About the group

BanchaLenguas is a collective of language justice workers working in Spanish and English based in New Orleans, Louisiana, historically known as Bulbancha or “land of many tongues” in Choctaw. The multiracial collective is a vehicle for its members to support each other, advocate for themselves as language workers, and to practice language justice within local organizing communities in alignment with their values. While the group is still considering the possibility of becoming a worker-owned cooperative, they have remained a collective since their founding in 2017 in order to retain their autonomy and to ensure that any change in legal entity is the result of an intentional process of discernment and reflection. However, in the state of Louisiana, becoming a cooperative does not necessarily reflect a significant distinction from any other business. 

The group’s processes and partnerships are guided by a commitment to moving at the speed of trust, and being in right relationship to each other, their work, and their communities. BanchaLenguas workers are multidisciplinary and outside of their language work are artists, organizers, health workers, and doulas. Most members currently have part or full-time jobs outside of the collective, and their language work is an extension of the other social justice work they do. There is a flow of constantly stepping up and stepping back within the group, and roles such as coordinator are rotating, to support sustainability within the group and allow for members to contribute in a variety of ways depending on their capacity. Yudith, for example, has a full-time job and limited capacity for translation and interpretation, but that allows them to step up and fill gaps when needed. 

The group has created what Yudith describes as “concentric circles instead of tier or ladders” as a way of understanding their relationship to membership. There is a  “primes” or “cousins” level of membership which consists of collaborators who have fewer touchpoints with the internal processes of BanchaLenguas, but the group is still figuring out how to balance the sweat equity put in by core and co-founding members. 

The collective is working with more and more well-funded organizations and institutions, whose rate of pay facilitates the local solidarity work that they do. During the pandemic, members mobilized as volunteers to support a community partner in their distribution of culturally relevant food to immigrant communities. Due to the climate vulnerability of New Orleans, during hurricane season, BanchaLenguas has also grappled with what it means to be responsive to emergent community needs and how to incorporate that into their regular process. 

How it all began

BanchaLenguas was formed through a series of passionate meetings that a group of friends and language workers held at each other’s houses in 2017. Sabina remembers that oftentimes the boundaries blurred between what was a social gathering and work on the collective. Dinner and drinks at a friend’s house would end up in a deep dive on some aspect of language work or collective building that probably should have been saved for a collective meeting. The collective was in part a response to the need for greater collective power as language workers who were working individually as freelancers and struggled to get paid adequately or have their rights and rates respected by their clients. 

In the beginning, the group was multi-gender, however as more work to develop the collective was necessary, femme and queer-identified people were the ones carrying that work. Male members “were just taking gigs” and while sometimes they tried to contribute to collective-building, Sabina recalls that sometimes in doing so “they created a lot of pushback.” This realization also helped define their identity as a group - which up until now has been femme-led (though they are open to this changing in the future). 

Both Yudith and Sabina brought prior experiences working with other collectives - Yudith with Antena Houston and the Somos Sur crew in Atlanta and Sabina co-founded the Tucson Language Justice Collective. During the early days of BanchaLenguas, Yudith was traveling often between Atlanta, Texas, and New Orleans (among other places). However, when Yudith decided to move to New Orleans, and fully commit to BanchaLenguas, it prompted the group to get more serious about its structures and evolve away from the blurred boundaries between work and social life that they had relied on previously.  

The choice to evoke Bulbancha in the name of the collective was a catalyzing moment for the group. It was aspirational and in a sense a way for the group to keep themselves accountable to their values and commitment to their community, especially as a group of majority transplants to the city. Sabina says, “We knew it was something we were going to have to grow into. It would motivate us to learn more and have as a compass in our decision making, strategic planning and visioning.” 

Where it’s going 

Given the expansion of work to virtual worlds during the COVID-19 pandemic, BanchaLenguas is no longer only doing in-person work in New Orleans. A lot of the collective’s work is now online and some members’ locations have shifted. They are also at a point where they feel comfortable taking on long-term commitments, confident that they will still exist in the near future. 

The collective is excited about its recent partnership with a local school, and is exploring the possibility of training BIPOC youth who can eventually step in and lead local language justice work. As the collective thinks about bringing in new people generally, they want to develop more clarity about what membership means and whether they will establish themselves as a co-op or some other hybrid identity. 

They remember what it was like when they relied on their personal relationships and want to offer something different to anyone else they welcome in. Now, BanchaLenguas is working internally so that it can “invite people into an organized, cute, cozy home as members,” replete with clear structures and collectively articulated processes.