Xicana Tiahui Podcast

Cumfessions del Corazón from a Butch Chicana

In this steamy episode, the Xicana Tiahui crew “chap it up” with Claudia Rodriguez as she returns on this special Valentine's Day episode. Sharing her erotic poetry, Claudia creates the space for us to explore the need for pleasure and vulnerability in our sexual encounters and the importance of creating sex-positivity dialogues in our homes and community. Check out more of Claudia’s writing at: http://rodriguezwriter.blogspot.com/

Remembering Butchlalis: Chicanas Queering La Panocha

In this episode the Xicana Tiahui crew hangouts with Claudia Rodriguez, scholar, writer, and teatrista. Claudia reflects on her journey as a Queer Chicana writer and her role in creating Butchalis de Panochtitlan, which functioned as space for Chicanas to own, claim, and celebrate their Butch identities. We talk about why theater and Queer theater specifically is overlooked in the field of Chicana/o/x studies and the critical role artists make in producing knowledge for La Chicanada.

The Mixed Race Damnés: Existentialism, Coloniality, and People-of-Color Organizing

In this episode, Xicana Tiahui sits down with Dr. Daphne V. Taylor-Garcia, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, to discuss her book, The Existence of the Mixed Race Damnes: Decolonialism, Class, Gender, Race (2018). Centering her mixed background as critical to informing her work, Dr. Taylor-Garcia shares with us her familial background, growing up in Toronto, Canada, and the experiences she faced transplanting to California. We contextualize her work and the impact her book has made on the field of Chicana/o Studies, Ethnic Studies, and coalitional organizing.

Queer Xicana Indígena Root Work

In this episode, the compas of Xicana Tiahui are in conversation with Chicanx Studies professor Susy J. Zepeda from UC Davis. We engage various topics, ideas, and directions that start from the intellectual and activist thrust of Dr. Zepeda's journey through academia that leads us to questions of worldmaking as La Xicanada in the United States.

[Entre Nos] Our Reflections on Chicanx World-Making

In this episode, the compas of Xicana Tiahui foster a space of reflection to discuss our personal growths and understandings of Chicanx World-Making. Engaging in a cyclical discussion, the crew checks in and offers their takes on the possibilities of meaning infused in world-making and the ways a Chicanx world-making can take place in our everyday life.

Civilization of Death: Coloniality of Power and the Decolonial Imperative

In this episode, the Xicana Tiahui crew hangs out with Profe Roberto D. Hernandez from the Department of Chicana/o Studies at San Diego State University. Roberto delves into his intellectual origins and inspirations that grew from his experiences along the U.S./Mexico border in San Ysidro. Discussing his current work and projects, Roberto highlights the Zapatista engagement of the civilization of death as a framework to help us understand the systems/institutions of destruction that are rampant in our communities and lives. Profe Roberto however reminds us of the power of world-making and the need for a decolonial imperative as a mechanism to obtain a dignified life. #decolonialimperative 

Music: Subsistencia, "Ehécatl," from Nuestra Tierra Anahuac (1998)

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.”