Affirmations of Bilingualism, Biliteracy and Binationalism in the Cali-Baja Borderlands: Transformational Politics of Liminality, Counter-Erasure and Borderizing

Our collective reflection communicates perspectives from four leaders of the Developing Effective Bilingual Educators with Resources (DEBER) Project. DEBER is an inter-institutional bilingual teacher preparation program in the Cali-Baja borderlands sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education. DEBER goals include supporting the transfer processes for prospective bilingual teachers (scholars) from community colleges to undergraduate programs as well as the completion of a postbaccalaureate teacher credential program. DEBER leaders design, implement and evaluate ongoing advisement as well as professional development learning opportunities for scholars. Leadership in DEBER is operationalized via ad-hoc working groups. We are four of the seven members that comprise the research and evaluation workgroup. We are bilingual, biliterate, and binational doctoral students, faculty members, researchers, and evaluators at Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) that are designated as Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSIs). In consideration of the geospatial context of the San Diego-Tijuana region where DEBER is implemented, we critically reflect how DEBER’s ways of knowing, being, and valuing affirmed scholars’ bilingual, biliterate and binational identities in Eurocentric, white-supremacist, monolingual IHEs. The following collective reflections draw from our individual reflections and memos, audio-recordings of group dialogue and excerpts from “I’m From” poems written with and for our DEBER Scholars.