The Urban Bird Project’s Mexican American Studies workshops focus on engaging students with their local communities and histories. For the Fall workshop, Dr. Liliana Saldaña and Bonham Academy educator Araceli Manriquez led a workshop that linked mesoamerican culture with their relationship to birds according to the different existing codices from Latin America.
Students accessed different images of birds from the codices, namely the quetzal, hummingbirds, turkeys, and eagles. Our facilitators divided up the students into small groups and had them play a “guess the bird” game based on fun facts. Some of these facts were, “this bird continues to be a part of Mexican Indigenous recipes and is traditionally accompanied with mole.” These fun facts spurred an inquisitive conversation between students, challenging their American and cultural Mexican-American knowledge. Some students shared stories about how mole plays a role in their own life—to which some students admitted they weren’t a fan of the dish but recognized that if someone was making mole, it symbolized a gathering. Based on the other fun facts, students in the groups were able to identify this bird as the turkey.
Our second workshop in the spring was led by Dr. Marisol Cortez, who gave the students a wonderful presentation on the history of racial segregation and cultural empowerment in San Antonio, TX. Her presentation walked students through the complex past of San Antonio’s history, showcasing the times when Mexican Americans were united and advocated for their civil rights. After the riveting presentation, students were asked to make Loteria cards depicting their home, or an element of their home. These beautiful depictions had titles such as, “El Rancho” or “La Estrella”—all showing the diversity of our students’ homelands.