How Doctoral Chicanas Resist White Supremacist Political Erasure Through Muxerista Mentoring

Latinas in graduate education remain underrepresented as doctoral recipients. During 2014-15, only 7.3 percent of Latinas had received doctoral degrees compared to White (66.7%), Asian (12.7%), and Black (10.3%) women (National Center of Education Statistics 2016). Latina students experience the doctoral socialization process of cultural dissonance, which conflicts with their own ethnic or racial identity. As doctoral Chicanas, we resist academia’s values of “individualism, competition, and emotional detachment” (Ibarra 2001, 101). During an isolating COVID-19 pandemic and a white supremacist political climate, we have managed to persevere against the odds. We have informally developed the process of Muxerista mentoring (Revilla 2004) by coming together to plan the annual MAS K-12 training program. We share our multi-generational testimonios to explore the multiple worlds we navigate while in our programs as nontraditional Chicanas learning and teaching in higher education. We argue that Muxerista mentorship is a genuine reciprocal connection and a commitment to building critical conciencia and collective transformation. Creating a Chicana feminist mentoring space that honors and values our unique experiences navigating a eurocentric education system. Through testimonio, we tease out our survival strategies and what nurtures our vision as activist scholars.