Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 67: Old California Strikes Back w/ Scott Russell Duncan!

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Episode 67: Old California Strikes Back w/ Scott Russell Duncan! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_05: You must excuse me.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_05: This hasn't been easy and no.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_05: But you've learned a lesson.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_05: A lesson in honesty.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: Honesty to yourself and honesty to others.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_05: That lesson will stand you in good step on your life.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_05: I think we've all learned a good lesson.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: I've always heard that honesty is the best policy.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_05: Now I'm catching on to why that's so, no, why that's so, no, why that's so.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantis, where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and we help combat the spread of disinformation about these very topics.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: And Ruben Ariano Tlaka Tecat.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: What is up, man?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: How are you doing?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'm doing great.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: Just soaking in the uh the beginning of the fall weather.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: Beautiful, beautiful weather.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, is it finally cooling down?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's finally fine.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, cool in the low 90s, so that's pretty cool for us over here at this time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_04: Texas still, yeah.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_04: For Texas, I remember still still pretty hot, but um, we're getting there.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: We're we're slowly crawling our way into fall.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did you guys get those um breed of mosquitoes that's been coming up?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, you know, I'm not sure.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh we've been getting them here bad, and apparently it's because of uh that fake uh global warming.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's warm, it's warmer longer, and so these mosquitoes usually don't make it this far north at this time of year.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they from?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're from Mexico, so they're taking the jobs of all the American mosquitoes.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Damn it, of course.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: Those little blood suckers.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say, you may not like to hear it, but we've been uh having a heat wave uh here, and it's been mid-90s.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's what counts as the heat wave here in Oakland.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I just read that they had their first uh documented cases of uh dengue fever in San Diego.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: As a result of these uh mosquitoes coming up.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But luckily, climate change is a hoax.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: They should let everybody in the south know that right now, as they're about to be freaking obliterated by this what is it?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a category.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is yeah in a row.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's pretty horrendous.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Wait, is this like the second one or the third one?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: Which one?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm losing track.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: It might be the third.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought there were two before this, but at this point, you know, who knows?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: I saw a photo of it from space from us uh, and it was uh it looked it looked like um it looked like from a you know those horrible movies like environmental change movies from a few years ago, you know.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: But now it's you know but it's not CGI this time.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I've been I've been hearing people come you know come you know saying, oh that's what Florida gets for you know whatever, you know, like they they make it all political.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, it's like you know, thinking back to like Hurricane Katrina, right, when when that occurred or other disasters that have occurred, like in California, where you're from, and and how a lot of conservative um uh politicos and like especially like religious uh pundits, they get on their little pedestal and then they start talking about oh yeah, you know, California suffering the wrath of God because of their you know uh liberal uh loose agendas or whatever.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: And like I wonder what these people are saying about Florida.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, because Florida tends to be pretty conservative.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'll tell you what they're saying about Florida, Dr.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tlaka Thakat.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, this is happening to Florida as a result of the Biden administration controlling the weather.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not even bullshitting you, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course, and that this is a direct like weather attack.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I did get the memo.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but what they don't know is that the blood offerings I made to Tlalok were successful.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: There you go, and uh the old gods have returned, and Florida's paying the price.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, guys.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tlaloc.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so for our listeners out there who uh are very astute, they might realize that there is a third voice with us for this uh very special episode of Tales from Astlantis.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We are joined by the one, the only Scott Russell Duncan.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Scott, if I may, I'm going to read your bio from your website.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Says that uh Mr.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Duncan is a Chicano writer, senior editor.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's somos en escrito, literary magazine, a press.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually an old one.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the old one.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's an old bio.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, how many bios do you have?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I moved.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where are you now?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm starting a new press uh called My East Poppin' Press with some other folks in the past next year.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nice popping press.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great name.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great name.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're the director of Palabras del Pueblo.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is that still true?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's still true.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a writing workshop for La Raza.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: In 2016, his story, How My Hide Got Color, won San Francisco Lipquakes Short Story Contest.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: His nonfiction piece, Mexican American Psycho is in your dreams, won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he is at work on a collection of short stories called Plurality.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: His newest novel is called Old California Strikes Back.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was put out recently, right?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just like last month.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's about to be is about to come out in the on the 15th.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so this month, yeah.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: This month, yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: And is coming out through Flower Song Press.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: Flower Song Press, yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: Is that a is that a reference to Star Wars?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I think it was the date we just pulled out a hat, to be honest.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean the title, yeah.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: I thought you meant the date.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, we I thought you knew it knew about some secret Star Wars date I didn't know about.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm not like a Star Wars nerd or anything, but hey, yeah, you know, I'll I'll I'll take it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: So I've I've been pronouncing in my mind, I pronounced your name as Scott Russell Duncan for some reason.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've heard that plenty of times, yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people come out and ask me where I'm from, uh, where's the Duncon name?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is it French?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Just make shit up, man.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: I had to make stuff up.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, I had to make I had to make stuff up as a child.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, honestly, nobody knew what I was uh growing up because my white friends wouldn't let me inside their house, their parents, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like they had the no Mexican Allowed rule.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: And um they had the sign on the door that said no Mexican Allowed.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty much.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was like take off your shoes and no and you know, no, no Mexicans, no, no beaners in here.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, basically.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so for some people, I was uh a Filipino for some reason.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Filipinos, you know, some people I was Italian, and some people were uh I forget.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: I had all different stuff, yeah, like all around.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't remember and I couldn't remember so you could have played Richie.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm taking I'm sorry, Richie Valdie.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, Richie.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I could have played Richie, exactly.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: I was Richie, yeah, the uh Luke Diamond Phillips didn't surprise me when so they're recon they're remaking that, you know.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was just about to say they're waiting.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_04: Aren't they remaking?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you're right.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're remaking it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: Why?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they doing that?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, Luis Valdez isn't involved.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is that if I read correctly, if I'm re misremembering, I don't know, but I seem to remember seeing that Luis Valdez wasn't very happy about it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Scott, what do you what do you say?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're over there.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: I've been making jokes about it, just like you know, like Richie's gonna ask Bob, like, I want to know about like my heritage and the cotola.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: I would take me take me to Latinx.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, and all the Chicanos in it are gonna be played by gender fluid Puerto Ricans, yeah.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is the this is the new the remake of La Bamba for the new age, folks.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: La Bambex.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: Dang, that's it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: You're on a roll tonight, crow.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: Man, only I'm only one beer, too.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: Speaking of beers, hold on, hold my beer.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, how are things?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're you live in Oakland.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Oakland, longest place I lived in my entire life.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been there?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, like 2007.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is a long time.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: A bit of a stretch.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, your new book, uh Old California Strikes Back.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I think I'm like three quarters of the way through it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not done with it yet, but I gotta tell you, man, it's really good, it's really entertaining, and it's very original.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: Like I really like I like at first I was like, Who's Ramona?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: And what why why is she so prominent in this book?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_04: But I finally realized, oh, okay, I get it now.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, unfortunately, Ramona's prominent in California.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I grew up in a town called Ramona, yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Took over that's how they took the story over, really.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's why uh that's why I wrote an essay kind of about the the research I did for the book, and I called it uh why California looks like Taco Bell.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's basically the answer is Ramona, right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I mean, yeah, it everywhere you go is like the dentist, uh red tile, uh barreled uh root, you know, and it's all fake, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: Even the stuff they even the stuff you show up to and they say is historic, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: All that stuff was was it's fantasy, it was rubble when the when the US showed up, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: And uh they had uh and they displaced more Indians, they displaced more Indians because of this fantasy about this paternalistic relationship with Indians, because like they showed up and like, well, you're still there and there's rubble.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: Get the hell out of here and let's rebuild it for the you know for white people from the east coast, you know.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And wasn't that um like the exact opposite of the intention that the author had of the book?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she's like it's uh yeah, Helen Hunt Jackson, like I mean, it's a bit problematic, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: But uh but like uh but she's preferable in 1880 she wrote this she wrote uh or perhaps a little bit um before that, she wrote a book a essay called Crime of the Century.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: I forget, it's been a while since I like uh read it, but like it's um something um Dishonored of the Centuries or something like this, about Avic trying to advocate because she got sent uh she got a grant to go to California and like uh because she lost all her family, she started taking up native um like uh like you know advocacy, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And she heard about the Temechla displacement, which of course that was you know that that's a horrible thing.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of stuff going down between you know the invasion and eight, you know, 1870 to 1880, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: But she goes there, she travels all around Southern California.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: She can't find figure out why most tribally affiliated people don't talk to her when she has a big hat with an owl on it, which you know, symbolizes death to quite a lot of native folk, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so what she did was stay with all the Californios, you know, they were like uh you know, kind of pissed off about everything, uh still having parties, kind of scared about and then also scared about losing their land, and they're like uh, you know, and you know, they kind of have intern the same internalized stuff there that they did in New Mexico.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm also New Mexico on my grandfather's side where they're like, uh by the way, I'm Spanish, you know, I'm the most Spaniard to ever ever live, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Don't take my land, don't you know, don't take me because I can't, you know.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: I read that part about your grandpa and uh claim to be Spanish.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, yeah, that was yeah, and so yeah, it's the same, yeah.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's very it's still still around and kicking.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um I kind of love, you know, like I, you know, I really love the genealogy society, Hispanic Genealogy Society, but one part I belonged to it because on the forums and stuff, you always come across people finding out they they 23 me, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like it's not possible.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: How am I mostly native?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_04: How am I it's it's you know, it's all it's always shocking to these folks.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_04: I just gave a talk at one of one of these organizations here in Texas a few days ago.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and um, you know, the theme five years ago when I when I spoke before COVID, the theme was because it was 2019, and so they were kind of commemorating the landing of Cortes in Mexico, and so like 500 years of Cortez is our grandfather, some whatever it was, the title.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, wow, and so and so I did a presentation to sort of contest that.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Well, if if Cortes is my grandfather, how come he was in Coabotecan?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so that was the title of my presentation, and so this time around, it was something similar to that effect again about celebrating our Spanish indigenous mestizo, all this stuff.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, it's and so I decided to go a different way.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, okay, so since these people are obsessed with Spain, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna show them how the Spanish also obliterated another group of indigenous people off of the coast of Africa, the Guanches from the Canary Islands, because you know here in Texas, there's this whole uh population in central Texas and San Antonio specifically that are so proud of their Canary Islander heritage because they were the people that sort of populated that that area.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, hmm, did you know?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: By the way, the Spanish took this out, and now I drove the point home at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: By the end, people were just looking at me like, okay, thank you very much, sir.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know what, Ruben?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is why nobody likes us.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, basically, yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's true.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: I call it the uh your your your Spanish conquistador grandpa left to get uh cigarettes and he hasn't come back yet, you know.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I don't really get it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, I I mean my identity's been spinning top and strange and all that, you know.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Could people tell me one thing, other thing of growing up, or they they want to launch stuff at me saying, you know, get racism for being native, racism for being like Mexican, or racism for being like uh coconut.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: But like I got a white father, and so I don't quite understand.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, they're they're lionizing this this um you know Spanish ancestor from 400 years ago, you know.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: I know it's it's incredible.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: And there's not like a weird test, you know, like it's I think about you know, my grandmother, like uh being the our nate our native ties to a tribal, you know, tribal ties was like a secret.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: She didn't want us to to get enrolled, she didn't want that, you know.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's like old school Chicano.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's like it was uh you know, the it's her generation was before obviously um you know before the 60s and all that in the movement.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like you couldn't get her to talk about it too much, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: And um, even though like my mother and and uncles and uh aunts and whatnot that would go visit family in the reservation, whatnot.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, and I don't know anything about I don't know anything about them ever, you know, and uh yeah, it's strange, it's strange, it's just kind of it's just really odd, you know, like how much how like also what's the other thing?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: I like you get cautioned too.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you go to uh went to this conference and it's kind of turning my stomach because it's it's supposed to be from this Eurocentric label of Latino uh and they say connecting to ancient um heritages, you know, of of Apaches and Pueblo, whoever you know, just for example, like but it was like Mayans, whoever yeah, typical lands.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, but it's but it's like don't say that you're that you're native, right?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: You can't you're not native, but you have and they caution me.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, first off, you don't know my story.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: Why are you cautioning me?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: I could be enrolled, you don't know.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: B, it's like you're you're writing upon our our literature and you're you're making it, you are one thousand percent shoehorning it into a colonial narrative, and into it's like from an outlook, and they're assuming your identity too.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: Like they look at you and they're making already all these assumptions about who you are, your identity, what who you can and cannot be, what you can and call yourself and cannot call yourself.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, yeah, wait a minute.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like, hold on.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like, who are you?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, yeah, yeah, they sound like fucking cops, is what they sound like.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like just how about that?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_04: Show me your papers, yeah.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_04: Oh I mean, that's one reason I'm like, yeah, like my name is like very your northern European.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people get like upset.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't take it from people with southern European names, right?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: But just like me, my ID gets checked all the time, right?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm not supposed to belong to this name, and and it's just a little bit odd.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, I'm kind of like throwing it into people's faces that yes, my name is Scott Russell Duncan, right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's just like the you know, the US has been around here for you know since 1846, you know, at least, and they even before that, because a lot of uh American families actually came to California and kind of married in, and uh, you know, they caused trouble whenever the invasion happened, of course, but you know, there wasn't a uh, you know, so the contact between these cultures has kind of been going on for a while.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: And so this is this is kind of what informs your your work, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, your current body of work, uh Old California Strikes Back, it kind of is drawing on these themes that have played out throughout your entire life and and your connections with family and and the place you grew up in and the way that the society sort of the way you perceive it and how people perceive you, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it affects me every day, to be honest.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like every day, like if somebody says, like it's strange that, you know, like someone will say I look so indigenous, one day, like I hear it, or you know, whether they mean it good or bad, I kind of sigh because next week I'm gonna hear, um, like I, you know, I look so Mexican, right?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Or I don't look Mexican, or I'm gonna hear how white I look the next the week after that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: It all it sounds, you know how things happen in threes sometimes.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of so if I hear one thing, I'll hear the other the other thing next week.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't look Mexican at all, I don't look native at all, I don't, I don't look white at all.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's really odd, you know.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: So you take the best of three, is that what I'm saying?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's kind of a it's a joke.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's like it's part of um it it's the the way the US has always written about Mexicans, right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: And indigenous people has overlapped quite with it, right, about every in indigenous people, but they've used they used it because it's like if we're we're Latinxes, if we're or if or if we're Spanish or we're Hispanic, that means we have no claim to land.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: We have, you know, like our culture is not a native culture, and so yeah, we're eternal immigrants, yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I call it existential attack upon our upon our identity because um, like I was on this panel once and it was kind of early, and so I wasn't exactly playing the game, if you know what I'm saying.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: I was a little too tired.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's and they kept on saying, as a as an immigrant population, I'm like, hey, hang on a second, wait a second.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're all not immigrants because like A, like we're from this continent, and B, the US crossed us, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're gonna be including being this kind of inclusive of a Chicano Chicano's into this terminology, you're gonna have to respect that, that we're all not you can't label us all like like this, you know.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: And and it like you're saying, like it goes um, like I grew up in Southern California and in North Texas, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: In Dallas.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I live grew up in a town uh called Ramona near San Diego, and my family's from LA, and they were, you know, they they were both in the indigenous people there, the people that you know, um I even come from an you know, people aren't like this, but I also come from a mission guard that put down a revolt, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um that it was against some Lucenio people.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also you know part Lucenual, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: So it's that's that's the same story in New Mexico a lot.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: We come across in pretty much all of the colonial stories like this.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just strange that when I'm walking around town, people throw when you know hillbillies were throwing the urine jugs at me, which you know, as I was writing this book, it became more and more like I'm remembering like this happened all the time.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: I totally normalized it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like happens, yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: It happened all the time.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: When I was a kid, you know, they're like, Go go the fuck back to Mexico if I'm near the Barona reservation, they would assume I'm native, and so they're like, you know, the Barona, which I'm you know, I'm not part of them, but like they would throw they would make um they would do like hoo-hoo-hoo, you know, and yeah, and throw the urine jug, you know, and so damn.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they getting all these urine jugs from?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right, is there like is that a common thing?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Are you just missing just you may not be from a rural place, you know.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: If you're in your pickup, you know, you're and you're driving, I don't know, driving in the mountain.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_04: I've done that before when you know, a long time ago on a long trip.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you don't like yeah, you don't keep it.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you don't keep it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: You find a Mexican to throw a Mexican child to throw it at or Indian child.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here we call it trucker tea.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, yeah.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Archaeologists will be doing survey on the side of roads sometimes, and I'll always tell the new uh the new people on the crew, like, uh stay away from the trucker tea.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, What's that?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you'll know when you see it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like the Mountain Dew, right?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the book, I really like the way it's written because I mean it's got really funny parts, but it's not written like as a comedy, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very it's very straightforward and it and it goes back and forth between this like autobiographical stuff and then this fantasy stuff, and like it starts getting hard for me to determine like, well, is he exaggerating here, or did this happen, or what's like what's what's the real part and what's the fake part?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, man, I felt like um, and this is meant as a compliment.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how other people feel like this, but uh it felt like I was reading like a Chicano Hunter S.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thompson at times, and uh he's one of my favorite writers, so that's uh meant as a uh a compliment.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: But well, I like Brown Buffalo because I keep it real.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just joking, yeah, yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more of a Oscar Zeta Costa kind of guy.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, that yeah, I appreciate that.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like I like Hunter S.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thompson as well.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, I mean, it goes into one thing because it's like who we are is kind of a fantasy, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And like what and I did quite a lot of research for this.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: You may not you may not even get that from the book because um, like I started looking more and more, and I hit against this Spanish California like mission fantasy, right?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: That Zoros and all these other things that they created that's been going on since 1880.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all for terrorists, it's all to divorce us from who we are.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's to to uh whitewash us literally.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all a fantasy.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also a fantasy to think that people who come from across the ocean get to say if we're native here or not.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: But like it's the U.S.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: started genocide right when they came, you know, they started like um displacing people, hunting people.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: They literally hunted people.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's the Northern California genocide.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: Only a few years ago did actually see like any kind of commemoration commemoration at the Oakland Museum over here about it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: But they also enslaved native people, like with the um, what do you call them?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: Vagrancy laws in LA.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_03: And they they readily uh they readily took up, you know, you know, there's and we look today who who who's out there in the field doing all the work, who's in the factories, it's still it's still brown folks, it's still indigenous people, along with you know, some other people, um marginalized folks, but it's and and then everyone's very much okay with us not getting paid as much, you know, for for hard labor and doing the worst jobs.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so it it's uh and then you also see, you know, growing up in San Diego, you see a lot of migrant workers and what people say about it, and um just how normal they try to normalize like this uh kind of trash talk against Mexicans, trash talk about, you know, like at least back then before NAFTA, it was a lot just a lot of young farm farm boys from like you know, some normal, you know, like neighboring states for the most part, at least back then, right?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: And uh they did all the work, you know, in the semi-rural area.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just uh uh you know, they were sending most of the money they got back home to support their families.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just disgusting how everyone treated them and how uh dehumanized, like you know, small town people were bragging, you know, older guys bragging about um I remember one in particular just bragging about like he was like uh hurling batteries at a guy, you know, goddamn, and robbing, robbing their camps, robbing camps of like really poor people, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And and beating them up and doing all sorts of stuff.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's uh who is it okay to do this to?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: What they gotta dehumanize, dehumanize us, dehumanize us and them, and and you know, we're you know virtually the same to to to excuse like the the how the society exploits people and and also reinforce it goes on with these uh these stories they tell, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like who they are, who are and it makes you know, you watch Star Trek.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I'm a nerd, I watch Star Trek and all this stuff, and I always wondering, like, so you know, like I write in the book, like Captain Kirk's beaten up the Gorn by Vasquez Rocks, that's where a Chicano folk hero was.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's one like you know, well, amongst folk heroes, California wasn't nearly as good as Texas, right?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Far as like saying things that actually were resistive.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: Tabercio Vasquez got pretty close, um, you know, after the fact, and maybe he didn't kill anybody, maybe he did, you know, but he did hang out with some look up his one of his gang members in uh he went to San Quentin, hardest looking Mexican on the like ever been in entire life, makes Danny Trejo look like a kitten.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's saying something.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean this guy like his San Quentin uh prison.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember the guy's name offhand, but like um Tiburcio uh Musquez Vasquez.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he he that's what's what um but he he might have not shot anyone.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he skated San Quentin, he went all around California, he was celebrated by all the Californios because he he he danced, he sang, he did poems, and it's just strange.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I went to all these places and he might have gone, he visited my family because it was very common for Mexican family to put him up because he was even though he was on the run, he only robbed Americans.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: Was he before or after uh Murieta?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: He was after, after, and that's the other thing.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Marietta's a big uh like uh character in my book.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, is just I think he was just the easy part of him is yeah, part, yeah, part of him is, like I said, he's just a very easy symbol because our fragmented culture, right?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: Our fragmented histories, our fragmented everything, and you want to know more, and you know, you also get you're not quite getting it all the answers you want, right?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, because we're you know occupied, defeated, uh, we don't tell the story.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's like, and and on even before the you know, this current colonization, there was another colonization that that mixed all these people, moved all these people, enslaved people, and that makes it even more like um what's the word, like confusing, right?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh yeah, Marietta's in it.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um and on top of it, there's like the figure of Ramona that's like um the fantasy.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: She's literally like she's supposed to be half California native and half uh Scottish, right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: But she's still this fantasy Mexican, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: She's still like have like she's damned by you know the the the Spaniard, Spanish, uh, Spanish uh family, right?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: That raises her by adoption, but she's still kind of the fantasy, the American of the Mexican uh kind of mix, you know, how they've always portrayed us as being like mixed like this, so they can use both, like you know, like um if they don't want us to be native, they can flip, yeah, they can flip-flop, right?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: As you guys and that's that's the novel, right?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of the story behind the novel.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty in the yeah, you know, and then throw in, like, you know, we're a product of like social forces.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a product, you know, like my um I'm around because of wars and stuff like that.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: My parents met uh because my dad, you know, left Texas to go to Vietnam, was on on leave, and the same thing.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like my grandpa would probably never have left New Mexico, right?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like he's from um a very rural place called Mora.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um get out of here.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's his last name?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Fernandez.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: My wife's no any pachecos.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: So oh, if she knows any Pachecos, Owellos, um, Mondragones, I think Garcia's.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a very I don't know if you've been to Mora, but it's not a thriving mega metropolis by any type of, it's really beautiful up there, and like everybody knows everybody.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So well, you'd you'd mentioned watching uh Star Trek, and one of my favorite parts of the book that I've read so far is when you talk about your mom taking you to see uh the wrath of Khan and how uh you talk about this movie can be viewed through a Chicano lens because you know Khan is is played by um Hamanthavan.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um you you go into how Spock as as a half-breed, you right, he has to attain his full humanity by dying and and showing that he's that's what we're for, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and it uh really struck a chord with me, man.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's actually a a sad story.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I love I I mean I love Wrath of Khan, and I mean, obviously, my book has to do with like my you know, obviously horrible relationship with my mother as well, right?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: And uh she was abusive and she was you know, I actually toned it down for the book.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so where my uh hopefully my family hear this and know that um, but like out of the blue one time, like because she would be kind of like you know, saying Scotty, your fucking stupid space, space TV show, you're gonna turn this shit off, you know, all that kind of thing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: All of a sudden, let's go see Star Trek.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is a trap.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: This is a trap, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: I expected something's wrong with the movie, something's wrong with it, but I went.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: But she was actually that's the only thing I can think of before the age of five that was a nice, like mother-son time, uh, just even a little bit.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um and like we went to see this, and to me, you know, it's like uh that movie is completely the fear of the the internal of the empire and the and how the internal um the what did you call it?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: The internal empire, right?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: I've got the internal other, right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because uh they got this, you know, they have this beef with um other powers that's going on, uh Klingons, whatnot, you know, Russians.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was during the 80s, and uh, but what about the marginalized folks?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, there's uh, you know, you know, uh Chekhov, the communist, uh, then there's uh the uh African-American, I forget his name, uh, but he's captain, he was cap Chekhov's captain.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: But uh Khan captures them both and puts a little like earbug into them.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: So he he got he got into their minds, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so like you have marginalized people under the doctrine of commun uh socialism and under like you know, like it's basically brown people getting together, black, brown, and you know, uh socialism getting together, uh Khan, and uh, you know, and they often have this what was it that Raza Kosmika was is something that you know turned out it's kind of a racist thing and strange, but people still talk about it.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: And um, but still this kind of talk about eugenics and whatnot that's around Khan, would they still stick on us?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: They're still, you know, when you saw like uh then that's a mix of things, but Avatar, the whole thing about the fear of the body brown body that was coming out pretty strong in that.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing with Khan, he's super strong, you know, even though you know Montebond's actually Spanish, but still, you know, like a little confusion will happen.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine with that.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: But so he talked about Chicano stuff like I was a prince a hundred years ago, you know, he things like that, all the old Chicano like Lang Grandma.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so it's like uh and then he's like you know, you know, he he played the Monteband played the Latin lover, and he was always this kind of stereotype.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, like he's really passionate, um, and he can't let anything go, right?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: He should he could have just gone, he had a starship, and he could have gone.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: And he also had a love boat too, if I remember correctly.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, love, but yeah, yeah, the fantasy island.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm getting my shows mixed up.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_04: It was the fantasy island, that's right, not the love boat, god damn it.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, but so so I'm watching this this movie, and I was like, why'd she take me?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Why did she take me to this?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Why was she nice there?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: And kind of like um, because you know, like to be a little bit um contrived about it, I have to admit, but it's still like how are we in society is basically how like Kant, he's a monster, like we're we're monster, we're the monster in all as native people as in all these TV shows, right?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: And a little forward with it sometimes, but like Kirk fighting the the the Gorn by Vasquez Rocks.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: How how is that an alien landscape if one of our uh our Chicago heroes were there, and it's also in part of this native place here, like so I think it has to boil down to ritual.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it to ritualize through narrative of who you are, and who you being the Anglo-American, they're the ones that are able to dominate have dominated the land, and you know, they they get you know anxiety over it because um if there gets to be too many marginalized folks, you gotta do something, right?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: As we're kind of seeing, right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like you gotta get you got to get rid of them.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's like too many to uh like you kind of wonder like why are they against migrant workers when they exploit them?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is because there's too many around and that you don't want it to flip over and you can't can't exploit them anymore, so you gotta get rid of them so they're manageable.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_04: So it's kind of and so this it's that fear of the slave revolt, still, right?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: Fear, yeah, fear of the slave revolt, Indian tack, all that kind of same stuff.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this othering of Mexicans, I mean, we saw that as recently as Trump with his bullshit, you know, they're they're rapists, they're this, they're that.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're always like the fallback uh bad guys in this country.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: We banditos, yeah.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: We make them the the easy bad guys, and the one thing no, I'm pretty sure you didn't mention it, but con, you know, that's it's a Maya word for serpent.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: I need to do an edit.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, I mean, is that what they're referencing in the con?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because it has that no, they're probably talking about Genghis Khan.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he he's supposed to be from India, and but still the similarity there is kind of like you could do something, you could play with that, you know.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then how like how in the serpent in Mesoamerican societies is actually a bringer of knowledge, whereas the white con is the bringer of death and destruction.
• 37:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, actually, there was a big rattlesnake that lived across the street from me as a kid.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciated him because he would rattle each time he got, you know, like down the trail.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: But it was a jogging trail, so people are always freaking out, like screaming.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just walking by and like he's letting you know he's there.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: Why you why would you like to do that?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when you started writing this book, did you did you have like a set in your mind?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's here's the beginning, the middle, and the end, or did you just have like a loose outline, or did you just start writing and say, like, well, let's just see where this takes me?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: I would write and then I would do research, and it took me quite some time.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't think it would, right?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: I really thought it would be like I wanted the book that would answer because you know, there's always people demanding like people would demand where I'm from, strangely, like you know, because you know, I have a northern European name and I'm brown for anyone who can't see.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I stay inside, so maybe I'm a little browner, like you know, I'm kind of pale for, but um, but like people would say, So where like they would do this thing.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can't remember I put in the book, it's been a while, you know, but like they would say, So where uh where's your family from?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean I'd be like LA, right?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, but when they come, you know, like but where were you from LA?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: LA, yeah, and then like uh when'd you come um from Mexico?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't, you know, it's like when did you come?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, say wouldn't they come from Mexico?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't, you know, and Mexico came from us, bitch.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so people get upset.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and yeah, and so I would I had some certain notion, I wanted to end all the questions, and I kind of it it did transform me, it put me more on decolonizing path.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say the book went from A to B, and I'm trying to be C to D these days, right?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: And um, like I I was I was using terms when I started out, like you know, like uh mestizo and all that kind of stuff.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: There might be a few.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to have a few in in the beginning in particular, uh, and now I'm just not you know, I'm more you know, more read upon it, more thought upon it, and like you look and see why am I despised of you know, why am I just despised in society other than you know my personality and whatnot?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you kind of see it's because you're indigenous, you know, you're brown.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so it kind of winds up in a certain place, and so I would I would go and also I was trying to write um I I really like flash fiction and short stories, and that's my kind of preferred form.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I was kind of how can I write something that could be composed of these things and also go in be thematically, which I figured it helped out thematically because it was frag, you know, it could be like uh different pieces of the whole, like fragmentation is definitely part of it.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was also looking at, you know, of course, uh hopscotch, uh, what's in the Spanish Raula and um by um what's his name?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is this uh Julio Cortázar?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: Catazo, yeah, that's it.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Cataza, yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I kind of like that.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was kind of it's kind of literary, choose your own adventure, and I thought that kind of lent to the fragmentation.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I I actually did travel California.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: The title is actually in reference to the first Hollywood movie, which is Old California, which is part of the fantasy about um Spanish California, and by the guy uh D.W.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Griffith, that's his name.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: He did um right what was it, uh Birth of a Nation about the Clan.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, the Old California is just as racist, really.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's just as racist as trying to divorce us from who we are.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was trying to uh promote a fantasy about like a horrible genocide.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's just uh, but it's the first Hollywood movie, and it's it's it's just a strange, it's a strange thing.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, also my family, some of my family names all all around Southern California, um, like Verdugo.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember I was at a some online event and it was um a bunch of like there's some native uh professors and whatnot, and someone mentioned Verdugo meant uh executioner, and they'll write it down for their little poetry later.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, wait a second, that's just a name.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Hang on a second, that's nothing to do.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: If it's called Smith, it doesn't mean they're doing Smith, you know.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean not to defend a guy, but you know what I'm saying.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like Verduo means executioner?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: He has an old word for executioner.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: It'd be like if your name was John X John Kill John Killer or something like that, you know, or John uh um Hood.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: John John Wick, you mean?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: John Wick, yeah.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: That that fools a killer.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and well, I basically wrote um I what I basically decided was you know like to really uh to have the structure around the the narrative of the of the um of the travel story, right?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's kind of like you know, the idea of self-travel, but also it's all tied with uh you know commercialism and commodification of history and people.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: There's a weird, there's a weird are it the stuff I found was so so so weird.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like it literally was a thing about Mission Indians back, um like you know native people making baskets, and it was like Pokemon.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like you go from you're supposed to come to California, drive out to California and go from like one place to the other collecting their baskets, collecting the baskets, and it's like supplies, spoons and stuff, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like you gotta collect it.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was really odd.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: And they also would come to like California, like Mexican like ranch houses in the middle of nowhere.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: They're supposed to be where Ramona stayed, and they would like run in, steal steal everything, or just like start sitting on chairs and uh or then like run out and like steal, or you know, but a lot of times they would run in, start stealing stuff, and then say, Um, like you're supposed to feed us now, aren't you?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the you know, and like and then they'd want to have like they expected because the book showed them um, you know, like feeding people, Mexican hospitality.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: It showed them Mexican hospitality, and I I kind of I think I wrote something about like like um Helen Hunt Jackson, she wrote about this.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: It must have been the first time she met a Mexican because, like, you know, it's like it's all Mexican stuff she's writing about, ranch life and stuff like that.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so people would literally come across and it would be I forget the same as fam, some of the families in particular, they would show up um and really just like mess up with her stuff, and like they'd have like you know, all of a sudden, like 50 hundred people over, like white people, right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Trying to like hell no, like wanting them to stay, like put me up, you know, put me up, like this is the Airbnb or something, yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like all of a sudden, you know, and and I don't have to tell you, like, there was like uh not everybody had a big ranch, obviously.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of poor people, poor Californians, poor whatever, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of native people started saying they're Mexican because they didn't want to get hunted or they want to get robbed and all the other stuff like Greencoe putting slave in slavery, and so the the amount of people having houses and land and uh you know uh was on a steady decline, uh or and so before everyone got kind of moved to like the barrio and stuff like that.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so it it's a little it's it's just a little funny, you know, like they're going to people that that have little and demanding.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's interesting the parallels that you just pointed out with the Mission Indians in California and the Mission Indians here in Texas.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's a very similar story because after Texas independence, um, a lot of the indigenous people, like the Coahuaticans, uh, a lot of the Apache, um, some Karanquas and others, um they were given a choice.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: Either you get out of Texas or we're gonna come after you, we're gonna kill you if you stay within the boundaries of of Texas.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so a lot of a lot of uh natives to the north of of Austin decided to go to Oklahoma, the Indian territory, so like the Caddo, the Tonkawa, the Wichita.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: So those folks uh went to um to Oklahoma, but the people who stayed in Texas were in South Texas, people like Huabotecos and Caracas.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_04: And so they decided to pass as Mexicans because they wanted to stay in their homeland, right?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of people did in California, yeah.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_04: And so and so there's a similarity between what would happen to them back then and and how they're beginning to reclaim their indigenity and their place among fellow Native American peoples.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_04: And I was just on a panel this weekend, or actually yesterday, for Indigenous Peoples Day, and um, and we had the same discussion about Cobaltican identity and the difference between state recognized and and and non-federally recognized tribes and what comes with the territory in terms of like being federally recognized as opposed to not being.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so one of the things that that I was um uh talking on is that for us uh as Coaltecos, those of us that that still maintain that identity, um, we don't really care to have federal recognition.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_04: There are some that do, I'm not speaking for all Coatecans, but for the most part, like the ones that I know don't really care for that.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_04: But what does matter is having the ability to carry on our medicine meetings, our traditions uh legally without any repercussions, without being um arrested for being in ceremony and and things like that.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_04: And also because um, you know, we we like to um you know repatriate the remains of our ancestors that are found here in Texas.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so if you're not federally recognized, then there's really no way you have very limited recourse to be able to do that.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so there are some people within the Qualiteching community who are beginning to have second thoughts about you know becoming federally recognized and you know, BIA Indians just to have those benefits to be able to, you know, do your traditions without fear and repercussions of being arrested and and fined or even thrown in jail, or also as well, being able to claim the the remains of your ancestors and rebury them.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_04: And so, I mean, I'm sure it plays out a little different in California, but I mean it's uh I see a lot of kind of like Yeah, it's a lot of the same stuff.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I mean I think you also I mean you want to be um I imagine also you want to be in charge of your your narrative of your own narratives and your own culture, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right, because I and one thing I I kind of noticed pretty much uh um certain populations have uh like uh outsiders feel more than a thousand percent to like to say who who who is authentic, who is not, you know, and it's that's something that happened to me all my life.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I also writing this book I came across there is needs to be there does need to be like a discussion amongst Native people and the people that are like Mexican people, right?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because like particularly in this land, because we're double colonized.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: And um, because I come across like the story of like my aunt, one of my ancestors, like I said, of Mission Guard, even though I'm partly uh Lucano uh Saboba, um, you know, he he put down a revolt by um by the Tongva, right?
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: Even though it wasn't a the horrible bloody one that you often come across, as far as we know, right?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because like the Spanish were writing the um narrative, but it was one of the figures that is becoming larger, at least for like many Chicanos in LA and other native folks.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's like of uh Topirina, she was the leader, and I quite really admire her story and her strength, and she's someone that I look to like, hey, we don't need to take it, we don't need to, we can stand up and we can uh be you know try to uh be proud of who we are, you know, all those kind of things are good from figures.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_04: But so was this was this rebellion uh that was put down, it was put down by one indigenous group against a different indigenous group, right?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was it was by it was by so it was in a Spanish mission.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's pretty close to where my mother grew up, which is a little funny.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and I think my cousins actually went there for the boy, their Boy Scout uh badge, whatever the but uh it was uh San Gabriel Art Archangel, and they um basically uh the Spaniards were saying, uh, you know, and also you gonna you gotta say kind of like saying uh the Anglos when you when everyone goes to Iraq, maybe, because it's like you know, there's different kinds of people there, obviously from Mexico that that went to California, and and also uh uh native people from that got decimated in in Baja California, and that were shown supposed to be like good examples of what could happen to you, which is like you know, they can destroy your language, your culture, and your your your physical physical well-being, but they were there, and so basically they forbid the funeral dances, and a child had died, and they wanted to do a native Tonga dance, and particularly my ancestor that that was I knew was there, he said no.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh they heard so a different corporal of the guard knew the Tongua language, and so um he he heard them over talking about Torporinas, you know, getting everyone together and they're gonna kill all the priests and kill all the guards, right?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so he set up a little ambush.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, they disguise themselves as a priest, and they stood on top of the um this is all like that that many people, by the way.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like 30 people 30 people versus 60 people or 50 or 40 people, something like that.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, basically it was put down and they, you know, they write out this long trial about uh of Torporina.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: All the men caved in and said, Oh, this be like, I don't know why we went against the Spaniards.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: You treat us so great, right?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: The the fathers were always the best to us.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: She's the only one who didn't cave in.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so they they made her divorce her husband, and she had status.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: So she was uh it wasn't like she was a daughter of a chief, right?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: Of a leader.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so they married her to Mission Guard in Monterey, and that's where she died.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: And last thing they write about her is basically that she became a good Catholic woman, and you know, she gets par buried into one of the, you know, you know, there's no marker like that, a mass grave there.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: But like uh for me, I was writing the book.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: There's not too much reference to her because I was thinking, because in the middle of it, I'm like, I want to kind of address this part as like my own indigenous Californian connections, my own, you know, like you know, I'm related to like war criminals, you know, like and people, you know, not that this guy was the worst of the worst, but like other other people like that.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to kind of have internal dialogue, but it's like I also want to kind of figure out how to do that.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I thought Toparina might kind of take over the book in a certain manner.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I thought, well, let me put it this way she deserves her own book, yeah.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: Not this, not this Ramona bullshit, not share space with this Ramona bullshit.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_03: She deserves her own space, and so that's why I anybody who might know them a little more California history, like why I didn't talk more about Toparina because I like because I respected Torporina not to have share space with some fake fake nonsense that they throw.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that your next project?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, one of them, yeah.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to figure out how to do it in in a in a proper manner, if you know what I'm saying.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like um absolutely, yeah.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: So as a as a Chicano author, it's like it's hard enough as it is to get books written and published and noticed and promoted.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I imagine, you know, being a Chicano author, I mean, maybe if you sold out and you were like, Well, I'm a Latinx, you know, author and I'm part of this hip new Latinx movement, you might get a little bit more love.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: But when you come out specifically, like Ruben always says, you know, disrupt Latinidad by proudly using the the word Chicano.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you when you disrupt that Latinidad, it's like you're not playing by the rules anymore.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine that makes it harder to it does make it harder.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, sorry, I'm sorry.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, go go ahead.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you know where I was going with it.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it makes it a lot harder.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because you're not supposed to say anything, right?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and also as uh Chicano author, uh, you only exist uh during Hispanic Heritage Month.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like you only exist, and a lot of like, you know, the ed I I don't like our a lot of people who think they're like I don't I don't know how to say it, like uh they can uh spit shine a turd or something like that.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: They they want to call it Latine author uh month.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: Have you seen this new one?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_04: Chica Chiquane, Chicane, yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_04: I kind of put that because people get upset because I use it every time I read it in my mind it I read it as chicane and I'm like Chicane, this doesn't make any sense.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: I put that now and then for academics, to be honest.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: I put that because um as I left, like there was a big issue at this former organization, which you guys had mentioned, I'm not gonna mention again, uh, about using you using any any other because I typically use Chicano, but I know, but I don't want to be not you know non-inclusive, but then also no academics if if uh I don't want to hear a bunch of BS if I don't say Chican X, I don't want to hear but so sometimes I say Chican A or Chicon X is for them.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um but but I also I don't know what the answer is either.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I don't know.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what to do, but I I hear a bunch of nonsense no matter what I what I use.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but they but as far as the Latinx Latino people, um uh it's not for us.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: It literally is meant it it it melts away our our concerns, you know.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like we're not it we're not uh it makes us um it wants to regulate uh like you know John Ling Wizamo has this, I haven't seen it yet, or you know, but has this uh I mean thing coming out for can you imagine John Ling Wizamo in your Chicano history?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_04: I I can't, yeah.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: I know, and so basically I can't do it.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh it's supposed to be kind of like a tourist headdress that you put on and say, Okay, I recognize my indigenous ancestry rather than being an indigenous person, rather than doing something about uh the environment, about all the other things, about the history, about the you know, all about uh the social issues.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it makes it harder, yeah.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: Being in Chicano makes it harder because uh people come at me because I I speak like this, I got a white name, as they say, right?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I'm a strange mixture of both very authentic Chicano experiences and very like you know, non-authentic Chicano experiences, right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh I was born in East LA, right?
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: But also grew up in a redneck town.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hey man, but all Chicano experiences are authentic Chicano experiences, yeah, exactly.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's right, but also I would go to like my family's ranch in New Mexico, right?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like it's it's it, you know, I had a white father, which makes it a little you know different.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, like I had to tell him growing up, you know, you expect me to come to your house, you've got to have some like hot sauce if you want me to eat your food.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Season your food, goddammit.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: Season your food.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was like literally, yeah, yeah, that was me as a teenager.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: I can't steal from you I mean any more food unless you season it.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's like people haven't watched that documentary with that with that half Chicano half white guy who goes to prison and needs a gang.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what's it called?
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um blood in, blood out blood in blood out, miklo, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Miklo's okay.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you, I when that came on uh table like in the 90s, right?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: I was eating a sandwich and I'm like, oh, this what the hell is this stuff?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'll put on, all right.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I literally dropped the sandwich because that opening scene, I I I lived because my you know, my dad uh like hired some, you know, you know, like the scene is like uh Miklo's dad's like they're working outside, and he's like, tell these Mexicans that they need to work harder or whatever, Rosie's like, why don't you tell them?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: I literally lived that without the actor.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's me.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: I feel seen.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: He felt seen.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: I've never well I've never seen, I never ever seen any kind of like that, like a you know, any kind of that kind of mixture, and he's actually that guy's like half white, Apache, and like Mexican, right?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I don't know.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know, but all I know is every kid that's half Chicano, half white has been cursed with oh yeah, being called Miklo by everybody in his family and his friends.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: El Miklo, el Miklo, god damn it.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: I've been called Miklo, I've been called Wero, I've been called Indio, I've been called those are all my deck names going down the list.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: But but I I have to I have to um quibble a little bit with what you were saying at the beginning in terms of Chicanos only get recognized during uh Hispanic Heritage Month.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because like is it really about us now?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, because it's really not.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's about Spain, it's about all these other places.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I didn't mean oh, I didn't know about us.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I didn't mean it like that was a good thing.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't mean that like like that was a complaint.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_04: Because like that's the only opportunity, like um but even even even though it's seen as an opportunity for us, like it's really not because it's yeah, they don't really want to hear the Chicano experience.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, we do have August, which as you all know is Dano Heritage.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's where I was going with it.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what we do.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_03: But the thing is, like the academia is not having like so.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: We have this this big, well-funded uh reading series in August for Chicano Heritage Month.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: It just, you know, like I'd go to that in a heartbeat.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I always consider about banning um Hispanic Heritage, you know, doing all that stuff.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I would like to, you know, if everybody wants to like invest more into like uh Chicano Heritage Month, I'm I'm down for it.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it's just like um I don't hear anything, you know, as a right, you know, this is my first book coming out, but I got stuff published on on you know magazines, anthologies, whatnot.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was hearing your work, man.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's really impressive.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, I just it should be more out there.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but like they uh I don't hear anything all year, it's not like come out and until that this month rolls around.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_04: Well, next time, next time they reach out to you, tell them, you know, I'm Chicano year-round, right?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_04: You can you can call me anytime, 12 months out of the year, baby.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have to wait until this fake holiday month or whatever you want to call it.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: So as a Chicano author, and you're you get you know, probably not taken as seriously, or you're not given as much exposure as other authors, and it wasn't that long ago, it was like damn, how long, like pre-COVID, maybe maybe four years ago, when American Dirt, do you remember that whole fucking rust up over that stupid ass book?
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this woman's book, and for people that don't know, American Dirt was a story of like you know, Mexican migrants, quote unquote migrants, and uh the Mexican experience in the United States, but it was written by a white woman, and she just made so much goddamn money off of this thing, bro.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: She was featured on Oprah, got another book coming, too, doesn't she?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, about Puerto Rican experience, about her Puerto Rican experience, yeah.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_04: Popping around.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_04: Her next one's gonna be about the Cuban experience.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean she's gonna be the world's foremost see Latinx, or she's sucking up all your uh that's right.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: All your I always said there only could be one sunlight, there only could be one like brown writer that they actually support, but the mainstream, I mean I mean, you know, there's only like one, and she took out that space.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that if you're asking me about American dirt, I it it did set me off pretty bad.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because, you know, like because you know, I've been I've been an editor and I know a lot of great writers, and to think that you can't even break into mainstream, right?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I a lot of stuff I do is actually like far as um the press I'm trying to start, my East Popping Press, Palabas de Pueblo.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, our main thing is like to reconnect our writers with our community, right?
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because as a right because as a writer, the thing I heard around this book quite a lot is I'm being published by um you know Flowersong Press, which isn't a mainstream like Gringo Press, right?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um I've heard from agents, editors, everything, and they're being very paternalistic.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: They say basically brown people don't read.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's what we had a read, uh me and my friends made a reading series for a while called Brown People Don't Read because we all heard about it.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we all the editors and agents were telling us that you have no audience that uh your community doesn't support you.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: And in a lot of ways, it's true.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: They don't uh always support, you know, they're they're biting Harry Potter they do read, but they buy Harry Potter, they buy, you know, things like they read stuff like that.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: So but I think it might be changing.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're kind of going through a renaissance.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: There are there's more um small presses, there's more books, there's more small Chicago presses more than ever.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, yeah, like the um, but I think our culture is in a spinning its wheels for for quite some time now because uh the conditions haven't changed for one.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_03: So like you're gonna get some of the same stories, but at the same time, we're writing, we're not writing for each other, we're writing for for um somebody white on the east coast to uh to like it enough, to be familiar enough with it, but also not being be indicted enough by it, you know.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: They they feel like something's wrong.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, there's something wrong with uh exploitation dehumanization, and the people who benefit off it like don't like the uh one of their benefits is not is fragility, comfort, all those kind of things we all know, right?
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: So they don't want to hear it, yeah.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_04: So, in a sense, what I'm hearing is that there's a parallel here with Hunt and this woman with American Dirt because it's a white lady who is writing about the brown experience, and so other white people can relate to it because it's a white person that is kind of speaking their language and describing this culture to them in a way that they can uh digest it.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's also one of the main problems I would say for a lot of like California, like people writing about Californios, right?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and people like and and you know, to less extent, uh like new Mexicans, right?
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because I, you know, my grandfather's side from there and I watch, but there's sense to be there's more new Mexican writers, but like uh everyone, particularly white people and non-Mexicans, feel very entitled to write about the California, like uh what Californios are, what even Mexicans of California are.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I can't believe it, you know, and like because I I learned the history, learned what's going on, and like it's everyone's hobby, you know, that's we're we're all made into their hobbies.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you this how much of this is coming from Chicano authors not being promoted properly, that like the whole reason like Chicanos aren't reading Chicano authors or like supporting Chicano authors, how much of it is coming from just a general lack of awareness that these books even exist?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: And how much of it is coming from uh a lack of distribution networks available, like bookstores, right?
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, god damn, there's there's hardly any bookstores anymore.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like Amazon killed everything.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's there's the third part, which you know, I hate to admit, but it is part of it, is uh we tend like to not support our own in terms of like just coming out of jealousy, like ah fucking Duncan thinks he's all fucking bad now because he wrote a book.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck that academic copyist.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like this, you know, this internalized colonization, this self-hate that a lot of us carry, this misplaced antagonism that we have towards each other that expresses itself as well.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not gonna support that dude.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_04: Crabs in the bucket, yeah.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I would say it's all these things, and it's hard to say exactly because there's um we're what one of the biggest things we're missing as a community, I would say is that Chicano education.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people don't know their own history, they don't know their their their own family history, they don't know their like uh their own literature, they don't, you know, and then you you think about the media, I lose my mind, right?
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, because things set in LA, it's like you have to, you know, you guys, if you guys have been to LA, there's a bunch of Mexicans in LA.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's like one of the largest, you know, obviously, yeah.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and it's like there's not even them back, not even not just not just not a main character, not even in the background, right?
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, it's not that they're not just going to a Mexican neighborhood, quote unquote, but they're like just not it, they're literally erasing they're erasing us from where we're one of the biggest groups, right?
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I would say so.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_03: We don't see ourselves, we don't we lack cohesion, we lack education in a large way.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people they get to college and they read alternative a little bit uh stuff and then they get a little more into it.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: And but the other thing is, I have to say, I don't remember this dude's name in grad school, but but I remember something he told me was kind of telling.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was taking a class by um a really great professor on African-American literature, right?
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was Af African-American, might have been speculative fiction, right?
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was a great class, and so we're here in writing workshop, and they're saying, uh, like, talk to your your guy, the guy next to you to see what you guys are reading lately, right?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: And talk and what you like to read and your favorite authors.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: So he tells me that he uh read a Russian, he really likes Chekhov and he really likes um Chaucer.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm like, well, I've been in this, uh, you know, I tell him I've been in this African-American literature class, I've been reading this and this lately, and he tells me, Wow, I just don't have any like I would read stuff like that, but I don't have what is like any any any margin to understand of understanding for that.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of sat there looking at him, so like, so do you do you speak Russian?
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes, Oh no, I mean, all right, so I said, So you feel more familiar with a 19th century doctor in Russia who wrote a different language, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 13th century clerk who wrote in old English than you do with someone writing in English in your own in this country in in your own time.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like and they all would tell me if I I took one class with like Mexican women writer or like or you know, unfortunately, US like Lat Latino writer, whatever it was, right?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I wish I spoke Spanish.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well, you know, my Spanish is kind of crap, but at the same time, none of these writers writing Spanish, you know, and can you and I was I was in um I won't I won't name names.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I was someplace, I asked them I around some people who are reviewers, and I asked them, could you name me?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_03: And after they showed no interest in some of the stuff uh the Chicano speculative fiction writers I was talking about, I asked them, could you name any Chicano writer or whatsoever to me?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: None of them, like five of them.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_03: None of them could name one Chicano author.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: Damn, yeah, not even like Rudy and I've got a big thing.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, those two, those are like Gibby, those are like almost I thought that easy, right?
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, yeah, and so it's like there it's uh it's part of the I it's for me, it's part of that binary, right?
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: There's a black-white binary and other, right?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_03: And this country promotes this this idea.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_03: We're the other, right?
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: We are the most othered and we're natives, yeah.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_03: We're the other right under your feet, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're the others who were here before all the others got here.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_04: We're so othered that we're we're beyond the othering.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_03: Man, beyond other collection uh Chiconnal writing.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's yeah, uh, it's a sad reality.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_04: One of the things that I've I've discussed before, uh maybe I've brought it up on the show, but I know I've talked about it before with some of my colleagues and and like at conferences, and the issue with like as a historian, like I teach Mexican-American history, and uh I can never get it to to um so I it's able to make online most of the time, but in person I have trouble sometimes to get it to make in person at my sp at my campus.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so our community college is uh has um seven campuses across uh the city of Dallas, right?
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_04: And so I'm able to to gather students, but not only from from Dallas College, but also from like around the state.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_04: So I get students from UT Austin from Texas State uh who take my class because it's online and it's cheaper at a community college than taking it, you know, at their at their home school, and so they take it for credit or what have you.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_04: And so one of the things that I've that I've uh I've noticed, right, in in my personal classes is that I get students who are, you know, whose parents immigrated here in the 90s or what have you, late 80s, early 90s, and uh and so they have no frame of reference when it comes to like our collective history as Chicanos in this country, and a lot of times they see the history of the people that came before them as not being their history because you know their family is immigrant, and so their connection is still to Mexico.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: And so when they think of their ancestors and then when they think of their stories, they're not thinking of you know Chicano history in the US pre 1990, they're thinking of like the people from back home, from their community, from their pueblos, and so that's part of the disconnect that we have going back.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_04: To what you were saying about the history and the lack of the historical knowledge and the continuity that we should have as a community, as opposed to, for instance, African Americans, they have that long durae, that history that they can tap into.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_04: And even including like uh recent African immigrants, you know, there's there's still kind of a a way for them to sort of be part of that broader collective history because it's very strong and it's still tied to the to the origins to their ancestors.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_04: And for us, with every new wave of immigration that has come, it's like a reset button.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_04: And everything that came before, it's like, oh, that's not us, that's other people.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_04: That that that doesn't concern me.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_04: I I kind of so that's kind of part of the problem as well.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_04: I see.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it's uh but first I wanted to mention I went to Richland College as well.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's uh in Dallas.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's part of Dallas College.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's interesting.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's where I took some of my Mexican-American history courses.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I wish I would have taken it then.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, I kind of call it the Mexipolo syndrome.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like the some people are thinking that this they're the first, like they may be first or second generation, but they're like the first Mexican to ever set upon this land, you know, and it's been an experience for you know, uh, I mean, thousands of years, you want to be honest, because people crossed back and forth all around, and then on top of that, you know, like the US has come here as far as like dealing with this kind of idiom has been for like you know, 160, 70, whatever years it has been.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it it's at the same time, a lot of people that come from other parts of Mexico, you might say, are like they have a sense of the state they're from, right?
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And they're very much proud of being from Jalisco or you know, wherever.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: And but now they're here, and it's like I either seen it like, oh, they're not the real Mexicans here, I'm like, what are you talking about, right?
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or it's like uh, like this used to be Mexico.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yeah, and it has a history.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_03: How come we don't want to want to why you don't want to know it, you know?
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the fourth thing is that it's all connected, you know, like the revolution caused a lot of people to come come across here.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of them hit out here during the revolution.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: People like Californios uh had an some Californians had enough and went to went to cross the border, some Tejanos had enough and they had to run across the border.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's always been this porous nature, and like and that has to do with politics as well.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're connected.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_03: We're all I mean, uh ultimately Californios that um the you know uh the parts that aren't like the locals came from Sonora, from the tribe from Baja California and Mexico City, right?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're we're like we're we're connected from the you know, everybody uh from the what do you call it?
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_03: They always talk about you know the people who were like the most desperate of Sonora came to California.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_03: So also it makes it the whole uh kind of prancing Spanish lore to California a little funny because the most desperate people showed up to California like that, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so yeah, so I think but we're all we're pretty interconnected, and that's what that doesn't always make sense to me, like far as like well.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, so even just recently at the conference that I spoke at yesterday, um the the person who happens to be the new director, he's been there for a couple of years of the uh office of um DI, um diversity, equity, and inclusion, because they still have this is a private institution, uh private four-year college, so it doesn't have to um abide by the the new Texas rules where that's kind of forbidden.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're allowed to give a shit about that stuff.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so they still have their office there and they can run it as they see fit.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so through this office, they were able to um uh you know host uh a bunch of native speakers from around the country uh locally and uh you know celebrate Indigenous People's Day.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_04: But the director, I was talking to him, and you know, it turns out that he's uh I'm not sure where where he's originally from, but he was in Omaha for over 20 years, 20-something years.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_04: And when he said that, I said, Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_04: I wanted to ask you something because I've been looking online for this place that I remember one time when I drove through through Omaha uh on my way north back in the late 90s.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_04: I remember distinctly on 35, Industry 35, um, to the right-hand side, as you were entering Omaha, there was this place called the Chicano Cultural Center.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, and he his eyes lit up and like, yeah, yeah, that I used to be on the board for the Chicano Cultural Center.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, oh wow, that's interesting.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I asked him, what happened to it?
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_04: Because I can't find it.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_04: I've been looking for it online, see if there's any information because I've always been curious about it.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, Well, we had to change the name.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_04: What do you mean you had to change the name?
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we had to change it to Latino Cultural Center or something.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, Why?
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, Because all the old veteranos had kind of graduated out of that place, it was a place of assistance where you people could go for health uh resources and education and things like that.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so it was getting to the point where they couldn't sustain it anymore because they weren't getting a lot of traffic, and all the the new people that were coming in, all the immigrants that were coming in, um, didn't have that connection because they didn't know they didn't even know what Chicano meant.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, What is the Chicano stuff, right?
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so he said we had to change the name.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_04: And once we changed the name and we started promoting it as a Latino cultural center, we started getting more foot traffic again, right?
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_04: So, right there, just right there, that that that that distinction that that that he made, right?
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like that point that he was trying to make is like the Chicano history, the Chicano people, you know, it's there's there's kind of a disconnect that's going on, right?
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_04: Between between the people who have immigrated recently in the last you know 30, 40 years, whatever, and the people that came before.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_04: And that to me, that just kind of drove the point home.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_04: And then it's like, oh, okay, that makes sense.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if I'm honest, I've had pushback for every Chicano project I've tried to organize.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um from people, yeah, I mean, from like every people.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm I'm dead serious, every people.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know, I uh helped put out the first Chicano Sci-Thi anthology, right?
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Which is great, by the way.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_03: It is love it.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, thank you.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: And working on the the next one, which I um have high hopes for it's gonna come out next year.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um through Ryder Rose's oh, I should say right through a certain small press, right?
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um but uh it's it's called Chicano Futurism.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh maybe Chicano Futurism.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now we're talking talking about the the title a bit, but it's gonna be nonfiction, fiction, uh art and comics and poetry about the future of Rasa be like a Rata futurology, but you know, with when it comes to Chicanos.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hell yeah.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um I've gotten yeah, I'm very excited about it because I think you know what we need is imagination again.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_03: We need our because uh we we lost everything else, and now we we need to gain gain our ideas about community going into the future.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's been diluted through the Latina, Latina, Latinx.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_03: But people have said, so why don't you stop what you're doing and get with us, this group?
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't obviously you're not you're being exclusive or somehow you know crypto racist and not letting X group in.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking this is a little bit strange because Chicago is a very wide uh identity, right?
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_03: And we all have different different um nations behind us that make up this, right?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it's supposed to be a decolonial identity.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_03: I thought everyone would be down with that, but unfortunately, it's it's just not true.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I I I shot down some people.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't want to name the group, but let's call them group X.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, So Chaffa, how about that?
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_03: Group what Chaffa Chaffa, okay.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Group Chaffa.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_03: I said, so when I get an invite for the next Group Chaffa anthology, I'll give you the invite for the next Chicano anthology to organize, you know?
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh, because it's like everyone deserves a space, but apparently we don't.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's why everybody feels entitled to it.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's this weird anti-Chicano freaking uh sensibility, you know, going around, and it's it comes from all these uh Latins, like it's it's this uh this dynamic between the two of us, and you know, like whatever.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll never call myself Latin, so I don't really give a shit.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it it kind of blows my mind, and I think we could be doing more things if people would be behind it.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just like it the part that really is strange is that they think if we get together, if we discuss things in a community or have our own like literary and cultural spaces, that means somehow we can't connect with other people, or or being or we can or all the Latins are saying, well, technically, if you get that many Chicanos together, that's a gang.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_03: If they say that to me, I'm gonna say you're right.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're coming for you.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I want to thank you, Scott Russell Duncan, Duncan.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Duncan.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the book is Old California Strikes Back.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is a great book.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am really enjoying reading it.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's truly original and it's a fantastic piece of Chicano literature.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when does that book come out?
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: October 15th.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: October 15th.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And where can people purchase it?
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you should ask for it at your local bookstore, but you could also get it on the Flowersong Press site, and it should be on all the online plat um platforms like Amazon and whatnot.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And where can people uh look you up?
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a website?
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have an Instagram?
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I'm on Instagram.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's at Scott Russell Duncan Fernandez.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_03: And my website is www.scotrusselduncan.com.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's two S's and two L's.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for all of our premium subscribers, we're gonna pick up the rest of this conversation on the bonus segment.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are a premium subscriber, we'll see you on the other side.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you were not a premium subscriber, please consider doing so.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Go to talesfromaslantis.com and click Go Premium for five dollars a month.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: You get bonus episodes, ad-free episodes, access to the Discord server, and now bonus content to each episode.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see you on the other side.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_03: And remember, folks, the truth is like medicine.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't always taste good, but it's always good for you.