Galen Axel Anderson
Contributing Writer
Last Sunday, Oct. 19, The College of Wooster hosted a panel of local immigrant community leaders as a part of its series: “Cultivating Hope Through Community & Resistance.” Before the event, there was a reception catered by the Amigas Project, one of the visiting community groups. The other organizations present included the Immigrant Worker Project and one of its subgroups, the Mayan Language Project.
The panel was comprised of six people: Jeff Stewart, the executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Worker Project, Annabella, a member of the Amigas project, Ernesto, a leader with strong connections to the Mayan Language project, Diego, involved with the recently created community garden, Hugo, invested in the nutritional and cultural benefits that accompany the construction of a community garden and Geronimo, an advocate for the ultimate goals of immigrants and the projects the organizations are pursuing. Interpretation was provided by Aída Díaz de León, visiting assistant professor of Spanish.
The focus of the evening’s discussion centered on three topics: the under-construction community garden as well as its impact, the languages of Mayans and other Indigenous peoples immigrating to the United States — specifically how linguistic differences can create barriers to inclusion and the immigration process — and the acts of resistance underway by immigrants.
The community garden is a newly started project made in collaboration with community groups located in San Jose. The motivation to complete this project is to reconnect local immigrant groups with the land and strengthen cultural identity by reestablishing tradition. During the panel Ernesto spoke to this, saying “whenever we go into the field we feel connected [to the earth].” Geronimo discussed the importance of communities coming together in self definition, describing acts of resistance, saying “when we organize, we reflect our culture [and] our cultural traditions in the way we connect with each other.”
The discussion also touched on language. Mayan and Indigenous language speakers are marginalized in Guatemala, and when people who primarily speak those languages immigrate to the United States, they are not provided with adequate resources to communicate. In immigration court, Jeff explained, individuals request Spanish language interpreters instead of languages like Kʼiche, for fear of mistranslation by interpreters speaking regionally variant forms of Indigenous languages or intolerance by judges.
Ernesto spoke about harmful stereotypes or presuppositions that all people from Central America are all Hispanic, or unified Spanish speakers.However, the diversity of languages, even in Guatemala alone, is such that people in communities separated by fifty miles of distance may not be able to communicate in their primary languages with each other. This misconception Ernesto described creates difficulty for many immigrants coming from Mayan and Indigenous communities.
The panel ended with a discussion on recent difficulties with community event organizing brought on by actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security. Many of the opportunities for local immigrant communities to come together were formerly on the football pitch, but DHS raids have made games an opportunity for risk rather than unity and entertainment. Panel speakers shared that this has had a chilling effect on the social life of immigrant communities.
The next event in the “Cultivating Hope Through Community & Resistance” series is this Friday, Oct. 24 at 6:30 p.m., titled “Litigating for Liberation with OCSILiO,”held at Westminster Presbyterian Church.
