La Xicanista Podcast | A show about all things Chicane as told by a feminist Xicana.

Alejandrina Franco

La Xicanista Podcast is a space where I share my thoughts, feelings, and experiences from the lens of a first-generation daughter of Mexican immigrants living in the United States. It is a space where I shed light on the nuances of Latin-American culture and more specifically, Chicane culture, to break the illusion that we are a monolith.

Episodes

  1. 12/21/2020

    Prologue & Episode 1: The Latine Identity Crisis/La Raza cósmica

    Welcome to the first episode! The topic of this first episode is the Latine identity crisis. In this episode, I define the different labels used to identify ourselves as an ethnic group such as Hispanic, Latino/a, and Latinx/e. I will also clarify that these labels only describe our ethnic identity, not our race. Then, I will talk briefly about José Vasconcelos and his essay, La Raza cósmica.  Vasconcelos was a controversial Mexican politician, philosopher, and author known to have defended eugenics in his writings and later in life held antisemitic beliefs and sympathize with the Nazis by writing for the racist magazine known as Timón. However, the ideas presented in his essay, La Raza cósmica, became a staple in the formation of the NCLR, National Council of La Raza, and the Chicano movement. Anti-Blackness and anti-indigeneity are prevalent in the Latine community. And, in a way, the eurocentric ideologies of Vasconcelos only served to push these sentiments within the Latine community over the years. However, we must be able to think critically, understand and recognize, historically, where these sentiments came from, just how embedded they are in our cultural beliefs and work actively to fight against them if we are truly going to move forward as the "cosmic race."  Here's a list of resources I found interesting as I learned about the complex and controversial Mexican politician and philosopher, José Vasconcelos. Read La Raza cósmica for FREE here. Yo te perdono José Vasconcelos (TEDx Talks en español) This is a video of a chef who became disillusioned by the lack of diversity in gastronomy in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León. He became much more disappointed because of Vasconcelos's theory that "Norteños" were barbaric in nature due to the climate of the region and therefore, their gastronomy was limited to just grilling meats. This chef pardons Vasconcelos's ideologies and actually thanks him. Vasconcelos's negative sentiments toward the people of this chef's home of Monterrey, Nuevo León, pushed him to be stubborn enough to defy his ideologies and find success in diversifying the gastronomy of an entire state. I'd say the same can be applied in other sectors besides gastronomy.

About

La Xicanista Podcast is a space where I share my thoughts, feelings, and experiences from the lens of a first-generation daughter of Mexican immigrants living in the United States. It is a space where I shed light on the nuances of Latin-American culture and more specifically, Chicane culture, to break the illusion that we are a monolith.