Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 94: Death and Loss

Transcript

Episode 94: Death and Loss · Tales From Aztlantis

0:25
SPEAKER_00: I've always heard that honesty is the best policy.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Aslantes, the podcast where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: And along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And Ruben Ariano Tlakatecat.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: So, Dr.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: Tlakatecat, what are we up to today?
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Today, well, uh today we're it's uh the season opener, right?
1:14
SPEAKER_01: So it's uh how many seasons is it?
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Sir Season six season six.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: Season six season number six.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: I know I've been saying that since season one.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm always amazed that we we're still doing I mean I was just commenting to my my wife uh the other day like, wait, we're doing season six, like that's that's uh that's something.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of podcasts don't make it past their first season, let alone their second season.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, yeah.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: And I was at um an art gallery the other day.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Um this really, really cool art gallery just opened.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, it didn't just open.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: I just became aware of this really cool art gallery in Albuquerque.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: You just Columbus Gallery.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: And uh it's called uh Hidden Gallery or Secret Gallery.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm pretty sure it's Secret Gallery.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Something secret, secret gallery, hidden.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: If I get it wrong, I apologize.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: I'll correct it by the end of the episode.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's very, very Chicano oriented.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Um the current exhibition is on La Malinche.
2:18
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: And they're having a new exhibition coming up this Friday.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: This Friday it's opening.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: Um Chicano artists from Texas are gonna be here putting on an exhibition.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: And uh it it yeah, yeah, it looks really cool.
2:37
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna be heading over there for the uh the opening.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: But while I was there, I was talking to the owner, you know, I was like, hey man, is this your place?
2:46
SPEAKER_02: And uh I introduced myself and he's like, Yeah, I thought that was you.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: I recognize your voice.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: I listened to your podcast.
2:54
SPEAKER_02: And just it's been happening a lot more lately, people recognizing my voice and asking if if I'm the guy from the podcast.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: So we got listeners.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm and I'm famously known as the other guy.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: The other guy.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: That's what I've been told.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're the other guy.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's my name?
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: No, but that's funny because um uh as as you know, uh March is um a month where there's a lot of indigenous, at least in our neck of the woods, a lot of indigenous-centered celebrations taking place.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, specifically you have the Michigan New Year, you have um the spring equinox, and uh so we uh we did a spring equinox ceremony down with uh the Coabotecans down in in San Marcos.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh nice and um several people from from that that ceremony came up to me after the meeting and uh they were like, Yeah, you know, we um we listen to your podcast or I listen to your to your podcast with Curly and and uh we find it you know encouraging.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: We find it sometimes we don't agree, and I'm like, yeah, that's fine, you don't have to agree, but you know, at least you're listening, so that's that's what counts.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes I'm amazed, like I'm thinking, are we even like having um some kind of impact on the community at all?
4:15
SPEAKER_02: Are we just shouting into the void?
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Shouting into the void?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Are we just uh twiddling our thumbs here, wasting our time?
4:21
SPEAKER_01: What are we doing?
4:21
SPEAKER_01: But at least if we can are able to reach out to a couple of folks that find our discussions useful in any way, I think that's that's a plus, that's a win in my book.
4:33
SPEAKER_02: Hell yeah.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, just having anybody take the time to listen is pretty awesome.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: And I looked it up, it's called Secret Gallery.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not a secret now.
4:46
SPEAKER_02: You're you're telling me.
4:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, right?
4:48
SPEAKER_02: But uh this Friday, April 3rd, the show is called Artes Sin Fronteras Tejas.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Contemporary voices from Texas.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: It's a group exhibition, it'll be at Secret Gallery, and uh that's located located at 717 Central Avenue downtown in Albuquerque.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Does it say like where the artists are from and specifically in Texas?
5:10
SPEAKER_02: Um I just have the general ad that they put out, but the individual ads that they've been putting out on social media name each artist.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I haven't really been plugged into the art arts community uh as much in in the recent years, but I need to get back into that.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: I kind of miss it.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, you want to get into it?
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's get into it.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: So today um today's a um kind of a heavy uh season opener for us.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh not even sure how to begin this episode.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh I kind of struggled a little bit on what to say and how to even begin, right?
5:52
SPEAKER_01: This new season that we have upon us, you know.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're a longtime listener, our longtime listeners know that you know what we do here usually is to explore topics of interest that range with you know with the Native America, Mesoamerican communities, indigenous Chicano communities.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we also like to occasionally, you know, come here and get together to celebrate the culture and talk about things that make us like, for instance, this gallery, right?
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Things that make us proud, things that make us laugh.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: Those of you that have been listening to the show for a long time know that we like to kid and we joke, and some people like it, some people take offense to it.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: They don't think we're being serious with some of these uh heady uh subjects.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: So we try to strike a balance.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: That's all I like to tell folks.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: And but we also occasionally come here uh to highlight the wins, and of course, also sometimes because we are part of a community, we have to come together and we have to sit in the dark, as I like to put it, you know, to meditate on some of the facts of life that affect each and every one of us, and uh that's what kind of what we're doing today in a b in a way.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's it's been a time you you were talking about March and the spring equinox, and it's all about rebirth, right?
7:10
SPEAKER_02: And renewal.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: But it's also been um a lot of loss.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a lot of profound loss.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: Um the kind of grief that uh you know, it hits your personal life, your academic roots, it affects yourself internally and and even people that you might have considered heroes.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and we're we're here, we're navigating this space between honoring people who built the floor, the foundation on which we stand, and uh also facing some pretty painful truths about uh individuals who were once idolized.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Yep, absolutely.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: That is something that we're here to do today, and we have to start with uh a giant in our community, a giant figure uh who passed away on March 23rd, 2026.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we're talking about uh Dr.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Rodolfo Acunha, also known as short uh as Rudy Acunha.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: He was 93 years old, he was a titan in the field.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you can't talk about Chicano studies without starting with Rudy Acunya, right?
8:21
SPEAKER_02: Because he didn't just teach Chicano studies, he fought to make sure that it existed as a field, that it existed as something, you know.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: Um when he founded the department at California State University Northridge back in 1969, um it it wasn't a polite academic request.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: You know, it wasn't like a memo that he wrote.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: He fought.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: He was it was a demand to make our history be seen as something that's legitimate, something that's worthy of being uh studied and analyzed and talked about and celebrated.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: That's that was my experience growing up.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember uh you know, because I think I've sit discussed this on the podcast uh from time to time, how my experience, much healthier experience growing up, and wanting to know more about my history because I've always been that kid, right?
9:12
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember for the first time when I opened Occupied America, which is his uh essential work, his uh first major contribution to what will become Chicano Studies, you know, when I first opened it in high school.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And this wasn't something that was like given to me in a classroom.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I did have a mentor, a Chicano mentor at the time who was um the head of the Mecha, uh the small little Mecha group that they had in high school.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: And when I first started to kind of uh uh tip my toe into Chicanidad and Chicano activism and that sort of stuff.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And he's the one that kind of hit me to occupied America.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: And when I opened it and I read it, it it felt like someone had finally given me uh something.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: They handed me those missing pages of not only myself, my personal story, but my history, the history of our people.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: And so to that degree that Acunya was able to do that, you know, he's been, you know, front and center, uh giving us uh throughout the his entirety of his career that vocabulary that defined who we were as a people, the struggle.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Um one of the things that really struck a chord with me was this internal colonial uh framework of analysis that that he really brought to bear to the Chicano struggle and called us a colonized people, right?
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And and because we're colonized within our own borders, you know, we're people who were here before this was the United States.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, the whole the old adage of we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us, comes from this idea of being internally colonized, right?
12:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he was um a truth teller, right?
12:43
SPEAKER_02: Even when it even when it got uncomfortable, you know, he he famously told his students you need to unlearn the history that you were fed in K-12 school.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: And he wanted young people to look at primary sources and to ask, you know, whose voice is being silenced in these primary sources.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: I remember my my very first uh exposure to Rudy Acunia was gosh, it was uh early 90s, uh late 80s.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: I I can't place it for sure, but my mom basically gave me this box of like her Chicano movement memorabilia, and in it were her textbooks from high school from Chicano studies.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Nice and one of the books was called The Mexican American Experience, and it was written by Rudy Acunya and the um the other textbook she had, I I don't remember what it was called, but it was that one was written by um Bettita Martinez.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: So like talk about like you know, being connected to your roots, you know, I didn't even know who they were, and they were already starting to influence my my little brain and and my upbringing.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: And just reading through this these books, that was my like first exposure to seeing, like you said, it our history written in a way that was like, holy shit, this is important, and it resonated so much because I immediately identified with everything that was in it, just growing up in the Chicano movement, and I'm like, damn, like we're in books, you know, like our our heritage is in books.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: This is amazing.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: And um, it wasn't until later that I found Occupied America in the uh public library in Los Lunas, New Mexico, and I checked it out and I looked, you know, because you had the little cards.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, do they still do the cards in the libraries?
14:44
SPEAKER_02: No.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: Were they stamp them with the colour?
14:46
SPEAKER_02: When was the last time you went to the library, Carly?
14:48
SPEAKER_02: That's been a long time.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: That's that says something.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what I'm talking about.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh but what's funny is is this card was blank.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:01
SPEAKER_02: So the card is like a record of everybody who's ever checked out the book in the date, and nobody had ever checked this book out.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's kind of sad, right?
15:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, spoiler alert.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: I still have that book sitting right up here.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: Spoiler alert.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: Don't trust Curly with your book.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: Spoiler alert.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I mean, you should have checked it out.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, nobody was nobody was reading this book.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, it was meant for my personal possession.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of Bettita Elizabet Elizabeth Betita Martinez, that's her full name.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know how you know people like to have a little quote at the end of their email.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh the one that I have is a quote from from her.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: It's actually um um one of the quotes from uh one of her books, I forget which one it is now, but it's uh our history tells us that when we organize, we win.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Hope is not a feeling, it is a practice born of solidarity.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth Betita Martinez.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: And I really like that quote because it it really encapsulates um everything that that the Chicano movement stood for and what the legacy of it continues to stand for, right?
16:10
SPEAKER_01: We have to organize, we have to maintain that structure despite what's going on around us, despite you know, revelations and allegations and death and loss.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it it's it's very inspirational to me.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: And so whenever a student emails me, or even you know, other faculty or even the administration, like that that's that message is there.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: No one's ever told me anything about it.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh in the the climate that we live in Texas, uh, you know, it's it's sometimes a little scary, right?
16:42
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, me, uh my my personal connection to to Acuña dates uh of course with with his books uh when I was uh young whippersnapper, as they like to say, back in back in the 90s in high school.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And um I mean every chance that I got whenever I would go to a bookstore, like a used bookstore, I would go to the you know Spanish language section, and uh they always had his books there, and so I started collecting them.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: I had you know volume one, I mean edition one, second edition, the third edition, and then when I got a hold of the fourth edition, I started noticing that there was a little bit of a change happening.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: I think we've we've talked about this before, so I think I stopped at the fourth edition.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: But the thing is that I continue to use Acuñas' book for as a textbook for my Mexican-American courses.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh it's uh edition nine now.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: And I think the last time that he updated it was like right before the pandemic.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: I think it's from 2019.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And now that he's gone, I don't know like uh if uh if uh the company, I think it's Pearson who who uh publishes it, if they're gonna going to try to uh keep it going and maybe put out another edition.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: And the what they usually do is uh it's been my experience that they try to find uh instructors who use the textbook, and if they want, if there's enough um uh I guess uh interest in the book, they'll they'll ask that instructor to see if they want to do a revision of it, right?
18:24
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not saying I'm the guy, but hey, that would be great if they would like someone from Pearson would reach out to me and say, hey, uh would you mind uh revising and uh helping us uh put out uh another edition of Occupied America?
18:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, sign me up.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Don't even have to tell me twice, I'm right there.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I met Rudy Aquunia back in 2009.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: Um Jose Angel Gutierrez, uh he for the for a long time uh has lived in in the DFW area uh and he used to teach over at UTR Linton.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh he's since retired, and he's uh uh I've heard he's back, but he had moved away for a while.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Um but he um he wanted to organize what he called the 40th anniversary of the Chicano uh movement or the Chicano Causa, right?
19:16
SPEAKER_01: 2009, so presumably six 1969 is kind of more or less the date that is given for the official start, even though things were happening before that.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And then so in 2009 we did the 40th anniversary, and so he um he reached out to one of our close friends, uh uh Evelio Flores, uh Jefe de Danza here in Dallas, uh, to see if he knew anyone that would be willing to help out uh to put on this this convention.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: And and so he tapped on me and a couple others, and lo and behold, we had like a core group of like 10 people plus a bunch of volunteers, and we put on we put this this convention together in the span of like not even like six or seven months, like we were able to get a space, we uh put out invitations, we got sponsors, uh, all this good stuff, and it turned out to be a great convention.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: We had people come in from all over the country, um, and one of the people that came was Rudy Aquuna, and back then there was a hotel called the Belmont Hotel.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: The place is still there, but it's since shuttered, it had been reopened, remodeled because it was an older hotel that went back to like the 50s or something, and it's very kind of mid-century and and all that good stuff, right?
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And so uh we uh were able to uh secure that space to have uh uh on opening night have a reception there, and that's where I got a chance to meet Rudy.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was always uh someone that I had heard was very unassuming and very, you know, down to earth, and that sure enough, that's exactly the person that I encountered when I met him.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was very unassuming, very down-to-earth and and uh approachable.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't someone who was some kind of stuffy academic who thought a little too much of himself.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Or I mean he was someone who, like, if you've ever read his work, he's always in his work including uh what his students were doing, whether they were doing some kind of action, some kind of activism of some sort, or what he was uh if he had conversations with students about things that made him kind of reassess his own opinions.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Like he always included the young people's opinions and and and thought processes, and that's very much the way he was in real life, you know, and and so that was the only opportunity that I ever got to sit with him, like sit down and have a like a really you know honest conversation about you know just history and the status of the movimiento and all that stuff.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: So it's something that I'm gonna cherish, um, you know, for as long as I live, and and I'm glad that I was able to meet him.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's um it's definitely a tremendous loss uh now that he's gone because he's one of the key founders of the Chicano Studies uh you know uh field.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And you know, last was it last year, the year before?
22:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm losing track now, but we lost another giant of the field, right?
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Um the historian um Gomez Quiñones, right?
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Like he he was one of the him and and Acuña were the two that that I have always referred to when it came to uh at least in and for the Chicano m uh movement and Chicano studies, the historical component.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: Though the the they were the ones that always uh kind of um to me were were the leading figures early on and and helped create um that whole field of studies now, right, that is in jeopardy.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean UNT, not that far from here, has already basically axed, speaking of loss, right, and losing things that relate to Chicanidad and Chicanos, like they they've uh using the excuse that you know there's not enough funds and this and that, and of course, you know, acts in DEI, anything that smacks of diversity and inclusion and being, you know, just being a kind person, right?
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Um they're they're their excuses that there's no more funding, and so one of the programs that has been slashed is the minor in Mexican American Studies at UNT.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: And uh so it's sad, but I'm just waiting for the the shoe to drop here at Dallas College and and someone, you know, coming and telling me that I can no longer teach Mexican American history because why can't it just be American history?
23:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, that why does it have to be Mexican American history?
23:26
SPEAKER_02: Why can't we just all be Americans?
23:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's uh well sort of ironic, right, that Acunas passing R.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: I P um it's coming at a time when when we as a community are um having to ask some questions about another major historical
23:50
SPEAKER_01: Figure in our community.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Chale con Chavez is what I like to say.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Chale con Chavez.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: For quite a while.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Someone was asking me about this, and I had to tell them, look, I mean, Chuigi's own Chavez.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to take away from him what he accomplished.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: He he was someone who led the farm workers to some great some great gains at the onset.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what he did afterwards, but at least at the very beginning.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, but like you said, like I'm I'm I'm with you.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm on that boat.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm someone who's been very critical of Chavez for a long time because of the wet lines that were going on.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: And also because, you know, as an indigenous Chicano, it just didn't sit well with me the way that he despised the Chicano term and not wanting to be associated with Chicanidad or Chicanismo.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, dude, like people, like that's what they know that you're connected to the movimiento, to the causa, and for then for you to very publicly decry that that identity as some as if it's somehow something.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of Mexican Americans do this, right?
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Like they they despise being called Chicanos, and I don't know, but that's a hold on them.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: But now this, right?
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, we're talking about Cesar Chavez, and and it's something that you know you there's there's many terms that can be bandied about, but you know, uncomfortable, problematic, none of those.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, nothing is it begins to cover the level of putting it lightly.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Like I don't even know what to say.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the reports that came out um earlier this month, the investigation that basically spanned uh into decades of sexual abuse that apparently he was engaged in, uh, the grooming of minors, uh, the revelations from Dolores Huerta herself, right?
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the UF uh WU also accusing him, you know, all these are major, major blows.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, to folks within the movimiento who, especially if you were in the dark about all of this, if you didn't know about the wet lines, if you didn't know about him being kind of wishy-washy on you know, being being called Chicano.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: Um and now to to for these revelations to come out, for those of you who were who have not really kept up with the story, you know, we have a little basic um timeline of events uh as follows so that you can kind of get a sense of where we are.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Curly?
26:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh March 17th, 2026, the United Farm Workers, or UFW, the organization Chavez co-founded with Dolores Huerta, issued a statement confirming that they had been made aware of sexual abuse allegations against him.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Then on March 18th, 2026, again, the New York Times published a major investigative report detailing decades of misconduct.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: And the investigation included things like allegations from two women who stated Chavez began grooming them when they were eight or nine years old.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: Fuck.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: And sexually abused them in the 1970s when they were twelve and thirteen years old.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about this eight nine-year-olds being groomed so that they can be abused by the age of twelve and thirteen.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: They also mentioned a public statement came out from the Lotus Huerta.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Chavez's longtime partner in the labor movement revealed that she had been raped by him at least on two occasions in the 1970s.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: These encounters apparently led to two pregnancies that were kept secret for 60 years.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: She kept these uh pregnancies, uh pregnancies secret.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: So the children were raised by their families and their parentage was only recently confirmed through DNA testing.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you imagine going on 60 years and then someone coming to knock on your door and telling you, hey, by the way, your dad was Cesar Chavez because he raped your mother who gave you up for adoption.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: It's fucking crazy.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean I can't even imagine how that feels.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: And unsurprisingly, there are additional accounts of harassment and coercion from other women within the movement.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Jeez.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And you know, this is this is something that I mean, I know that that these reports uh make it clear that he was engaged in this stuff, but I mean, isn't it true that some rumors had been flying around for quite a while now that he had been at least engaged in sexual improprieties, but maybe not necessarily that it was connected to minors.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know if that was known yet.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I remember reading uh somewhere, I forget where I read it, but about his um affairs for sure.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Affairs.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what I'm thinking about.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some affairs that you might have had.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: And then just recently, March 30th, uh the New York Times published another piece, and I think you were saying that they've been publishing something daily, but I haven't been really keeping track of all of it.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Every other day, I think coming out with this.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: This one came on my radar because it it uh kind of hearkened back to uh an episode that we did on uh Chavez's connection to the Cinnanon cult out of California.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh longtime listeners might recall this episode was from was it season one or season two?
31:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember now.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: It was like season one, but I we just re-released it.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: We released it, yeah.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: I yeah, I edited it down and um uh re-released it uh like a week ago.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so one of the points that came out of this uh connection was that Chavez had become acquainted with the Cynanon cult, the leader Charles Diedrich.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Is that what we said?
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Diedrich.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Diedrich.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: Um in the mid mid-1960s, right?
31:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean I believe that isn't that what we talked about in that episode?
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, like 1966, which is like right around when all this shit was going on.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: When all this shit was going on, right?
31:40
SPEAKER_01: So and then we also talked about his problematic friendship um uh um in okay, so that's the that's the the the episode, right?
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Um but I don't know.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean Yeah, and if you don't know about Cinnanon or his connections to this freaking cult, uh definitely go back and listen to this episode.
32:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's called Cesar Chavez and the Cult of Cinnanon episode.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: It was re-released as episode 93.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: And you know, uh give it a look.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: And then when you see, you know, using that as context, re-watch uh interviews with Chavez with this context in mind, and it definitely gives like a different lens to his behaviors and how he was treating people and the approaches he was taking.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: It's pretty wild shit um that I think more people need to know about.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: The immediate impact of all of these revelations um and these occurred just within weeks uh before the annual Cesar Chavez Day, which falls on March 31st.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Um these allegations and revelations led to a swift national response, such as holiday changes.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature moved to rename the state holiday to Farm Workers' Day, which I'm in total agreement with.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: Um Texas governor Greg Abbott, fuck that dude, similarly announced that the state would no longer observe the day and directed schools to remove references to Chavez from their curricula.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: I bet you it made this asshole so happy.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: Right.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm saying.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, I get it.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: Chavez apparently was a fucking douchebag, right?
33:36
SPEAKER_01: But the fact that it took him not even a day for him to just declare the holiday, the the whole holiday just canceled, as opposed to like what they did in California.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: We're we're just gonna reframe this as farm worker day, which is much better.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which makes absolute sense.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: And this this douchebag is like, no, we're just gonna cancel the holiday altogether.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, get rid of it all.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: Get rid of it.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: Fuck these browns, amazing, right?
34:00
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Um there have been renaming efforts across the country.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: Cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, begin processes to rename streets and parks bearing his name.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: We have um Avenida Cesar Chavez right here, um not far from my house in Albuquerque, and the mayor came out and was like, All right, we need a the community we're gonna rename it, but he wants community input as to what uh the new name should be.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: So and uh it uh it connects the uh Avenida Cesar Chavez and Avenida Dolores Huerta actually connect like um here in Albuquerque.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: So some people are saying, well, just name the entire thing Dolores Huerta.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: There you go.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: Um others are saying use like what California did and call it like Farm Workers Avenue or Farm Worker Boulevard or something, which you know I I I'm very much for naming things after movements and events in history rather than uh lionizing individuals uh personally, because I think the problem we get is you start getting this blind hero worship, and when there's blind hero worship, it makes people less inclined to do critical evaluations of who these the actions that these people took.
35:33
SPEAKER_04: Right.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: And when, you know, if if you're if you grew up lionizing somebody, sanctifying somebody, and just blind hero worshiping them, when it comes out that they were just fucked up human beings, then what I'm seeing now are the like these knee-jerk responses where they're just rejecting the allegations outright, right?
35:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm seeing this online where they're like, nah, fuck that, these are lies, or these are unfounded allegations.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Why are we believing this?
35:59
SPEAKER_02: They're just trying to take down another brown man and this and that.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's uh a byproduct of just blind hero worship.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: Like they've bought so much into this myth that they don't want to let it go.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I mean, in some places the statues are coming down, and rightfully so.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: So I think that that's something that we're all gonna have to reassess because, like, how do you look at a man who you know fought for the dignity of workers while he was at the same time stripping the dignity away from women and especially young girls' children in his you know inner circle, right?
36:35
SPEAKER_01: So we we definitely have to do something.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: And then there were uh institutional responses uh from organizations and universities such as CSU Fresno.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh they covered or removed statues of Chavez while the UFW officially distanced itself from his personal actions, calling these action allegations indefensible.
36:58
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: And while biographers had previously documented instances of Chavez's adultery, like like we've talked about, and his intense personal control over the Union, the specific allegations of sexual abuse and rape of minors and colleagues were not known to the general public until this recent report by the New York Times.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: So you know, looking at this, this is a very different kind of loss than with Rudy Acunia.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: Oh, for sure.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: When Rudy passed, we lost this mentor, um, somebody who would establish the field of Chicano Studies.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: And um with Chavez, you know, the community is losing someone who's been mythologized in life and whose larger-than-life persona has only grown since his death in 1993.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: So to hear that, you know, he allegedly, and I say allegedly, um, abused girls as young as 12 and 13 in the 1970s.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: And I say allegedly because, you know, don't want to get sued, uh, the very uh era when he was supposed to be the moral compass of the movement, right?
38:13
SPEAKER_02: And and they did, people looked at this guy like he was this fucking saint, like he was like above everybody else.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: And god damn it.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: All right, I'm gonna go on a little mini rant right here.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: One of the th one of the things I fucking hate more than anything, and you know this, Abobi, um, is I hate this fucking false humility that people walk around like they just eat it up when people are are you know hero worshiping them, instead of being like, hey no, guys, I'm just I'm just a dude, you know, don't do that, don't get out of hand, I'm just a guy, I've you know, I fuck up too.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: He just ate it up, man.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: And that's always gotten under my skin to see these people that walk around like you know, like their shit don't stink, as my mom used to say, you know, they walk around like they're just better than everybody, and you could just see it in his face when people were just giving him these adulations and and just adoring him, like he really, really enjoyed it.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: And if you read um Miriam Powell's book and Matt Garcia's book, um, they talk about this.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: They talk about how his he had this mesionic complex, right?
39:33
SPEAKER_02: Like he really thought that he was going to start a new religion with him as the head, and that they were gonna um I I don't know how to pronounce this, beatify, beatify when they make people say, maybe is that what you're saying?
39:50
SPEAKER_02: Beatified um martyrs of the farm worker movement, like they he was really setting it up to be like a religion.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: But what about this idea that you know we must protect our heroes, like referring back to those critics online that you were referring to?
40:08
SPEAKER_01: What do you think about that?
40:10
SPEAKER_02: Oh, like, yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean we just have to I I think a lot of it comes from people don't want to admit that they were wrong or that they had been bamboozled or that they had been kind of taken for a ride by this guy.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: Um and then you have people that are like, no, I mean no matter what, we should defend our own.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: You know, this is just this is just the the white man trying to destroy the image of a of another brown man, and it's like, well, you need to look at at the uh the evidence that's been presented.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: It's there's a preponderance of evidence that's come out about this guy's character and who he was and the abuse and manipulation that he put the members of his organization through.
41:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, again, if you read those two books, um it really comes out that he he was not a good dude.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that really blew my mind is just how much he cussed.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: Like that guy was dropping the F bomb every other word.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: So you have this guy who's supposed to be the moral compass, this little saintly guy, and behind closed doors, he's like, These motherfucking fuck you, fucking prof like every other word he was saying, fuck.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: And so when people are just like knee-jerk defending him, it's like, well, hold on, you know, did get all the information straight first, you know, like you're entitled to your opinion, sure, but it should at least be an informed opinion.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: You should have all of the information that's available and base your opinion of the guy on that.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Don't just knee-jerk respond like the guy could do no wrong and that he's above criticism.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: That's the thing right there.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: Like thinking that anybody is above uh being criticized is just uh it's it's a recipe for for failure, it's a recipe for bad shit to happen because people, you know, when you look the other way, that just it like gives people permission to be pieces of shit because they know like wow, they these people worship me.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: They're gonna they're gonna believe whatever I say.
42:34
SPEAKER_02: It's almost Trumpian, it's almost MAGA uh that that style of thinking of just this blind worship and and ex this um refusal to criticize or take um a critical uh viewpoint of anybody that that you're busy worshipping.
42:54
SPEAKER_02: It's I don't know, man, it pisses me off.
42:57
SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm trying to stay off social media when it comes to these conversations because they devolve immediately.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: All somebody has to do is post a link to an article, to the New York Times article.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: And you could tell that half of the people that are responding haven't even read the article because they're saying stuff like, Well, if if they're her kids, then where's the DNA evidence?
43:25
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, did you even read the fucking article?
43:28
SPEAKER_02: Like, what are you talking about?
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Or they're like, this is just one allegation, you know, we're gonna crucify him for one allegation.
43:38
SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, it's not stupid.
43:39
SPEAKER_02: Like, what are you what are you talking about?
43:43
SPEAKER_02: So it's it gets infuriating, right?
43:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I mean rant over.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: Rant over.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, w we have to be accountable to ourselves, to the community, to the movement, and so it's not really tearing down the movement if what you're actually doing is holding people to account, right?
44:02
SPEAKER_01: It it's cleaning the movement, right, so that it can actually survive to the foreseeable future.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we owe it protecting the movement.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: We we owe that to the survivors.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: We owe that in this case specifically and also to Dolores Huerta and uh the the two young women who have been named, who, and especially, you know, all any any of the women who have carried these kinds of secrets for decades, right?
44:27
SPEAKER_01: In Dolores' case, 60 years, you know.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so what I like to tell people, this this I mean, take this as a rant or or take it as uh my opinion.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, you take it as you see fit.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm sorry, there's a lot of noise around me.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: Um at my office, uh but it's okay.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: It's okay to grieve the person that you thought he was.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Like going back to what you were just saying, Curly, that people have uh uh lionized and mythologized and um for who they thought he was, his public persona, all right.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: Um and and people are also allowed to be angry um because what he did was horrific.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no other way to put it.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: It was horrific, it was reprehensible.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and again, back to what we were saying at the beginning, no words can really um do justice to to the the the things that occurred and and to the the victims of of his uh actions, right?
45:33
SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, we also have to separate the cause from the man himself.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, there are some people, like you were saying, on the opposite side now who are attacking uh the the movement itself, the UFW, the the the farm worker struggle.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, and just because you had the one of the people who co-founded the leading organization at the time, I don't know if it still is the leading organization, I haven't kept up with that, but at least at the time when when this was uh um front and center of the movimiento, like it's okay to say, hey, you know, there's this guy who helped lead the cause for the farm worker struggle during the Chicana movement, and he was you know elevated to this position within the movimiento because of what he was doing alongside with Dolores Huerta and others, and it's okay to say we were mistaken about who he was at that time, and you know, now we can shift focus and and we can still say the farm worker struggle is still a valid struggle, even if the leader turned out to be this horrible individual.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: Like those two things can exist in your mind.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: You can you can say we used to think this guy was one thing, like you were saying, some saintly figure.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: Now we know he wasn't, and it's okay that the farm worker struggle uh is still something that is worthwhile, right?
46:52
SPEAKER_01: That we still should um you know support the struggles of the farm workers despite whatever happened uh with this uh individual.
47:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I mean I'm I'm not part of the UFW.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm not a member.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't really know.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: Anyone personally that is part of it, but uh you know the only thing that I can say is that let's stop vilifying the UFW because it had nothing to do.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you know, they were one of the first people to to come out and say, we know that these allegations have been made, it's going to be made public, and we want to distance ourselves from that individual from this point forward, which is good on them, because that's exactly what you need to be doing, right?
47:34
SPEAKER_01: You used to think of them one way, now that this has come to light, now it's okay to think of them this other way.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: And if you need to make a separation between you and the founder, perfect.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: There's there's nothing, I mean, you're gonna lose something in along in the process, but as you know, it's it's it's better than to just completely you know throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Like just throw in this case the baby being Chavez, throw him out, you know, keep the UFW.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Um because it's not their fault.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: It's not their whole fault that Chavez turned out to be a wannabe cult leader and a sexual predator, and if you want to even be technical, a pedophile, right?
48:14
SPEAKER_01: Because he was abusing girls.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Exact yep, exactly.
48:18
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think unless you have something else to say about this guy, I think I think we're done with Chavez.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we are done with Chavez.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: Literally.
48:29
SPEAKER_02: That's that's that's a good way of putting it.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, believe believe women, believe the victims, and um, you know, to all the news outlets, this will be my final my final say on this thing right now.
48:43
SPEAKER_02: Um you know, correct your language, news outlets, stop calling them underage women and call them what they are, which was children, um little girls, and and just call it for what it is, like you said, it's uh it's fucking pedophilia.
49:00
SPEAKER_02: We are done with Chavez.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so with that out of the way, um speaking of of grief on on the on the topic of grief, uh I know that this hasn't just been um you know a period of loss and grief just uh related to the community for you.
49:29
SPEAKER_02: It it goes far more personal for you.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does.
49:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, our family recently we experienced uh tremendous loss uh in our family with uh the passing of of my mother um back in in in uh February and um she had just turned 76 uh years old in January.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: And um a lot of people didn't know this is not something that I made public because you know, I mean, who wants to discuss their personal family matters?
50:02
SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, she had been struggling with with cancer for close to five years.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh she first had one type of cancer, she beat that, and then she got a different type of cancer, and uh she, you know, did her best uh to to try to overcome it, but in the end, it it just um um you know people who have had family members and close friends and relatives uh deal with this, understand that sometimes, you know, some people are able to come out of this and and uh live to tell the tale and of uh successful, you know, beating of cancer, but my mom, she unfortunately um did not was not able to do that at all.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: So sorry, bro.
50:46
SPEAKER_03: That sucks, man.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
50:48
SPEAKER_01: May she rest in peace.
50:50
SPEAKER_01: Um I take comfort in in um you know, I guess if there's any belief in me about anything, you know, I believe that she's um, as we like to say, right, in the indigenous community, she's returned to be with the ancestors, right?
51:05
SPEAKER_01: So that memory of her, I still hear my mother talking to me uh on a daily basis, giving me advice, counseling me, you know, getting on my case about something that I didn't do or did or did the wrong way or whatever.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like she was she was a constant presence in my life.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh I was close to her, and um it's uh this is something that that's really hurt.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I'm myself, my family.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: Um But you know, you you you you spend all this time, you know, like we've done here uh on the on the podcast and on a personal level, you know, analyzing the concept of death, and then suddenly death kind of just walks into your own living room and sits down, and you're staring at it, and you know what's about to happen.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: Um so the sorrow is it's physical, it's mental, it's emotional.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you name it, people who have lost a loved one really know and understand uh how this feels, right?
52:08
SPEAKER_01: It's it's a weight that's on your chest uh and that makes it hard to breathe sometimes.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, you you you you get choked up to just you know, when someone says something, you recall a memory of something that is anything can trigger that memory of that close relative, especially when it's a parent, you know.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, you know, like just a while ago, I was you know, staring at my phone and I'm like looking for a text from my mom about something, or I want to call her to give her, you know, some news, or just tell her, hey, I'm gonna stop by and say hi, and can you have some enchiladas for me because I'm hungry, you know, stuff like that, and and just knowing that I can't do that anymore, is you know, it kind of hits all over again.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: That pain comes back, and and um and that's that's kind of where I am at the moment with with all this.
53:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um it's it sucks, man.
53:04
SPEAKER_02: Like there's no other way to put it.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: It it just it sucks.
53:07
SPEAKER_02: And in times like this, um we get told or encouraged, you know, well just try to move on, you know.
53:17
SPEAKER_02: But that's that's hard, you know.
53:20
SPEAKER_02: How how do you move on?
53:22
SPEAKER_02: And even if you manage to move on, it doesn't it doesn't make pain go away because it it never gets easier.
53:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I lost my mom in in back in 2007, lost my dad uh just recently, and it's like yeah, you still get up and you and you go to work and you do your daily activities and and and I guess that's moving on, but it's I don't know, it doesn't make the pain go away, it doesn't make the hurt go away.
53:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean uh it nothing really makes the pain go away um when you're dealing with with this kind of loss.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you think that it's gone away, but it just kind of changes shape a little bit.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: Um and uh but right now to me it's the shape it kind of feels like this jagged rock that that I have uh that I'm carrying with me and and every single jagged edge is poking me in one way or the other and it triggers memories of this and that.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Um but eventually I want that rock because I know that my mom to me she was kind of that's why to me this this metaphor is is is uh appropriate because to me she was like a rock, right?
54:38
SPEAKER_01: She was she was that weight that that helped me uh remain centered even when I was trying to, you know, lead uh a life that was more astray than she would have uh liked, you know.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I eventually I want this jagged rock.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: I hope I I I want it to become some smooth stone, right?
55:00
SPEAKER_01: That that is that represents the memory of of my mother that I can carry with me and pull out, you know, instead of pulling out this phone, I have this rock and that's the memory of my mother, that stone.
55:13
SPEAKER_01: And um, but right now it's it's just heavy, right?
55:15
SPEAKER_01: It feels like this, I feel like an immense guilt, you know, just even being here.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, we talked about this, and and I was like, you know, I'm not sure if I'm ready to go back uh to doing a show, you know, to get behind a microphone and you know, talk about the next thing that's uh controversial or that's popped into our radar.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: And because you wanted to do a completely different show, and I'm like, dude, I don't know if I can do that right now, man.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like I have to get over this thing first.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: I have to say it, I have to at least express it in some way before I can return to doing the the usual things that we do on this show, and um uh so I don't know.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's uh kind of the state of affairs, you know.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh unfortunately, this this season opener is one where we had to begin with a lot of uh, you know, I like to shorten the title to death and loss, right?
56:15
SPEAKER_01: Like there's death in the and that's uh personal, there's death that's impersonal, but connected, and then there's loss because of the people that you lost, and also because of the loss of an innocence uh in the sense, right?
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Of when it comes to like the Chigano movement, right?
56:30
SPEAKER_01: Like the loss of someone who people like you were saying, right, painting this individual in the saintly way.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: So there's there's death and loss.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: That's that's been the theme of this opening, opening segment, this opening episode for the for the show, for the season, and and I just want to apologize to our listeners for that, but you know, I couldn't I cannot move forward without having done this uh first and and uh I don't know.
56:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, bro.
56:57
SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, that's like you you I really like that the way you put that, that it's a jagged rock and that you hope that it becomes a smooth stone because it never goes away.
57:11
SPEAKER_02: Like I know that from experience.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: Um and with me it felt like I'd become untethered.
57:22
SPEAKER_03: Just like my ombligo was gone.
57:25
SPEAKER_03: Like my my connection, my I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how it how it hit me.
57:33
SPEAKER_02: But you know, that's that's where our resiliency comes in, right?
57:38
SPEAKER_02: Um being a resilient people, the same resiliency that uh Rudy Acunia described um in his body of work.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: So we We carry our our dead with us, where our ancestors walk with us, right?
57:53
SPEAKER_02: We don't leave them behind.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: That's that's kind of the the way that I see it.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: Um I think about what Rudy would say, right?
58:02
SPEAKER_01: Like uh to me, Rudy uh in many ways he kind of is uh very reminiscent of my mother.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: He would probably tell me to quit moping and to get back to work and write something, for instance, uh you know, do what you love, do what you like, but stay active.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, he believed in the power of memory as a form of resistance, and that's exactly what he did in all his work.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, he he tried to get us to remember and not to forget our own history, our own past, our struggles, or uh the things that we done got right and the things we got wrong.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just imagine that Rudy Akuna lived, and I don't know how cognizant he was of the of of what was going on, but because I believe he was like already in in hospice, right?
58:46
SPEAKER_01: By the time he he passed or something akin to that, but like to live long enough to see someone who was considered to be quote unquote one of the four horsemen of the Chigano movement get taken down by his own, you know, horrific past, right?
59:06
SPEAKER_01: Like that I think about that, right?
59:08
SPEAKER_01: Like that's to me, like wow, that's that's crazy.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: And then to have him pass away, and then my mother passing away before all this, you know, she would have also told me stuff like Rudy would say, like, uh I can just hear her now.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: She's telling me, you know, meaning, you know, don't be lazy, don't walk around, don't feel sorry for yourself, you know, go do something, do something, do something, basically, do something productive.
59:35
SPEAKER_01: And uh that's what I intend to do, you know.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, yeah.
59:39
SPEAKER_02: We don't have a choice.
59:41
SPEAKER_02: That's that's what's wild about it.
59:44
SPEAKER_02: And maybe that's the the thread that ties all of this together, right?
59:48
SPEAKER_02: Um whether it's the passing of a legend in the community like Rudy, or the shattering of a legacy like Chavez, or the personal heartbreak of losing someone you love, uh it's it just all comes down to how how we choose to remember them, how we choose to remember people.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think uh Cunha, if I'm if I'm if I'm bold enough to say this, should be remembered for his courage, his intellect.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, uh we should probably be remembering the survivors of Chavez's um uh atrocities.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how I mean what do you how do you describe this, right?
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's harsh uh by giving them the justice and and and uh and you know, hearing what they have to say, holding his legacy accountable because he does have that legacy and and we need to hold it to account because he's no longer here, so we have to hold his legacy in his stead to account.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_01: So don't erase the bad, right?
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: We we can't forget it, um, and also the good, you know.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_01: Um as my mother will always uh be with me, and I will always remember her wise words, uh, her tough love because she was uh tough cookie, but she had a ver uh an indomitable spirit about her.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: Then I think that's that's one of the things that really inspired me growing up.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_01: And you know, maybe you know, we had our differences uh of opinion on many things, uh, but you know, uh it she really did inspire a lot of the things that I did, including you know being here as a professor of history, you know.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh I think I owe some of that in part to to her advice and her encouragement and uh the things that she would tell me um so that I could be uh someone of substance, not just some you know random Joe on the street not doing anything productive with his life, right?
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: So grief is to me, you know, like if if you want to interpret it in a certain way, it's love with nowhere to go.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: And so we have to put it to work in some way, right?
1:01:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh we have to put put it back into our own personal work, but we also, I think, need to find a way to put it back into the community.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: And so doing this show to me is part of doing that work, right?
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: That's the way that I see it.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, we are a resilient people, if nothing else, homie.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've survived genocide, we've si we survive oppression, occupation, um fucking we'll survive ICE, we'll survive Trump.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we also survive like the quiet moments, uh, those the personal losses, you know, every day that not everybody not everybody knows about.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_02: But we keep going, um, because we have to, because our ancestors would want us to, and you know, because our kids are watching and and and we have to set that example.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess um all I can say now, I mean all that's left to say is to Dr.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: Acunya, I want to say presente, but he's gonna be front and center.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: Presente to Dr.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_01: Acuna, to the survivors uh of abuse, to all of you, uh just like reiterating what you just said earlier.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: We see you and we believe you, and everyone should follow that advice.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: We need to see survivors, we need to believe them.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_01: And of course, to my mother, I mean, everything else that I've said really comes down to this, you know.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh if I was to say this again as I said it before, and as I said it as I was, you know, sitting there next to her as she was taking her dying breath, you know, I love you.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_01: And I will tell her that until the day I die, I'm gonna continue to tell her how much I love her.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: And um I think that's that's really all I have to say.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: And I love you, bro.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: I love you too, Carnel.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh rest in power.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_03: And now that I'm starting to cry, uh we'll see you next time.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_03: Hasta la próxima, Carnel.