Sembrando Semillas, sowing seeds: Reflections on Latinx representations in US community psychology's AJCP.

Latinx have contributed to the foundation and formation of the United States, and as this demographic increases, overlooking their unique experiences and lived conditions can limit community psychology's potential to better support them in their wellbeing. Thus, in alignment with the call for a virtual special issue highlighting critical themes in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP), we take an exemplar approach to reviewing 15 articles published between 1979 and 2023. We highlight these articles for their unique contributions in laying the foundation or shifting the discourses of Latinx in the United States. We organize each article under one of the following themes: (1) Challenging notions of Latinx as passive victims or deficient; (2) Documenting the misrepresentation and invisibility of Latinx in community psychology; (3) Affirming Latinx as knowledge producers, protagonists, and agents of change; and (4) Centering Latin American epistemologies that foster liberatory praxis for and with Latinx. Via these themes, we illustrate where the discipline has been, and offer reflection for where it can move toward as it relates to Latinx. In doing so, we highlight perspectives grounded in Latinx communities. Our review is not exhaustive; however, it offers our subjective interpretation or curation of the articles we acknowledge as fundamental to the discipline's formation, and our learning and ongoing growth as critical community psychologists of Latin American heritage with affinities to Latinx communities in the United States. We offer this brief review as a semilla (seed) to the possibilities ahead as we remain open to reflection, dialog and learning.

Muxeres en Acción: The Power of Community Cultural Wealth in Latinas Organizing for Health Equity.

Community psychology, despite its commitment to social justice, is prone to engage in deficit-based perspectives that do not appropriately capture the strengths of Latinx communities. Given these limitations, we use a Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) (Yosso, 2005) framework to describe how muxeres, Latina women who identify as promotoras, madres, and mamás, leveraged their political power and culturally informed leadership to improve the health and well-being of their communities. We highlight instances from our fieldwork, witnessing the agency of muxeres en acción for health equity. We offer three case studies to describe how we approached our collaborations with three groups of muxeres situated in different geographic locations in the state of California. The first case study discusses how immigrant muxeres who identify as promotoras (e.g., health workers) in the Central Valley developed their research skills through a promotora model that allowed them to build the capacity to advocate for the well-being of their communities. The second example offers reflections from a Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) project with a group of Mexican immigrant madres in a gentrified community in San José. Lastly, the third case study describes how a group of mamás in the East Side of Los Angeles addressed issues of educational inequities. Together, these case studies illustrate muxeres' advocacy for their health and well-being. Because women in general, and muxeres in particular, are considered gatekeepers of culture and tradition within their families, it is crucial that community psychologists ground their work in ethically and culturally appropriate frameworks that highlight the power of muxeres.