Xicana Tiahui Podcast

Becoming the Territory, Becoming Ungovernable

In this episode, we have an extended and second conversation with a compa about the latest communiqué and zine from Re-Existir Media, titled We Are All Illegal: An Intro to Brown Anarchy. As they describe it, Re-Existir Media is "a new community info-project coming to the Inland Empire." We do a close reading of the content of the zine, elaborating on the themes of anarchy, brown insurgencies, and how to confront the question of autonomy in local geographies. Our main concern becomes the how of responding to material conditions and the ways communities struggle against capital and the state toward another world.

 

We Are All Illegal: https://reexist.noblogs.org/zines/illegal/

 

On the recent Los Angeles ICE raids:

"Revolt and Representation" | https://heatwavemag.info/blog/revrep-061625/

"Defend the LAnd" | https://spectrejournal.com/defend-the-land/

"Los Angeles, or the End of Assimilation" | https://illwill.com/los-angeles

"Fuck I.C.E. City-Wide" | https://ineditas.noblogs.org/post/2025/06/18/fuck-i-c-e-city-wide-los-angeles-goes-up/

Brown Insurgencies: We Are All Illegal

In this episode, we have a conversation with a compa about the latest communiqué and zine from Re-Existir Media, titled We Are All Illegal: An Intro to Brown Anarchy. As they describe it, Re-Existir Media is "a new community info-project coming to the Inland Empire." With a seasonal bulletin, zines, "how-to" manuals, and resources, the project aims to share with its local geography an analysis of political economy, US politics, anarchist praxis, and oppositional ideologies rooted in Latin American or brown autonomous projects. In the conversation, many topics emerge, bubbling from We Are All Illegal, determined to ask more questions without shying away from some proposals. Here, some might be inspired to think about the recent waves of ICE raids in their local geographies and developing methods to confront the Trump administration's mission for mass deportation.

 

We Are All Illegal: https://reexist.noblogs.org/zines/illegal/

 

On the recent Los Angeles ICE raids:

"Revolt and Representation" | https://heatwavemag.info/blog/revrep-061625/

"Defend the LAnd" | https://spectrejournal.com/defend-the-land/

"Los Angeles, or the End of Assimilation" | https://illwill.com/los-angeles

"Fuck I.C.E. City-Wide" | https://ineditas.noblogs.org/post/2025/06/18/fuck-i-c-e-city-wide-los-angeles-goes-up/

[SWAPA Interlude] Circle #5

In this special interlude episode, we offer our naguala shape-shifting reflections on Chapter 5, “The Rhetoric of Supremacism as Revealed by the Ethical Technology: Democratics." From the responses to quotes across the chapter, each collective member present offers a gift of emotion produced through the process of deep listening. SWAPA is an acronym for Storytelling/Witnessing Wor(l)d-Art & Performance as Activism. It is a spiritual activist or nepantlera method in the spirit of differential social movement and consciousness from Methodology of the Oppressed. These special episodes are responses to the book and offer a practice of creative close reading and what it means to bridge worlds with others.

[EP5] On the Rhetoric of Supremacism

In this episode, hosted on the Xicana Tiahui podcast platform, the Sandovalian Semillero Collective delves into Chapter 5 of Methodology of the Oppressed. The collective explores how Chela Sandoval examines dominant ideologies, as well as white consciousness, and how beings perpetuate systems of supremacy through rhetorical poses. Sandoval draws from Roland Barthes and Frantz Fanon to analyze the mechanisms that sustain oppressive power structures and to investigate “the language of supremacy.” Throughout the episode, the collective breaks down the rhetoric of supremacism and offers examples. Identifying these rhetorical poses is the first step to confronting the world and invoking the technology called democratics.

Wellness & Housing Justice with Ashley & Leo

In this episode Ashley and Leo, tenant organizers from Union de Vecinos-Eastside Local of the LA Tenants Union discuss how wellness is embedded in housing justice work.

 

To learn more about their work, follow @uniondevecinos on Instagram

[SWAPA Interlude] Circle #4

In this special interlude episode, we offer our naguala shape-shifting reflections on Chapter 4, “Semiotics and the Language of Revolution." From the responses to quotes across the chapter, each collective member present offers a gift of emotion produced through the process of deep listening. SWAPA is an acronym for Storytelling/Witnessing Wor(l)d-Art & Performance as Activism. It is a spiritual activist or nepantlera method in the spirit of differential social movement and consciousness from Methodology of the Oppressed. These special episodes are responses to the book and offer a practice of creative close reading and what it means to bridge worlds with others.

[EP4] The Methodology of Emancipation: Semiotics, Language, and Revolution

In this episode, hosted on the Xicana Tiahui podcast platform, the Sandovalian Semillero Collective delves into Chapter 4 of Methodology of the Oppressed. Here, they unpack how Chela Sandoval engages the work of Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon and French cultural theorist Roland Barthes, extending a conversation about semiotics (the study of signs), the conditions to link language with revolution. In particular, the collective tackles what Sandoval calls "the methodology of emancipation" and its five technologies of power: semiotics, deconstruction, meta-ideologizing, democratics, and the differential movement of consciousness. These theoretical threads of social praxis for the concrete practice enacting the social movement's differential mode come alive. The practitioner of the methodology of emancipation becomes, in the process, the one to enable this "move of energy" for the possibilities to struggle against dominant ideology.

 

Decolonizing Epistemologies: Conversation with Latinx Philosophers (UC Berkeley Latinx Research Center): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCV6Veg-eYo&ab_channel=LatinxResearchCenter

[SWAPA Interlude] Circle #3

In this special interlude episode, we offer our naguala shape-shifting reflections on Chapter 3, “On Cultural Studies: The Apartheid of Theoretical Domains."  From the responses to quotes across the chapter, each collective member present offers a gift of emotion produced through the process of deep listening. SWAPA is an acronym for Storytelling/Witnessing Wor(l)d-Art & Performance as Activism. It is a spiritual activist or nepantlera method in the spirit of differential social movement and consciousness from Methodology of the Oppressed. These special episodes are responses to the book and offer a practice of creative close reading and what it means to bridge worlds with others.

Caracoleando Among Worlds

Natalia and Gustavo from Xicana Tiahui hang out with Dr. Silvia Soto, professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies and Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. Platicamos about her recently published book “Carocoleando Among Worlds: Reconstructing Maya Worldviews in Chiapas.” We learn about her journey in the Zapatista struggle and her literary movida to bridge Maya Literature, Zapatista thought, and Chicanx and Native Studies. Get her book through the University of Arizona Press or your local library. 

[EP3] Knowledge, Power, and Disciplinary Silos

In this episode, hosted on the Xicana Tiahui podcast platform, the Sandovalian Semillero Collective delves into Chapter 3 of Methodology of the Oppressed, discussing disciplinary divides in knowledge, what Chela Sandoval calls "the apartheid of theoretical domains." The collective considers Sandoval's notion of power and how it operates between the horizontal and vertical axes, suggesting how we must attune ourselves to both, not choosing either/or. By focusing on one's position, the collective also thinks how the personal is political.