Paper short abstract:

In exploring how Hispanic children in rural New Mexico make sense of narratives of discipline and opportunity, this paper shows how children mobilize history as collective experience to imagine possible futures that both create continuity with and critique the world their parents grew up in.

Paper long abstract:

New Mexico has a high level of poverty and school dropout rates within the United States. In rural areas, small towns originally settled as land grants, are home to historically "Spanish", Hispano (or Nuevo Mexicano) families that have experienced immense social and economic change over the past century. This paper examines how children of Hispanic descent in rural New Mexico make sense of the narratives of discipline, constraint and proper behavior they encounter among parents and teachers as they imagine a future that both creates continuities with and transcends experiences of adults. In focusing on the importance of finishing school, gaining qualifications, attending college and making a good living, children's ideas about possible futures appear to reproduce parental notions of discipline, protection and shared responsibility at the same time as they engage with the increasing emphasis on academic achievement within New Mexico public schools. In putting these ideas into practice however, children also draw on popular narratives of limitless success, sports stardom, technological progress and freedom of choice. In this way they make their own meaning from various inherited tropes to re-imagine the future that adults see for them. I argue that within this context, children mobilize history not so much as an abstract category or chronotope, but as a set of practices that transforms the potential meaning of 'opportunity' in terms of their own future, whilst emphasizing continuity through an imminent critique of the world their parents grew up in.