There is a significant diaspora of Mixtec people residing along California's Central Coast, mostly working in the agricultural sector. The new realities in the diaspora have brought Mixtec varieties in contact in new contexts where they co-exist with other Mexican Indigenous languages, as well as with Spanish and English. We urgently need more…

This dissertation examines individual, constricted agency in a multilingual environment within the context of a language discussion group and the form of social capital possessed by their Mexican Indigenous diasporic community living on the California Central Coast. The research is based on participant-observation ethnographic work with a language…

This study took place in a village in Yucatan, Mexico in the context of two adult education programs in Yucatan [Plaza Comunitaria and Preparatoria Abierta]. I interacted in "convivencia" with bilingual (Mayan-Spanish) Yucatec Mayan women who took on the challenge of completing their formal schooling through those adult education…

This research is a study of the relationship between language acquisition and the status of equity. The history of the Maya people in Guatemala gives strong evidence that their failure to acquire competence in Spanish, which is the national language of their nation, has resulted in their failure to compete in the social, economic, and political…

Theological education among Latin American Baptists began during the epoch of colonial missions as a part of the long-range strategy developed by missionaries primarily from North America. Beyond translation, contextualization had little importance in those beginning stages. Over time, the seminaries were nationalized, yet today the earlier…

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity…