Building Bridges: Epistemic Violence and Mother–Daughter Pedagogies from the U.S.–Mexico Border

Living in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, residents have intimately learned about the impact of the militarized policing of the physical border on their lives. While not often discussed, the policing transcends the border institution and targets the ways of knowing of People and Immigrants of Color. This essay features pláticas between two Mexican women educators from the border, la frontera, to challenge epistemic violence on the lives of U.S. Chicanas/Latinas. Intergenerational pedagogies of a mother–daughter dyad from the Tijuana–San Diego region serve as exemplars of the survival and resistance found in the borderlands. The narratives highlight their unique experiences, one as a Mexican mother and preschool educator in Mexico, and the daughter as a first-generation professor working within the realms of academia in the United States. The authors, a mother and a daughter, offer their lived realities stemming from the border to humanize their epistemologies and build bridges across mothers–daughters, P–20 schooling, and the U.S.–Mexico borderlands