Cultural competency training and indigenous cultural politics in California

This essay illuminates the challenges of using cultural competency training as an ethnicity-based political strategy for indigenous Mexicans struggling to gain rights and recognition in a transnational context. Through an analysis of the political and philosophical stakes in a cultural competence training delivered to social service providers by Mexican migrants, the essay interrogates the claim that these trainings, even when provided by linguistically and culturally competent facilitators, intervene in social and health inequities. The analysis is based on two and a half years of ethnographic research with a well-known indigenous Mexican migrant-led non-profit organization in California, Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueno.