cynthiavazquezphd
Publications
The Mirror Within: Chicana Transborder Feminist Praxis on Kumeyaay Land
Fall 2026
American Quarterly 78, no.3
pp. 789-800
Tribal nations whose traditional lands overlap multiple settler borders, specifically on the U.S./ Mexico border, navigate a labyrinth of local, national, and international web of a microscopic state-surveillances by a multitude of governments that consequently infringement on Indigenous sovereignties. Researchers working with border tribes navigate tiered layers of complex negotiations with power and the self.
In this paper, I reflect on my experience based on my decade long field work with border tribes—specifically the Kumeyaay who are the traditional land stewards of the Tijuana-San Diego region. I use autohistoria-teoría methodology to provide a mapping on how cultural intuition can lead us to places and spaces we never imagined being in and how transformational it is for both the researcher and community members (Anzaldúa 1987). I unearth tensions, highlighting reconnections, and truly ask the question on how we can authentically and ethically work outside of our communities.
Questions on relations and praxis guided my work such as: What does it mean to be in relationship with the communities we work with and why does our praxis matter as Chicanas working outside of our community? I offer my testimonio, as a lose guide for other Chicanas working with Indigenous communities. I hope my testimonio provide and entryway on how to center decolonial relational relationships—one that is based on growth, intuition, and knowledge production based on Indigenous sovereignties in the Borderlands.
Border Transcolonialities: Illegalities, Crossing(s) and Racializations of the Kumeyaay in California and Baja California
Fall 2026
Book Chapter
Critical Latinx Indigeneities: An Anthology
Tribal Nations whose traditional territories straddle multiple colonial borders experience an added layer of coloniality and dispossessions. In addition, tribes separated by the US/Mexico border have another added layer of dispossessions-- racializations. By applying a Critical Latinx Indigeneities framework, it allows us to understand how the border operates on multiple scales and temporalities to dispossess Indigenous and Native peoples from their lands while simultaneously criminalizing non-Indigenous migrants, first- and second-generation Chicanx, Mexicans, and overall Latinx people who cross and live on the border.
Trans-Mission Hauntings and Ama de Llaves Apparitions in Contemporary California Schooling
Fall 2026
Critical Mission Studies Handbook
University of California Press
Mission haunting-- cyclical ghosts present in modern forms of Indigenous dispossessions and land theft—operate in today’s schooling on the U.S./Mexico border. This seven-year tribally lead project reveals how public schooling policing and “safety” measures are grounded in mission haunting logics. In juxtaposing primary sources of the historical figure of the Ama de Llaves, Mexican (mixed-race) women mission key keepers, and critical ethnography, at an East San Diego County high school located close to the U.S./México border, uncover how key stakeholders in public schools, such as administrators and teachers, distribute and withhold resources, stoke historical racial tensions between Native and students of color reminiscent of mission haunting logics is damaging to Native students. For example, administrators and teachers operate as mission keepers by surveilling private spaces, in some instances promoting racial and gendered divisions between students, and execute punitive disciplinary actions to expel rebellious behavior for birthing laborers into the nation-state.
Transborder Indigenous Education: Kumeyaay/Kumiay Educational Sovereignty on the U.S/Mexico border
2024
Dissertation
UC San Diego
The U.S./Mexico border is a site of increased state polices for surveillances, hyper-militarization, and state sanctioned violence on Native Americans and Indigenous peoples living on the border. Similarly, public schooling in the U.S. and Mexico is damaging to Native and Indigenous students (Lomawaima & McCarty 2006). Sate surveillance and criminalization on the border and in schools attempt to rupture Indigenous relationships and curtail Indigenous sovereignty across colonial borders—specially tribes separated by colonial borders.This seven-year multi-site community-based, historical, and critical ethnographic study reveal how tribal nations separated by the U.S./Mexico border practice traditions, defend Indigenous existence and lands, and are (re)connecting and strengthening transborder bonds. Drawing from decolonial theory, Native Feminisms, and Chicana feminists, the border is a site of analysis to examine how overlapped multi-settler colonialisms, state surveillance, hyper-militarization, state policies on the U.S./Mexico border attempt to rupture Indigenous forms of education. Further, this study interrogates how Latinidad subsumes Indigenous peoples and erases Indigenous migrations and Indigenous sovereignty on the U.S/Mexico border. This study reveals how transborder Indigenous migrations, Indigenous knowledge systems, language revitalization, and intertribal and intergenerational bonds are not rupturing, but in fact, strengthening, (re)connecting, and defending Indigenous existence and lands as a form of Indigenous sovereignty on the border and in schools.
Five Cycles of Education:
Kumeyaay/Kumiai Experience of Assimilation, Isolation, Resistance and Negotiation
Published 2014
Master's Thesis
UC San Diego
This study tracks Kumeyaay educational experience from past to present, focusing on state-run educational institutions. This study will further analyze the organization of knowledge by exploring all types of education: formal, informal, and nonformal. There are five educational phases for the Kumeyaay, beginning with indigenous education, subsequently followed by the introduction of formal education: Spanish (1769-1833), Mexican (1833-1848), American (1848-current) and Indigenous and American/Mexican education (current) time periods.After years of resistance, forced assimilation, and isolation the Kumeyaay are re-taking their education. The Kumeyaay are using educational institutions as tools to “educate” or “re-educate” their youth.[1] If they do not reclaim their education, it will be lost to formal schooling. Thus, this study shows how the Kumeyaay are reclaiming their culture by the appropriation of educational institutions for the continuation of Kumeyaay traditions, memory, and language. These educational institutions range from language revitalization programs, museums, and other forms of education that originate in the household. The fifth phase of education for the Kumeyaay is a period of practicing sovereignty and the restoration of their traditional knowledge.[1]. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.