughter, I had responsibilities; I

had to learn to interpret, to represent and to speak

for my mother in the Mexicano/Latino and Anglo

cultures. As I got better in dealing with these daily

transactions, I grew tired of the task and almost

resented having this responsibility. Unbeknownst

to me, however, I was learning to navigate social

bureaucratic spaces—doctors, landlords, teachers,

adults, lawyers, the police, people in social

services—and I was learning the power of

language and the power of knowing how to speak

to and with people in positions of power over my

family and me. To translate or interpret is not an

easy task for a young adult, but as a transnational,

this tool, to know how to translate and interpret, is

essential for survival in the United States.

As a cultural broker I had to go in and out of

spaces, constantly shifting the role of daughter-

translator, knower to known (Suarez-Orozco &

Suarez-Orozco, 2001). As a first generation

college student, I was privileged to attend a

university where I learned to trust the knowledge I

gained from lived experience and to see my

identities as a Mexicana immigrant and as a

bilingual student as assets (Flores Carmona, 2011).

When I conducted studies as a senior in college

Cutting out Their Tongues:

Mujeres’ Testimonios and the Malintzin Researcher

Judith Flores Carmona

New Mexico State University

This article presents the issues I encountered as I collected data and translated life herstories/ testimonios of

six Latina mothers living in a city in the U.S. Mountain West. After over five years of living, being, working,

collaborating, and developing relationships with six Latina mother activists (five Mexicanas and one

Guatemalan), I delved into critical reflexivity. The experience of researching and writing the critical

ethnography and the depth of relational connections I developed with each of the six mothers moved me to

write this critique so that I might continue to learn from the use of testimonio methodology and the countering

act of translating their stories from Spanish to English. I search the possibility and explore the contradictions

of being a “Malintzin researcher” and how such researchers may be replicating oppressive acts when we

translate and edit the voices of participants in educational research. At the same time, as Malintzin educational

researchers in our communities, as Mexicanas, Chicanas, and Latinas, we also have to continue reflecting on

our responsibility to put to use our tools and knowledge for positive social change in our communities and in

academia.

Keywords: Testimonio methodology, Translation, Feminist methodology, Chicanas, Latinas, Educational

research, Reflexivity, Positionality

Judith Flores Carmona is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and in the Honors College at New Mexico State University. Her work has appeared in Race

Ethnicity and Education, Equity and Excellence in Education,

and Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. She is coeditor (with Kristen V.

Luschen) of the book Crafting Critical Stories: Toward

Pedagogies and Methodologies of Collaboration, Inclusion, and Voice (2014).

Send correspondence to [email protected]

JOURNAL OF LATINO/LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, 2014, 6(2), 113-124 114

and for my master’s thesis in graduate school—I

was conscious of my advantage as a researcher to

enter communities and to have access to their

knowledge for my benefit (Villenas, 1996).

However, I had learned about the importance of

developing relationships of solidarity and the

importance of reciprocating their willingness to

participate in my research (Flores Carmona &

Delgado Bernal, 2012).

This article presents the issues I encountered

as I collected data and translated life herstories,

testimonios, of six Latina mothers living in a city

in the U.S. Mountain West. After over five years

of living, being, working, collaborating and

developing relationships with these mother

activists (five Mexicanas and one Guatemalan), I

delved into what scholar Wanda Pillow (2003)

terms critical reflexivity. The study, a critical

ethnography, and the depth of relational

connections with each of the six mothers (Angela,

Patty, Lourdes, Montserrat, Maite, and Viviana)1

moved me to not only critique but to learn from the

use of testimonio methodology. I also explore the

countering act of translating the participants’

voices, their wisdom from Spanish to English.

Throughout this piece, I search the possibility

and explore the contradictions of being “Malintzin

researchers” and how we are replicating oppressive

acts (Flores Carmona, 2010) when we translate and

edit the voices of participants in educational

research. At the same time, as Malintzin

researchers in our communities, as Mexicanas,

Chicanas, and Latinas, we also have to continue

reflecting on our responsibility to put to use our

tools and knowledge to work for positive social

change in our communities and in academia

(Pizarro, 1998). For example, in my research,

although I centered the mujeres’ wisdom,

knowledge, and teachings by bringing their

testimonios into academia, when I translated their

stories to English, I was editing their voices and

providing partial truths. Because their stories were

not heard in their home language, much was lost in

translation. Therefore, not only did I translate them

in the literal sense, but figuratively as well, as I

theorized their testimonios once translated. Being

Malintzin researchers, then, is a double-edged

sword.

Drawing and building on Dolores Delgado

Bernal’s (1998) self-reflexive work on Chicana

1 All names used in this piece are pseudonyms chosen by the

participants.

feminist epistemology and her concept of the

cultural intuition as an insider/outsider researcher,

I seek to demonstrate that there are important and

conflicting implications and consequences to the

ways we, as Chicana, Latina researchers, interpret

and write about the lives of our participants.

Ironically, in this article, I write in English;

however, when thoughts come to me in Spanish, I

also translate them, and go back and forth between

languages. English is the dominant language in

academia, the language of currency and power;

therefore, when I translate from Spanish I am also

turning myself and Others I translate into readable

and “intelligible” subjects. When I translate, I am

offering a new re-presentation of the Other and of

myself. While translation allows for the

dissemination of different truths to enter uncharted

terrains, once translated, the participants in our

studies become present/available to be read and

their knowledges and perspectives enter spaces

like academia, though in new forms and in various

contexts.

The Translator as the Malintzin Researcher

In the Western world, Doña Marina,

Malintzin, La Malinche is talked about as a

traidora, a traitor to her people, a person who sold

out her people. However, Malintzin was more than

that—she was a path opener, an intellect, a

knower, a multilingual translator and interpreter of

many cultures, a cultural broker, a woman who had

agency in deciding her own future and in deciding

how much she shared when she translated her

people—she was a survivor (Elenes, 2011).

Building and drawing from the work of other

prominent scholars, such as Alarcón (1983; 1989),

Anzaldúa (1999), Cano Alcala (2001), Candelaria

(1980), Castillo (2005), and Castañeda (1990;

2005) to name a few, C. Alejandra Elenes (2011)

states that:

Malintzin/Marina/Malinche, the woman

with multiple names, the translator, ‘the

Mexican Eve,’ embodies the misogynistic

fears about women: traitor, vendida,

corruptible…intelligent. Because she had

an active role in the Spanish conquest of

Mexico, which included a sexual liaison

with Hernan Cortes…bearing him a son,

and supposedly not repenting for her

actions, she has been historically and culturally condemned as a traitor to the

Mexican (and Chicano) nation. (p. 139)

115 FLORES CARMONA/ ANTICOLONIAL METHODOLOGIES IN EDUCATION

Ironically, most of the writings about Doña

Marina, Malintzin, La Malinche are descriptions,

assumptions, and imaginations of the woman she

was. Her own voice is not recorded in any text; her

testimonio was never written. Malintzin’s truths

were never told in her own words. She never used

her lengua (tongue/language) to disclose her story;

“…her voice is absent. Without her voice, without

any testimony from herself explaining her actions,

we can only infer her motivations” (Elenes, 2011,

p. 160). In fact, Malintzin was also translated, as

her story was written but in Spanish, not her

language and not in her own words. As mujeres

Chicanas or Latinas, we also participate in our

communities playing contradicting roles as

educational researchers coming from the academy

and as translators and interpreters for our

communities. We play the role of writing our

people into academia—of translating them from

everyday language to academic discourses.

Sofia Villenas (1996) and Marcos Pizarro

(1998) both write about the complexities that we

face as outsider and insider researchers doing work

in our communities—as we walk between the thin

line of being the colonizer/colonized. We must

recognize that, “One does not have to be a member

of a culture to understand what culture means or to

interpret a culture in a meaningful way”

(Champagne, 1998, p. 182); however, we also

have to continue to be vigilant and not assume

expertise on “our culture” because we are

members of the community or because we speak

their language. Even though we may live in the

community in which we conduct research, the

community members know that we come from the

university—our position grants us access to their

lives. Conducting respectful, ethical research

guided by our cultural knowledge can lead us to an

in-depth understanding of our communities,

especially when we reflect upon how to present the

information and knowledge we gain from the

participants in our research.

In my research, a negotiation of what was to

be translated, and therefore, shared with an

audience, pushed me to sift through the

information that the mothers shared with me. As

the Malintzin researcher, I had to take inventory of

details to then keep the un-tellable and

untranslatable to myself. I had to edit and tuck

away some secrets, hold some truths, and was only

able to make meaning of the stories told to me. For example, when I shared the transcriptions with the

mothers from the interviews conducted in Spanish,

Patty was very clear about what she wanted me to

translate to English and use in my study; “no

puede usar nada de la pagina seis a la diez.” I was

only able to divulge parts of their truths because

not everything was translatable, not everything

was to be spoken—for Patty the five pages she

said I could not use were to remain her papelitos

guardados (Latina Feminist Group, 2001). The

educational scholarship that springs from our

relationships should help us problematize and

question our assumptions about our communities

and how we translate them to be read by

academics. Once we have a product, for example,

the dissertation, we have to contemplate the

decision of making available the texts to our

participants even when they are translated.

In the notable work of Ruth Behar (1993), she

writes and translates las historias de Esperanza and

crosses the border with her stories from Spanish to

English, from Mexico to the United States, from

comadres speaking with each other to academic

settings. As Behar translated Esperanza’s historias;

“The translator and the traitor, figured in the shape

of a woman” and just as “Malintzin, translator and

lover to Cortes, have been seen as synonymous in

the Mexican male historical imagination” (p. 19)—

many Latina researchers could be viewed as

Malintzin or Malinches, traidoras through the work

we conduct in our communities. In fact, Federico

Garcia Lorca asserts that; "La traducción, por bella

que sea, destroza el espíritu del idioma, hágala

quien la haga" (Laffranque, 1959, p. 440), and for

this reason I cannot translate his very quote into

English. What gets lost in translation? As the

purveyor, how do I replicate what I know is unjust

in order to meet the expectations from academia—

translating Latina mothers’ testimonios—losing

meaning, cutting out their tongues and piecing

them back together to be read en ingles. As such,

in this piece, I engage toward an understanding of

how I was a colonizer/colonized ethnographer

(Villenas, 1996) and how my relationships with

Latina mothers, grounded in love and care for each

other, moved me to center their voices by the use

of testimonio methodology (Brabeck, 2003;

Burciaga, 2007; Flores Carmona, 2010; Perez

Huber, 2009; 2010).

Critical Ethnography and Testimonio

Methodology

In fall 2005, when I entered the doctorate, I

immediately began to connect and engage in


community work with mujeres in a city in the U.S.

Mountain West through a school-university-

community partnership. For five years, las

mujeres, migrants from various parts of Mexico

and Guatemala, lived in the same community as I

did. Las madres, Viviana, Montserrat, Maite,

Angela, Lourdes, and Patty connected with me on

the school grounds where their children played and

we interacted in the classrooms where their

children learned. We saw each other at the local

grocery stores, and we shared meals that we

prepared together. I was invited to their homes

where we spoke Spanish, and I was asked what I

wanted for dinner or what Mexican food I was

craving. I attended baby showers, birthdays, and

first communions of their children. The women in

this study were not simply participants to me; they

were my neighbors, elders who taught me, and

their children saw me as a teacher, a mentor, and a

friend. I listened to the Latina mothers’ migration

stories and to their dreams; I learned from their

birth stories, they shared their love stories, and we

shared and reciprocated stories of living and

surviving in the United States. I was often asked to

help them translate documents or to go with them

to the Department of Motor Vehicles. They saw

me as a bridge between cultures, and they asked

me to look for summer activities for their

children—I enrolled three of them in a reading

program so they did not fall behind in school; “por

favor que lea libros en ingles y en español/please

have her read books in English and in Spanish.”

The use of testimonio to “collect data” and to

share stories of survival allows for collectivity and

a deeper amistad and connection between the

participant and the researcher. These interactions

allow Chicana and Latina educational researchers

to become vulnerable observers (Behar, 1996),

vulnerable portraitists (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983),

and reflexive insiders/outsiders (Hill Collins,

2000). Yet, as a reflexive researcher, I have arrived

at uncomfortable reflexivity—that locality where I

recognize that I, in fact, have perpetuated and

replicated traición as I became the translator,

interlocutor, the bridge, Malintzin, between their

voices and the re-presentation of their lived

experiences (Pillow, 2003).

These interactions between the knower-known

in Western academic settings are precisely

oppositional because Western ideas, such as

objectivity and manifest destiny (and the racism implicit in both ideas), have led to the silencing

and erasure of these testimonios. While the tool of

translation serves to illuminate truths and allows us

to introduce the wisdom of our gente to academic

settings, we must continue to be self-reflexive

regarding the very act of translating and we must

continue countering the stereotypes held about

mujeres Mexicanas, Latinas. Ironically, the way in

which I reciprocated the mothers’ generosity—the

sharing of their lives, teachings, and wisdom—was

to help translate for them whenever they needed

me. Genuine relationships of care and support can

lead to developing confianza with participants in

critical ethnographies but these take time, patience,

and listening deeply and when participants are

ready to speak.

A critical ethnography allowed me to study the

practices and behaviors of Latina mothers and their

children in relation to pedagogical moments that

spring from their everyday rituals and practices

(Villenas, 1996, 2006; Villenas & Moreno, 2001).

In a critical ethnographic study, “family

experience is the beginning of a research process

rather than the culmination” (Sleeter, 2008, p. 115)

because the framework delves deeper into

contextual, structural, organizational, group, and

other interactions to be able to describe with detail

the happenings in a particular setting and among

the constituents involved in the research. In critical

ethnography:

It is not enough to want to communicate

with ordinary people. This is no longer an

option. The critical…ethnographer is

committed to producing and performing

texts that are grounded in and

coconstructed in the politically and

personally problematic worlds of everyday

life. This ethnographer does not use words

like data, or abduction, or objectivity.

These words carry the traces of science,

objectivism, and knowledge produced for

disciplines, not everyday people (Denzin,

2003, p. 270).

Most importantly, the goal of critical

ethnography is social change after witnessing

“patterns” of inequity or oppression in the research

setting and making the ethnography an

accessible/readable text. Critical ethnography’s

core purpose is to foster emancipation of

community members and constituents involved in

the ethnography. Therefore, critical ethnography works against inequitable practices, toward

emancipation, and helps us “reveal oppressive


relations of power” (Villenas & Foley, 2002, p.

196). The ethnography is written in a narrative

form. It takes this form based on what is seen,

experienced, and how these findings are aligned to

specific theoretical frameworks. Historias de la

vida, the oral her/stories shared through

testimonios specifically, were used in my critical

ethnography to explicate how Latina mothers draw

from cultural-familial knowledge of the home and

how these moments become pedagogical instances

from which their children learn.

Various methods of data gathering were used,

including focus groups and one-on-one interviews,

classroom observations, field notes, texts produced

by the students, documents, artifacts to

complement the findings from the interviews,

information gathered through informal

interactions, and testimonios written by the Latina

mothers. A particularity of critical ethnography is

the presentation of findings as a story, a portrait

that illustrates the longevity of the relationships

and time spent in the field (Lawrence-Lightfoot,

1983). The critical in critical ethnography is the

praxis, taking action for change by challenging

marginalization as a result of what the participants

have shared through their testimonios.

Such challenges, as well as the triumphs of the

Latina mothers, their families, and community,

were best illustrated using the tool of testimonio.

Testimonio as method was employed in my

research to center the voices of the Latina mothers.

I purposefully gathered, listened, and read their

words, written by them. For example, I gave the

Latina mothers a 75-page notebook and a Spanish

copy of chapter one from the testimonio, Me

Llamo Rigoberta Menchú y Así Me Nació la Conciencia/ I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian

Woman in Guatemala (1983).2 The mothers wrote

their testimonios in Spanish and I translated them

into English. Throughout the translating process, I

was conscious that “the issues associated with

translating from one language into another are

much more complex than transcribing because

they involve more subtle issues of connotation and

meaning” (Marshall & Rossman, 2006, p. 111).

These issues need to be taken into consideration,

since translating involves making meaning of

concepts perhaps not intended by the participant

and this is, in a way, unjust and harmful to the

participants and to the language. Delgado Bernal,

Burciaga, and Flores Carmona (2012) explain

2 I did not translate the title of the book, this is actually how the book title was translated from Spanish to English—it is incorrect.

some of the issues with translation and the

specificities of translating.

One must be cautious to translate

conceptually rather than literally because in

translating particular terms, nuances get

lost, and we run the risk of reproducing

language marginalization. Translating

testimonios from Spanish into English

includes translating culturally-specific

knowledge that can shift meaning and

reproduce negative connotations associated

with gendered or racialized terms of

endearment. (p. 365)

For example, I had trouble translating the

Spanish words “acomedida” and “aprovechar.” To

be acomedida means to take initiative in doing a

chore or to take action without being ordered to do

so. To aprovechar does not necessarily mean to

take advantage of something or someone, but to

take in knowledge from every moment, to take in

and learn from all that is of benefit to one’s well-

being and future. Through personal

communication with Dr. Norma E. Cantú, whose

research interests include folklore, women’s

studies, and Latina/o and Chicana/o literature, I

was able to gather some definitions from Spanish

concepts to English. When I translated the

testimonios, I became a sort of interlocutor, a

translator whose knowledge of English and

Spanish became a filter to move from one

language to another, and I knew that the

limitations of my knowledge of the languages

might affect the presentation of the testimonios.

In writing down their own life stories,

however, the mothers were effectively countering

stereotypes and deficit depictions that surround

them as well as the homogeneity of the Latina

mother experience. Because testimonio as method

interrupts dominant narratives, using this tool in

qualitative research serves to gather herstories and

to listen to the voices that help researchers to fully

attend to the urgency of the participants’ life

stories. The mothers wrote their own testimonios

with the goal of denouncing and “bearing witness”

to the injustices and reality of living in the U.S.

Mountain West as undocumented mujeres.

Individual testimonios, collected from a

particular population, reflect a collective reality

that gains credibility because it then becomes a

communal testimonio (Brabeck, 2003; Delgado

Bernal, 2008). Testimonio, supported by other


critical qualitative data, not only validates the lived

experience and epistemologies of historically

oppressed groups, but the testimonio itself moves

into becoming a counterstory (Solórzano & Yosso,

2002). Further, “testimonio emphasizes the

validity of experiential or lived knowledge” and

produces knowledge, “not as empirical facts, but

as a strategy of cultural resistance and survival”

and offers a way of “talking back” to dominant

intellectuals (Brabeck, 2003, p. 256; hooks, 1989;

Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Testimonio, a critical Latin American oral

tradition practice, links “the spoken word to social

action and privileges the oral narrative of personal

experience as a source of knowledge,

empowerment, and political strategy for claiming

rights and bringing about social change”

(Benmayor et al., 1997, p. 153). Further,

testimonios have the power for making space in

and transforming Eurocentric and essentialist

notions of people of color. Testimonios are framed

as papelitos guardados, “protected documents,

guarded roles, stored papers, conserved roles, safe

papers, secret roles, hidden papers, safe roles,

preserved documents, protected roles” (The Latina

Feminist Group, 2001, p. 1); however, in my

research, they came forward through informal

conversations or platicas.

Testimonio is the telling of life stories, auto-

historias, lived experience, and lived oppression.

Testimonio is a cathartic confession. It is a tool for

those who have been silenced that allows their

voice to be heard. Testimonio can be collective

empowerment for all who can relate to the life

story told. It is a verb, that is, a call to action

against oppression once injustices are denounced

using this medium. Testimonios bridge generations

of displaced and fractured communities across

time. They also serve to preserve knowledges that

are not learned in schools as a way of illuminating

and preserving our epistemic and pedagogical

community tools and assets. As such, testimonio

exemplifies Chicana/Latina feminista

epistemology and pedagogy (Delgado Bernal et al.,

2006) and attempts to situate the researcher-

participant in a reciprocal relationship where

genuine connections are made between

“academic” and community members.

The testimonios I gathered are not only stories,

but also reflections of the different oppressions

these women faced in their daily lives, and they also have the potential to connect people from

other subaltern or marginalized groups in society

who share the same or similar oppressions in their

daily lives. Testimonios make space for people to

connect experiences, even when coming from

different positionalities. As stated in the

introduction of Telling to Live: Latina Feminist

Testimonios (Latina Feminist Group, 2001),

“These texts are seen as disclosures not of personal

lives but rather of the political violence inflicted on

whole communities” (p. 14). Testimonios expose

situations that are relatable even in difference

because the experience of living under politicized

violence is real for many other people in subaltern

positionalities. Through their testimonios, the

mothers were able to bear witness to experiences

on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, in

Guatemala and in their current home and

communities in the United States. These

experiences bear witness to oppression, resiliency,

empowerment, suffering, surviving, and their love

for and commitment to their families and to the

community. As teachings on survival and cultural-

familial practices, the testimonios become

pedagogical tools that are used by Latina mothers.

They construct meaning from these cultural tools

as they become part of their cultural or collective

resources and then pass them on to younger

generations. However, the genre of testimonio,

from its beginnings, starting with the canonical,

Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú y Así Me Nació la

Conciencia/ I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian

Woman in Guatemala (Burgos, 1983), caused

much debate around the authenticity and

legitimacy of a testimonio, especially once the

testimonio was translated to English.

Testimonio Methodology: Lo Que Se Pierde en

la Traducción

En ese sentido, el debate entre Stoll y

Menchú no es tanto sobre la verdad de lo

que pasó (Stoll mismo concede que los

errores o tergiversaciones que encuentra en

el texto de Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú

son relativamente menores y que la visión

que Menchú ofrece allí de esos años en

Guatemala es, en líneas generales,

correcta), más bien es sobre quién tiene la

autoridad de narrar esa historia. Lo que

parece preocupar a Stoll es que Menchú no

se limita a ser un "informante nativo" que

se prestaría a su deseo como antropólogo

de observación e interpretación, sino que asume la autoridad, y la responsabilidad, de

narrar su propia historia a través de un


interlocutor letrado (el historiador

guatemalteco Arturo Taracena y la

antropóloga venezolana, Elizabeth Burgos).

/ In that sense, the debate between Stoll and

Menchú is not so much about the truth of

what happened (Stoll himself concedes that

errors or misrepresentations found in the

text, I, Rigoberta Menchú are relatively

minor and that the vision offered by

Menchú of those years in Guatemala is

broadly correct), instead, the debate is

about who has the authority to tell that

story. What seems to worry Stoll is that

Menchú is not a "native informant" who

takes the role of anthropologist, observing

and interpreting, but assumes authority, and

responsibility, by telling a story through a

third party, a scholar, an academic (the

Guatemalan historian and anthropologist

Arturo Taracena and Venezuelan Elizabeth

Burgos) (Beverley & Achuga, 2002, p. 10).

It is pertinent to speak here about the highly

notable debate initiated by David Stoll (Tierney,

2000) about the veracity and authenticity of the

communal testimonio, Me Llamo Rigoberta

Menchú y Así Me Nació la Conciencia (Burgos,

1983). David Stoll “…attacked Menchú’s

credibility…Stoll accuses Menchú of lying. The

subsequent back and forth between supporters and

detractors of Rigoberta Menchú has created a

firestorm that revolves around the idea of truth and

what some would claim is epistemic validity”

(Tierney, 2000, p. 103). To start, the title of the

book is poorly translated, from Quiche to Spanish

and then to English, Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s

communal testimonio becomes, I, Rigoberta

Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. The

story of the Quiche people told to and written by

Elizabeth Burgos (1983) is about the life of

Menchú and her family and community, her

village, her people. The testimonio told to Burgos

when Menchú was 23 years old was a translated

text, an aspect that we must critique instead of

immediately calling Menchú a liar. Menchú had

only learned Spanish three years before the book

was taking shape to be written. In this case, I too

ask the question; who can assume authority to

interpret and translate an entire community’s

story? Who is responsible for clarifying if any part

of a translated story is inaccurate? Much like the depictions of Malintzin and the way in which

many others told her story—Menchú and her story

became written by Burgos rather than written by

herself and/or in her language.

In my study, the testimonios written in

Spanish by each of the Latina mothers became

“Stories born again in an alien tongue…. An

historia thrice born in translation” (Behar, 1993,

pp. 17-18). Testimonio as methodology has the

potential to serve as a reciprocal process of

exchange and to expand approaches to

participating, teaching, learning, and researching in

Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. Testimonios,

when shared mutually, display and situate the

researcher-participant in a reciprocal relationship

where genuine connections are made between the

“academic” and the community members because

we all become vulnerable as we share of our lives.

The use of testimonio to “collect data” and to

share stories of survival allowed for collectivity to

arise among the six Latina mothers and for a

deeper amistad and connection between the

mothers and me as ‘la muchacha de la

universidad,’ as the mothers often called me.

Listening to and sharing struggles, pain, and

dreams lends itself to a type of interdependent

solidarity based on the idea that we are one. While

testimonio guides us to hear an organic

intellectual’s knowledge that has not been

privileged historically or has been lost because of

language barriers—how do we prevent cutting out

tongues when we translate them? The answer to

this question may be found in how I approached

the constant straddling and tensions that arose

from the translation (from Spanish to English) of

the experiences and events of the Latina mother

participants. As researcher/participant, we

straddled together between lenguas and cross

cultures, entre mundos. I am conscious that I

became an interlocutor as I translated from my

knowledge of Spanish, my first language, into

English, my second language.

As some testimonios spring from platicas and

“platicas come to us through the mediums of

language, culture, tradition, experiences, and

bodily revelations in describing how to navigate

challenging physical and social ills that often feed

off one another” (Chabram-Dernersesian & de la

Torre, 2008, p. 9), we must be thoughtful and

careful because we are not simply translating

language but cultural specificities. Indeed, proper

translation or interpretation requires a firm grasp

of at least two different and complex languages and cultures, which sometimes can be

overwhelming—and we cannot essentialize a


“Latina mother perspective” and make

generalizations. Translating platicas takes great

skill to capture the nuances of communication and

spontaneous behavior because the topics of

conversation can change rapidly. For example, in

the platicas and interviews I had with the mothers,

we would begin talking about our childhood and

end up talking about rape or about our migration

stories. In platicas, “when we speak and are

listened to, we are able to begin healing wounds

created by our past and present lives. Platicas open

the door to healing in ways that a simple medical

encounter cannot” (Chabram-Dernersesian & de la

Torre, 2008, p. 164).

When describing the reason testimonio

emerged as the method for putting together the

book Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios

(2001), the Latina Feminist Group shared that

rather than the traditional research they had

originally meant to produce, “we found ourselves

limited by traditional academic approaches, which,

in the move towards comparison, tend to simplify,

aggregate, and reduce experience to variables,” (p.

2). Further, Chabram-Dernersesian (2008) shares

that the collection of platicas were something to

counter, “a traditional academic context that

encourages individualism and the

monodisciplinary research,” (p. 7). By employing

testimonio methodology, we are decentering and

debunking master narratives about Latinas that

tend to continue replicating deficit re-presentations

of us and our communities. By engaging theory

from lived experience, or theory from the flesh, we

are making powerful contributions towards

establishing Latina testimonio as critical pedagogy

informed by participants’ critical thought and

reflexivity, such as the Latina mothers who

participated in my research. To employ testimonio

methodology means that as researchers, we listen

with compassion and that we engage fully as we

listen. This means that we don’t always know what

we will delve into—as we begin translating and as

we become attune to the feelings taking place

when testimonios of pain and struggles come out

of the mouths of those who sit across from us.

Feelings, pain, and struggle cannot always be

unpacked in our transcriptions and therefore

cannot be translated.

In drawing from and putting into action our

cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 1998), as we

employ testimonio methodology, we ought to engage with; “a complex process that is

experiential, intuitive, historical, personal,

collective and dynamic…[and that] extends one’s

personal experience to include collective

experience and community memory, and points to

the importance of participants’ engaging in the

analysis of data” (Delgado Bernal, 1998, pp. 567–

568). Following an intuitive approach that

acknowledges our participants’ needs can help us

recognize that we need to “collect” data in a

respectful way, bringing together and putting to

use our educación, con respeto.

As a Malintzin researcher, I had to move

beyond reflexivity and rethink how I was using the

tools I learned in academia. Confianza is gained in

how we comport in the community rather than

making participants feel used for the sole purpose

of data collection and only for our benefit. Rather,

the Malintzin researcher is in the in-between,

constantly straddling between languages and

between the community and the academy. La

maestra Cherrie Moraga (2013) says that “change

only comes with great fire and fire hurts” –the fire

comes when we understand that we are wrought

with contradictions. The struggles the Malintzin

researcher has been through informs her research

methodology and the way in which she re-presents

the participants to the larger society. We must,

however, ask: who are we doing research for and

for what purpose?

One of the tools that I brought to the

community is being bilingual. This tool was used

to help the mothers navigate the anti-immigrant

environment in a city in the U.S. Mountain West,

and also to translate for them in such xenophobic,

unwelcoming spaces. As people who have lived in

subaltern positionalities, testimonio, be it through

the sharing of our papelitos guardados or platicas,

has an added non-academic value, as de la Torre

and Chabram-Dernersesian (2008) assert. We

become authors of our own lived realities and

producers of knowledge and that allows us to heal

and bring to light our communal knowledges. For

the purposes of turning testimonios into stories that

would be understood in academia, we translate and

theorize the lived realities of the participants in our

research. There is an assumption that because we

can read something or someone we can understand

them. However, cultural context is crucial to

understanding our participants, our gente (Pizarro,

1998). Since we choose and edit what we write, we

also edit our translations. Therefore, we cannot

assume that we can ‘write’ our participants and capture all the nuances of their lives. We must

acknowledge that some testimonios are


unintelligible, even when translated.

Issues with Translation and Interpretation:

Reflection to be Continued

Translation as a practice shapes, and takes

shape within, the asymmetrical relations of

power that operate under colonialism. What

is at stake here is the representation of the

colonized, who need to be produced in such

a manner as to justify colonial domination,

and to beg for the English book by

themselves.…translation depends on the

Western philosophical notions of reality,

representation, and knowledge. Reality is

seen as something unproblematic, ‘out

there’; knowledge involves a representation

of this reality; and representation provides

direct, unmediated access to a transparent

reality (Niranjana, 1992, pg. 2).

Reading Niranjana’s (1992) work pushes me

to continue being a self-reflexive Malintzin

researcher. I conclude this article by offering my

thoughts on the issues I encountered with

translation and interpretation. I offer my thoughts

on the use of testimonio methodology and the

countering act of translating the Latina mothers’

life stories from Spanish to English. I urge us,

Malintzin educational researchers, to continue

exploring possibilities and to search for the

contradictions in being Malintzin researchers to

interrupt replicating oppressive acts when we

translate and edit the voices of participants in our

research. At the same time, as Malintzin

researchers in our communities, as Mexicanas,

Chicanas, and Latinas, we must continue reflecting

on our responsibility to put to use our tools and

knowledge for positive social change in our

communities and in academia.

Pillow (2003) pushes us to move beyond

“reflexivity as recognition of self, reflexivity as

recognition of other, reflexivity as truth, and

reflexivity as transcendence” (p. 175) and to

rethink the process of reflexivity in educational

research. Even in critical ethnographic research,

unequal power dynamics may be replicated if the

researcher does not move away from “feeling

good” methods and reflection or by simply stating

that they employed reflexivity in their research. In

my process of moving toward practicing

“uncomfortable reflexivity,” I began to pay closer attention to how I attempted to gather ”data” from

the Latina mothers and came face to face with the

“discomfort” Pillow (2003) refers to.

During an interview, Montserrat began to talk

about the fear she felt when she drove because she

did not have legal residency in this country, and

therefore, did not have a driver’s license. As she

finished relating her fear, I said, “entiendo lo que

usted siente porque yo también alguna vez no tuve

papeles” (I understand what you feel because at

one point, I too, did not have ‘papers’ in this

country). Montserrat stopped me before I finished

my next thought and said, “No Judith, “usted no

entiende” (you do not understand). I was struck

and moved beyond discomfort. I felt embarrassed

and ashamed because in my attempt to

demonstrate empathy I had replied with an empty

phrase, a distant sentiment—I have the privilege of

having papeles. In my attempt to let her know I

understood her fear, I could not translate my own

feelings and thoughts because I was removed from

knowing that fear. I could not translate her

sentiment of fear because I was listening from a

privileged position. I had been colonized and in

that moment I was the colonizer (Villenas, 1996).

“Tiene razón, ya no lo se” (you are right I no

longer understand).

Over the years I have continued to reflect on

this experience. In my conversation with the

Mexicana mother, it was no longer enough to

recognize the privilege that I possess, and I no

longer had the right to say I understood. That was

a moment when my own use of language betrayed

me—when I had limited knowledge of how to

empathize with Montserrat’s feelings in her own

home and in our language. A modest knowledge of

the Spanish language and limited knowledge of

our participants’ sentiments and everyday

experiences is not enough to translate reliably in

every situation. Certain circumstances require

immediate, highly functional, and accurate

translation. At times of high stress and in critical

moments, our ability to communicate effectively in

each language and in different contexts

demonstrates that even an experienced Spanish

speaker and cultural broker cannot find the right

words.

With these ideas and sentimientos, I hope to

compel readers and educational researchers to

genuinely challenge ourselves to understand that in

our attempt to bring voices of people from

marginalized communities to the academy—we may replicate oppression. As we translate their

historically silenced voices, specifically from


Spanish to English, we continue to preserve

colonial domination because we are losing

meaning in their truths. As translator

ethnographers, and as Malintzin researchers, we

can also fall into “forming a certain kind of

subject, in presenting particular versions of the

colonized, [because] translation brings into being

overarching concepts of reality and representation”

(Niranjana, 1992, pg. 2). When we are re-

presenting new versions of the translated people—

when we translate the voices of community

members for the sake of research and publishing—

we inevitably continue replicating a power

imbalance and knowledge hierarchy.

A relentless commitment to inclusion of

historically ignored community knowledges

requires a critique and rethinking of our uses of

languages and re-presentation of Others in

academia. There is a benefit in the work that we do

as Malintzin researchers; there is something in the

act of asking historically excluded, silenced people

for their wisdom, and it does matter that we listen

to them. There is a moment of active listening,

compassion, and the urgency to care about the

issues our communities are facing and this is also

political. When there is confianza and we care and

reflect, we may move to use tools such as

testimonio to cause less harm and to help us re-

present our participants in just ways, in their own

words, even if translated.

When I interacted with the mothers and when

they shared their testimonios, I did not translate

word for word because some words could not be

translated or because their silence was about

trauma and pain, which is not translatable. I was

only able to interpret their struggles, especially

when these were shared in our platicas and as side

notes in our interviews. There are many papelitos

guardados that remain tucked away in a box,

because if I shared them, if I translated them, if I

told them, I would have betrayed the mothers. The

difference between translation and interpretation is

that we are more often than not interpreting

because we cannot translate word for word, and we

must take into account the context in which we are

translating. Indeed, Robinson (1997) concludes

that “Translation involves far more than finding

target-language equivalents for source-language

words and phrases; it also involves dealing

with…an awareness of the roles translation plays

in society and society plays in translation” (p. 192). Once we write our participants into

academia, we have translated them and in a way

they have become stagnant, “contained” as

Niranjana (1992) explains:

Translation thus produces strategies of

containment. By employing certain modes

of representing the other—which it thereby

also brings into being—translation

reinforces hegemonic versions of the

colonized, helping them acquire the status

of …objects without history. (p. 3)

As Malintzin researchers, we are wrought with

contradictions. We must acknowledge, process,

and reflect upon our role as researchers, as

interlocutors, as translators, as the purveyors of

partial truths. And, yes, there is always guilt in the

work that we conduct and in the writings that we

produce. Here I am reminded of a powerful

interaction that took place once I had left the

research site/community to complete a post-

doctorate in the East Coast. Upon returning for a

visit, I stopped by Angela’s home. “Usted es una

ingrata, ya se olvido de nosotros. Nomas se graduó

y se olvido de los pobres.” Her words left me

feeling in fact like an ungrateful, ingrate

researcher—one who left once she had gathered

the participants’ wisdom—in fact, this is more than

guilt—her words still haunt me.

The mothers also expressed a positive

outcome of the research I conducted. They all

shared that for the first time they were able to

release their unspoken feelings and their

suppressed words. The mothers shared they were

able to desahogarse (release, but it literally means

to un-drown), and I was able to bring their voices

to academia, to recognize them as holders and

producers of knowledge (Delgado Bernal, 2002),

as wise women whose everyday lives and actions

inform their activism and feminista scholarship.

They were able to say, “Por primera vez me

pregunta alguien como estoy yo.” In this manner,

as our communities’ knowledges enter academia,

even if translated, we allow for their lives and for

their testimonios to reside openly in these spaces

rather than continuing to be suppressed.

Acknowledging the presence of their

knowledges and the importance of many voices is

critical to enable transformation in the academy.

The translated testimonios of the Latina mothers

can have a place in academia even if they are only

parts of their life herstories. Niranjana (1992) reminds us of the function of translated

testimonios:


Translation functions as a transparent

presentation of something that already

exists, although the ‘original’ is actually

brought into being through translation.

Paradoxically, translation also provides a

place in ‘history’ for the colonized.” (p. 3)

Indeed, using the power of testimonio

methodology in academia is a contradiction,

especially when they are translated. The

testimonios, once told and written, are always both

oppressive and empowering—we are re-presenting

the Other in an edited form. However, my role as

Malintzin researcher is to also use the power of

testimonio against how the academy views these

ways of knowing—testimonio is a legitimate

instrument for conducting research in our

communities. Testimonio is a critical tool for

validating our voice. In being self-reflexive and by

critiquing my own work, I recognize the

responsibility I have to re-present our communities

in positive ways, always turning the mirror

because I am a part of the academy. As the

Malintzin educational researcher, I must attend to

the complexities. I must understand that I am a

paradox and that my role is messy and complex.

As Malintzin researchers, we must search for

methods of finding and retaining our communities’

knowledges and use our languages as tools of

empowerment, and in strategic ways, to address

problems within our communities, en ingles y en

español.

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Documents

Cutting Out Their Tongues: Mujeres’ Testimonios and the Malintzin Researcher