Preventing Gang Violence Through Healing Circles: The Case of the Círculo de Hombres in San Diego

The purpose of this essay is not only to examine how Chicano and Mexican men navigate and negotiate street gangs, the criminal justice system, and self-destructive behaviors that dehumanize them, but also how they rehumanize themselves through the development of culturally rooted consciousness based on Indigenous cosmologies and epistemologies. It examines how these marginalized men integrate a Maya–Nahua philosophical syncretism with restorative and transformative justice practices, rooted in dialogue, that emphasize ethnic identity and social justice. Specifically, this piece focuses on the processes of re-indigenization and re-humanization that these men embrace within community-based spaces. The aim of this inquiry is twofold: (1) to understand the curative and culturally rooted cosmologies and practices of community-based healing circles to prevent self-destructive behaviors and (2) to identify the complexities of re-humanization and Indigenous-based pedagogies as a liberatory praxis that resists the discourses and mechanisms of dehumanization. Using Freire’s liberatory praxis framework, supplemented with indigenous pedagogies and qualitative methods, I argue that their engagement in re-indigenization facilitates their conversions as they begin to see themselves as subjects, rather than objects, subjugated by the created apparatuses of power or knowledge. The Círculo de Hombres plays a pivotal role in transforming men’s lives as they learn to see themselves as creators of historical knowledge and change agents, possessing the ability to transform themselves and the world around them.