Las historias que dejó María: Educators and Researchers Bearing Witness to the Coloniality of Displacement

Abstract

This article centers the experiences of two university researchers in Colorado and four public  school educators from Florida as they engaged in a dialogic process of counter-storytelling to reject  one-dimensional narratives and embrace contradictions and vulnerabilities throughout the process.  The authors speak against the deficit stories and colonizing practices that have affected Puerto  Rico and Puerto Ricans pre- and post-Hurricane María. This collaborative project humanizes the  ongoing experiences of multiple displacements resulting from U.S. colonialism, racism, white  supremacy ideologies, and unnatural disasters. Using a series of letters as the basis for reflection,  we trace three major themes across our collaborative sense-making: (1) a desire to resist systems  of white supremacy and coloniality by positioning teachers, displaced students, and their families  as agents rather than victims; (2) a sense of (un)belonging that transcends or exists beyond the  storm’s landfall; and (3) the power of counter-storytelling as a humanizing, liberating act.