Colonial legacies and the history and present of the Mexican migrant high school youth in rural Idaho schools through Maldonado–Torres’ metaphysical catastrophe

Purpose On the land of five federally recognized tribes, the Indigenous people who have called this place home since time immemorial, the presence of Mexican migrant communities in Idaho is deeply intertwined with colonization, land dispossession, mestizaje and the broader histories of colonization in Latin America (Blackwell et al., 2017; Powell & Carrillo, 2019). Design/methodology/approach The researcher employs Chicana feminist epistemologies (Delgado Bernal, 1998) and decoloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2016) to understand how two high school students, characterized as newcomers, experienced the first months of schooling after migration to rural Idaho. Documenting the experiences of these students through Maldonado Torres's lens of decolonial epistemologies uncovers how the legacies of coloniality persist in the everyday experiences of Mexican migrants in Idaho. Findings In this article, the experiences of these students, documented through a cultural, historical approach (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), contribute to the broader history of the migration of Mexican people to Idaho and the Pacific Northwest, connecting it to current social issues. This documentation and analysis bring forward knowledge and perspectives often overlooked when documenting the history of Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. Originality/value This study uncovers the metaphysical catastrophe, as described by Maldonado-Torres (2016) where research reproduces the dehumanization of Mexican migrants through a central focus on labor and economics. Instead, this research focuses on the cultural and linguistic repertoires possessed by Mexican migrant youth in the US Schools in the historical context of Mexican migrants in Idaho.