Our Methodology

From 2020 to 2023 a team of community-based organizations and academics researched the impact of COVID-19 on farmworkers and their families, known as the Oregon COVID-19 Farmworker Study or COFS (a survey of 300 farmworkers and in-depth interviews with 45 farmworkers).  Farmworkers of Indigenous Mesoamerican origin made up about 25 percent of  the study participants. The study revealed the highly marginalized situation of Indigenous Mesoamerican farmworkers. But at the same time, workers, families, and communities-maintained practices of Indigenous care, across borders. We hosted the first-ever “Mesoamerican Languages in Oregon” conference in June of 2021. Invisible No More! continues that work. 

A crucial initial step of this project is to find and document the diversity of Mesoamerican languages in Oregon. Our team has been working on guiding people through a short Qualtrics survey (accessed by a QR code) to accomplish this goal. We are working to complete 300 surveys in our pilot to illustrate on an interactive map where Indigenous languages are found in Oregon, (which cities and counties) and the specific places where they originate in Guatemala and Mexico. No identifying information is collected from people who participate. 

Team members are also conducting oral histories of language use which will be summarized with photographs and short audio clips. These oral histories allow us to understand the role that language has played in the daily lives of community members since they were children and how language use can continue to connect and build communities in diaspora in Oregon. Oral histories are conducted in Spanish, in some Indigenous languages, and some are bilingual in a specific Indigenous language and Spanish. Pseudonyms are used for narrators, summaries, and short audio clips.