Xicana Tiahui Podcast

Counter-Mapping: Land, Space, and Creating Tools of Resistance

The Xicana Tiahui crew members converse with the Mapping Against Power Systems (MAPS) crew, Maritza (they/them), Kim (they/them) and Jaz (she/hers). As a womxn and gender non-binary centered collective, MAPS set out to create a knowledge sharing and co-creating space that disrupts colonial understandings of land and space. In this episode, we learn about why MAPS emerges and how the collective builds an insurgent counter-mapping project and builds new cartographic visions of relating to our neighborhoods and community.

A Place For Us: COLA4ALL and the Student Struggle for a Dignified Life

In this episode, the Xicana Tiahui crew linked up with special guests Bre and Carlos from student struggle COLA4ALL at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In this conversation, we learned about the experiences and motivations of graduate students who were unsatisfied with the limited reach of COLA, cost-of-living-adjustment. Graduate students like Bre and Carlos, amongst many, pushed the boundaries of obtaining livable wages for solely graduate students, and instead formulated a relational based praxis that struggles for a dignified wage and life for all students, all workers, and communities who are seen as disposable under the banner of the university. The crew delves into discussions about the role and limitations of unions and the paradigm of labor value. Lastly, we learn about how the collective A Place 4 Us emerges, and Bre shares how this idea blossomed from her relationship with Harriet Tubman and her desire for freedom. Music by Bread and Circuits and La Trova Pank.

The University and Pandemic: Graduate Student Testimonies on Academia and Teaching

In this episode, the Xicana Tiahui crew takes a moment to have an organic conversation about the educational responses to the pandemic and how educators are expected to navigate it alongside the students they teach or facilitate discussions with. We are graduate students learning and sharing the virtual realm, a phenomenon that we think through together as we try to understand our experiences.

Transborder Organizing: Xican@patistas, Detention Resistance, and Practices of Autonomy

In this episode, we discuss the lived experiences and political praxis of Ymoat, a Xicana transborder organizer influenced by Zapatismo who participates in many spaces of rebellion such as El Central Cultural de La Raza, Detention Resistance, and Hormigas Autonómas y Rebeldes. Ymoat is also part of an emerging podcast called Voices of Transborder Resistance.

As a guiding question, we asked ourselves: How do we build autonomy and create networks of resistance? We reflected on the work of Xicana organizers such as our guest Ymoat and the new re-structuring of capitalism with the current pandemic of COVID-19. Intro song is “Generaciones de Odio” by L.A. Punk band Subsistencia. The song at 39:40 is Gustavo playing his jarana to “Chiles Verdes.”

CNI-CIG: Indigenous Struggles in México

Here is a podcast episode that took place in the late summer of 2019. This episode dialogues on the emergence and struggle of the Congreso Nacional Indígena and the Concejo Indígena de Gobierno. We want to thank QuiQui for sitting down and speaking with us as a collective to talk about the Indigenous struggles in México. Music credit goes to Subsistencia, a punk band from Los Angeles. Songs are "Xochicuicatl" and "Zapatista Guerrer@ Tezcatlipoca."