Community Counts!

Galarza, Ernesto (2011). Barrio Boy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

 Part One - pp. 9-32
Part Four - pp. 216-17

 In Part One of Barrio Boy, titled “In a Mountain Village,” Ernesto Galarza describes the village in which he was raised from birth to about age six, Jalcocotan, or Jalco. Jalco is a small village in the Sierra de Madre de Nayarit Mountains in Mexico. A major theme of his early childhood is a strong sense of community, with everything happening on the one unnamed street in Jalco, “because there was no other place for it to happen.” Ernesto lived in an adobe cottage with his mother, cousins, uncles, and aunts. Ernesto had a large extended family in the village and in the surrounding villages, but everyone in Jalco acted as his family, with the women requiring errands run by the nearest child, no matter if it was their child or not. Those living in the village provided support to their fellow residents in times of joy and times of crisis, such as when one of the cottages flooded due to a hurricane.

After Ernesto and his family leave Jalco, they found or built strong community support systems in the series of places they lived on their way to the United States. In the barrio in Sacramento, Ernesto’s family lived among many other Mexican refugee families that all supported each other and maintained their own traditions in the midst of Americans and people from many other places. Ernesto’s community in the barrio included Americans, Koreans, Yugoslavs, Portuguese, Chinese, and Hindi. Ernesto worked and interacted with a wide variety of people on a daily basis, but the barrio was nevertheless a very close-knit community.




This idea of community as very important to people from other cultures can provide a model for our classrooms as a support system for students. Students may come from a background that is community-focused, and being thrust into a more individualistic culture may be a jarring experience. However, we can foster a strong sense of community in our classrooms by encouraging collaboration and cooperation. We can also help ensure that students do not feel that they must assimilate, but instead allow and encourage them to share their traditions and cultures with their classmates. By appreciating these cultural differences, we can build a classroom environment that resembles a community to provide students with an easier transition to a new place and culture. In addition to being more welcoming to students from diverse backgrounds, this culture of community can benefit all students.

Comments

  1. E.A.June 25, 2017 at 10:37 AM

    Hi Stacey-

    I think your commentary on the way that Ernesto and his family relied on community as they made their way into the United States is really insightful and appropriate. What is particularly interesting to me about Ernesto's experience is that he didn't just rely on Mexican immigrants in the United States to provide support and a community. He and his family developed communities full of immigrants from all over the place. Here in the United States, we do tend to have an individualistic culture and somewhat of a survival of the fittest mentality. I love your suggestion that we as teachers ought to create a sense of community in our classrooms because I am certain that students coming into our classrooms from different cultures and backgrounds likely do find our more individualistic culture to be quite shocking and jarring. I happen to think that we need to provide a sense of support and community that will embrace ALL of our students, not only the ones who come from a different cultural background than one that is typically American. I honestly think our culture can almost be too harsh sometimes in that people feel as though they have to succeed at all costs or they will get eaten alive in this highly competitive culture and society. If we approach things from a community standpoint and the idea that we should support and help each other out, I think we can improve our own culture while also reaching out to those students coming different cultures as well.

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