Undocumented settlers? Enrique Sepúlveda, ‘Chicanx studies, indigeneity and the politics of settler colonialism’, Latino Studies, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

Undocumented settlers? Enrique Sepúlveda, ‘Chicanx studies, indigeneity and the politics of settler colonialism’, Latino Studies, 2023

22Apr23

Excerpt: Midway through the 2019 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) annual meeting, a poignant pedagogical moment arose in the audience about the meaning of Gloria Anzaldúa’s work and the wholesale application of a theory, settler colonialism, onto communities in Abya Yala. The one area of contention I wish to highlight here in settler colonial theory is the labeling of all migrants, regardless of their complex histories and colonialities, as modern-day settler colonialists. It was a case of junior and senior scholars speaking from the heart. The last speaker in the audience was a Chicanx prospective graduate student who shared that they were undocumented and felt insulted at being labeled a settler colonialist. As they pointed to their chest, they said it pained them deeply that their people were being framed in this way. It was, for many of us, another layer of pain and trauma. The roundtable session was a critical decolonial dialogue on questions of indigeneity, settler colonialism, and the work of Anzaldúa (1987), particularly her reframing of mestizaje.

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