Latinx’s Testimonies on the Margins of Street-Life: Fragments and Tears

Abstract

This article examines two Latinx testimonies connected to street life in San Bernardino, CA, a Hispanic majority city in the Inland Empire. The city of San Bernardino has undergone high levels of urban decline, which in turn has created a web of urban issues, such as a rising unhoused population, high levels of urban violence and other issues of street life (drug usage, gangs, etc.) In the process, street ministries have emerged in the city and have attempted to assist people on the margins. In spaces like street ministries, non-traditional testimonies appear and remind us of narratives, which I term testimonies on the margins, that operate outside of more institutional spaces of religion. While traditional conversion narratives can have their own narrative arcs, what are we to make of testimonies of the street life that appear in pieces or fragments, and of women that transform their wounds to factors of healing? Exploring Latinx testimonies on the margins of San Bernardino as “fragmented testimonies” and “testimonies of tears,” this article reads these testimonies as overlooked accounts of how Latinx voices survive and heal from their social-historical conditions, compounded with issues of street life. It proposes that, while unorthodox, these testimonies are attempts to heal from wounds of street life—wounds of erasure and wounds of loss.