Description
The purpose of this study was to conceptualize LatinX Leadership for LatinX Community College Administrators and Professional through engaging with the experiences of individuals who are identify as queer and trans, LatinX, and an administrators and professional within the community college sector. Grounded in borderlands, conocimiento, queer theory, and intersectionality as theoretical underpinnings, this study utilizes a grounded theory approach methodology to conceptualize the development of LatinX leadership. Through testimonio and queer chisme methods, this study exposed the violence experienced in leadership for LatinX Community College Administrators and Professionals. Testimoniolistas shared how they constantly negotiated and navigated systems of power, privilege, and oppression in relation to themselves in leadership. The reflexive processes of testimonio and queer chisme that disrupt cishetergendered structures of community colleges revealed four major findings: (1) remolinos of leadership, (2) Telarañas of the past, present, and future in Leadership, and (3) concencia in practice towards LatinX Leadership, and (4) radical self-love. These findings influenced the conceptualization for LatinX Leadership that consist of five arrebatos (rupture, shock): (1) remolinos en sociedad, (2) nepantla in leadership, (3) dismembering in leadership (Coyolxauqui), (4) agents of responsabilidad, and (5) radical self-love. The model is not fixed or linear and can happen across space and time. As noted by the testimoniolistas, the conceptual LatinX leadership can serve as a catalyst to transform leadership structures that allow for the full existence of ourselves, queer, trans, and LatinX, by re-envisioning new frameworks that connect us all.
