Digital Cuentos: People, Place, and Cultural Geographies in Digital Narratives reflects an inter-disciplinary, documentary studies initiative using the digital storytelling format to address contemporary issues and concerns of preservation and sustainability through the physical and cultural mapping of the human terrain. The digital cuentos process encourages students to engage with family and community and give audience to people whose stories help frame shared commonalities and interests, including moral values and an inherent worldview. Some of the videos address weighty subjects- gentrification, loss of language, culture, traditions, and identity. Other videos celebrate family, community, preservation and maintenance of traditions, and the places we call home, our querencias.

In the process of creating their digital cuentos, students are encouraged to use some of the concepts they have been introduced to in my classes such as resolana, oro del barrio, and platicas. Resolana and Oro del Barrio are concepts borrowed from the work of Sociologist Dr. Tomás Atencio (Resolana: Emerging Chicano Dialogues on Community and Globalization). “Resolana is the space defined by the south wall of a building that is shielded from the east and west winds, where the sun reflecting off the wall creates a place of warmth, light, and tranquility.”

In a traditional village setting, la resolana serves as an informal community gathering place. “It also connotes a process of understanding the world at a higher level of awareness. The concept is grounded on a short set of assumptions. Among these is the belief wisdom is not the monopoly of the educationally credentialed elite: life itself, if systematically and keenly observed, can give all of us the basis for making sound judgements about the nature of our world and the meaning of our existence. Resolana is, in the words of the O’odham elder, ‘the sun shining on everything and everybody is seeing everything as it is at the same time.’”

Using the concept of resolana to engage students in a process of self-reflection and contemplations on the nature of “their world” can help them appreciate the knowledge and wisdom that exists within their own families and communities. The stories, histories, and knowledge they gather is not subjugated knowledge held in the hands of the elite or academic institutions, but a form of knowledge Atencio and a group of Chicano activists termed El Oro del Barrio.

“El oro del barrio is both actual and imagined. It is known through the stories people tell. When people tell a story, either from their own experience or one that has been passed on to them, they often add their own reflections and interpretations. Moreover, the story unveils both memories of real activities as well as activities and images of the psyche. Psychic creations, or imagination, such as cuentos (stories), mentiras (tall tales), chistes (jokes), images, symbols, ceremony, and rituals, are integral parts of a community’s knowledge foundations.”

The Digital Cuento builds on those knowledge foundations of resolana, oro de barrio, and platicas and becomes a form of self-expression acting on behalf of a community’s needs and casting a reflection of its history and values. As in the DigiSites’ Culturally Mapping project, the digital cuentos are an ethno-cartOgraphic documentation of People, Place, and Cultural Geographies.