The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Link

May 30, 2026

When Erin Brockovich recently observed on MSNBC that "people aren't being heard" in the rush to build AI data centers across the United States, she identified a problem that extends far beyond environmental regulation. 

Her concern goes to the heart of democracy itself: Who gets to decide how land, water, energy, and public resources are used in the name of technological progress? And whose voices matter when those decisions are made? 

For Texans, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent as the state emerges as one of the nation's leading centers of AI infrastructure development (MSNBC, 2026).

According to Brockovich's AI Data Center Reporting Project, Texas hosts approximately 464 data centers that are either completed or in process, making it one of the nation's leading hubs for AI infrastructure (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; also see UT News, 2026). 

Link [pdf]

At the same time, Texas reportedly leads the nation in citizen complaints submitted through her website concerning the impacts of data centers on local communities. Residents have raised concerns about water consumption, strain on electrical grids, noise pollution, environmental degradation, tax incentives, and the lack of transparency surrounding proposed developments (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; Gillette, 2026).

The map created by Erin Brockovich. 

brockovichdatacenter.com

To understand why these concerns are resonating so deeply, Karen Hao's recent book, Empire of AI (2025), offers an invaluable framework. Her reporting from Chile is particularly illuminating. There, communities challenged proposed hyperscale data centers that would consume substantial quantities of water in regions already suffering from prolonged drought. Residents found themselves confronting not merely technical questions but political ones.

Similar to Texas and other states where such centers are getting developed, top-down decisions affecting local resources, drinking water quality, loss of land and so on were often justified through narratives of modernization, innovation, and economic necessity, while those most directly affected struggled to gain meaningful influence over the process (Hao, 2025).
Hao challenges the popular image of artificial intelligence as a largely immaterial force existing somewhere in "the cloud." In reality, AI depends upon vast material infrastructures—data centers, electrical grids, water systems, mining operations, and labor networks that stretch across the globe. Every single AI request relies on physical resources that must be extracted, transported, consumed, and maintained.

What is perhaps most striking is that opposition to these projects is increasingly bipartisan. As highlighted in recent MSNBC coverage, residents from across the political spectrum are questioning whether communities are being asked to absorb disproportionate environmental and economic costs in exchange for promises of innovation and economic growth (MSNBC, 2026). 
In a political era defined by polarization, this convergence is noteworthy. As concerns over water scarcity, infrastructure demands, and local control intensify, the politics of AI infrastructure could become an important issue in future elections.

Recent research from the University of Texas at Austin projects that data centers could account for between 3 and 9 percent of Texas's total water consumption by 2040 (UT News, 2026). In a state already grappling with recurring drought, aquifer depletion, and increasing competition for water resources, these projections warrant careful public scrutiny. This is especially true in Central Texas, where population growth, climate uncertainty, and development pressures are already placing extraordinary demands on finite water supplies.

Yet environmental concerns alone do not fully capture what is at stake.

What Hao's work helps us see is that AI infrastructure may represent a contemporary expression of what Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000) termed the coloniality of power. Coloniality refers to the persistence of colonial forms of domination long after formal colonial rule has ended. It shapes whose knowledge counts, whose labor is valued, whose resources are extracted, and whose interests prevail in decisions about development.

Wikipedia Link

Historically, empires extracted silver from Latin America, rubber from the Amazon, cotton from the American South, and oil from colonized territories throughout the world. Today, the resources being extracted may appear different. Yet the underlying logic remains recognizable. The AI economy depends upon water, energy, land, public subsidies, data, and labor. The benefits frequently accrue to distant investors and technology firms, while local communities are often left to absorb environmental risks and infrastructure burdens.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence itself is inherently harmful. Nor does it mean that technological innovation should be rejected. The issue is not whether AI should exist. The issue is whether communities have a meaningful voice in determining how AI infrastructure is developed and governed.

This is where the concept of transformational resistance becomes especially useful.

In their seminal work, Solórzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) distinguish "transformational resistance" from other forms of opposition by emphasizing its critical awareness of structural inequality and its commitment to social justice. Transformational resistance is not simply reactive. It combines critique with collective action aimed at creating more equitable social arrangements.

More recently, Valenzuela, Unda, and Mena Bernal (2025) have extended this framework in their analysis of resistance to Texas Senate Bill 17 and the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education. We maintain that transformational resistance emerges when communities move beyond defending existing institutions toward imagining and constructing alternative democratic futures grounded in solidarity, collective agency, and the protection of the public good.

Viewed through this lens, communities raising questions about AI infrastructure are not merely opposing particular projects. They are advancing alternative visions of development rooted in democratic participation, ecological responsibility, and collective well-being. Their efforts remind us that technological progress should not be measured solely by computational power, market valuation, or economic growth, but also by whether it strengthens our capacity to care for one another and for the shared resources upon which our futures depend (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Valenzuela et al., 2025).

At stake is more than water consumption or energy demand. The deeper question concerns our collective obligations to resources that sustain community life across generations. Aquifers, watersheds, electrical grids, and public infrastructure are not merely inputs into an economic system. They are foundations of collective life. 

When decisions regarding their use are driven primarily by private interests while risks are borne by the broader public, citizens are right to ask whether the burdens and benefits of development are being distributed fairly.

This is why Brockovich's reporting initiative is so important. Her project does more than catalog complaints. It creates a public record of community concerns. It validates local knowledge. It elevates voices that might otherwise remain invisible within highly technical regulatory processes. In so doing, it helps democratize a conversation that too often unfolds behind closed doors.

The lesson emerging from both Chile and Texas is that technological futures are not inevitable. They are political choices.

The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will shape the future. It already is. The question is whether that future will be organized around principles of extraction or stewardship, concentration of power or democratic participation, private gain or public responsibility.

We should be stunned—not because artificial intelligence exists, but because one of the most resource-intensive technological transformations in modern history is unfolding with so little public awareness and deliberation.

From Chile to Central Texas, communities are challenging the assumption that technological development should proceed without democratic consent. As Erin Brockovich reminds us, people deserve to be heard. 

The growing resistance to unaccountable AI infrastructure reflects a broader demand for transparency, stewardship, and meaningful public participation in decisions that affect collective well-being. At its core, the debate over AI data centers is not simply about technology. It is about who gets to decide, whose voices matter, and whether the future will be imposed upon communities or built with them.

The future of AI should not be determined solely by corporations, investors, engineers, or policymakers. It must also be shaped by the communities whose lives, resources, and futures are implicated in its development.

References

Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting. (2026). AI data centers & our communities. https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com

Bureau of Economic Geology. (2025). Water requirements for data centers in Texas [White paper]. The University of Texas at Austin. 

Gillette, S. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich launches map to track controversial AI data centers, which reportedly cost $25B in environmental damages last year. People. https://people.com/erin-brockovich-launches-map-track-ai-data-centers-11985676

Hao, K. (2025). Empire of AI. Penguin Random House.

MSNBC. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich on AI data centers: "People aren't being heard" [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hQLn5MbsEI

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085901363002

UT News (2026, May 6). Data centers are growing in Texas, but big questions remain about water use. University of Texas at Austin News. https://news.utexas.edu/2026/05/06/data-centers-are-growing-in-texas-but-big-questions-remain-about-water-use/

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Mena Bernal, J. J. (2025). Disrupting colonial logics: Transformational resistance against SB 17 and the dismantling of DEI in Texas higher education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf

Oaxaca's Third Gender—"Las Muxes: El Tercer Género de Oaxaca" [YouTube Video]

As we think in our own country of trans and LGBTQ rights, "Las Muxes" [pronounced 'MOO-ches'] from the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico—and specifically from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—remind us that gender is not only fluid but an unquestioned, accepted part of life in different parts of the world. Moreover, this is hardly a phenomenon that derives from our ostensibly "woke" moment, but is Indigenous and centuries old, predating Columbus' invasion of the Americas. 

I am readily reminded of Two-Spirit peoples and ways of knowing and being in Native North America about which there is a growing scholarly literature (e.g., Robinson, 2020). In short, what is today considered by some to be divergent is actually native to this continent. How cool is that?

If you listen below to the YouTube video (in Spanish), you learn that las Muxes are born into male bodies, but do not identify as men. Nor do they identify as women. Nor are they transexuals, transvestites, or homosexuals. Instead, they are considered a "tercer género," or "third gender." Their dream is to marry heterosexual men which is not easily achieved.

They live dignified lives in the context of their own community and society. As expressed by one of them, their primary problem occurs with respect to Mexican government policies that disallow them to attend secondary schools and to otherwise get formally educated. 

This becomes salient at the secondary level because it is by the age of 12 or 13 when they come into an awareness of their gender and schools don't allow them to dress like girls or women. Consequently, they are forced to take up roles associated with the care of the home and assisting with community festivities. They get relegated to gendered occupational roles like seamstresses, weavers, cooks, hair stylists, and so on. Moreover, the state's reinforcement of rigid gender identities constructs a specific kind of gender identity that alienates and excludes them from educational opportunities and that further lead to discrimination. sexual violence, and exploitation.

A text I've not read about the Muxe but quickly found is this one, researched by a former professor of mine, Dr. Alfredo Mirandé, titled, Behind the Mask: Gender Hybridity in a Zapotec Community (2019). There is also this wonderful movie on Netflix that embraces the complexities of Muxe identity titled. The Secret of the River (El Secreto del Rio) that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Scholars like Maria Lugones urge us in the modern era to consider gender from the perspective of how people that have been colonized, struggled historically not solely with the rigidity of gender categories introduced by Western European colonizers, but also how the introduction of race in the 1500s erased not solely the complex, situated understandings of gender throughout the Americas, but women themselves. 

With echoes of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?," Indigenous notions of gender were subjected to a system of racial classification that justified slavery, conquest, and all manner or racial and sexual violence. We live today the vestiges of that horrible history to which patriarchy is obsessively invested.

Before we construe this as a battle between the sexes, let's understand that patriarchal violence is as harmful to men as it is to women, if not more so. Personally, I find this liberating and fully compatible with our most powerful religious and spiritual traditions that center notions of love and acceptance, particularly, of those deemed "other," in a shared quest for a world where all diversity is embraced simultaneously with the notion that all human beings—by virtue of being human—are intrinsically worthy of dignity and respect.

Do view the video. Thanks to Dr. Martha Lengeling for sharing.

Happy pride month!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186-219.

Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742-759.

Mirandé, A. (2017). Behind the mask: Gender hybridity in a Zapotec community. University of Arizona Press.

Robinson, M. (2020) Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity, Journal of Homosexuality, 67:12, 1675-1690.

Truth, S. (1851). Speech at women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric (s), 144-146. [pdf]

Uvalde Police Officers, Middlemen Minorities, and the Coloniality of Power: Deepening the Analysis

To Dr. Emilio Zamora's point in his recent reflection posted on Monday to this blog and now appearing as an op-ed in Sunday's Austin American-Statesman that was based on our weekend trip to Uvalde, we must consider the wider social context in order to more fully understand how mostly-Mexican Uvaldeans already suffered from pre-existing social trauma and subordination even before the deadly shootings of May 24, 2022. This is precisely the focus that Neil Meyer, writing for the Washington Post, describes below.

I take this opportunity to deepen the analysis. 

"Colonialism"—or to borrow from Quijano (2000), the "coloniality of power," or Valenzuela's (2019) "colonial matrix of power"—capture the sociopolitical dynamics at play characterizing so much of what Texas IS for people of color under white settler colonialism. This is hardly hyperbole, but rather a lived experience under white supremacist patriarchy that helps explain the NRA's stranglehold on the Republican Party.

Upon reading Meyer's piece and critically consuming vast amounts of news media and seeing how ignorantly and dismissively Uvalde is portrayed, it's time to resurrect not only these concepts of coloniality, but also the notion of "middleman minorities" as coined by Blalock (1967) and theorized by University of California Riverside sociologist Dr. Edna Bonacich (1973) in her classic piece titled, "A Theory of Middleman Minorities." 

Such minorities are the entrepreneurs and middlemen who play an intermediary role between dominant and subordinate groups in society. Their clients or customers are most often members of marginalized racial/ethnic groups that are themselves living lives that are separate from the dominant group (or groups) in power that we may also understand as the white power structure that includes Eurocentric school curriculum.

The images we are seeing on the news every day speak to this dynamic of coloniality that very much convey not solely the history, but also the contemporary circumstance, of living under white supremacy in Texas. For example, read this May 27, 2022 El Paso Times piece by Martha Pskowski andNicole Foytitled, "Uvalde school shooting, Mexican-Americans fought for decades to improve school system). But for the coloniality of power, just struggles like this shouldn't take decades.

A larger point is that just because we're seeing brown faces on TV among the Department of Public Safety police and immigration officers in leadership positions or a Latino 18-year old who committed this horrible atrocity against children, doesn't at all mean that white supremacy isn't at play. After all, we are still talking about a white power structure and its ideologies that systematically promote racial ignorance and self-hatred that minoritized youth experience in the form of internalized racism or oppression. 

For more understanding of internalized oppression, I encourage you to read one of my published pieces along these lines titled, Uncovering Internalized Oppression. You can read it online in an excellent anthology by Mica Pollock (2008) titled, "Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in school.

To wit, at the grassroots level here in Austin, locals refer to UT-Austin as "the plantation," an organic term that reflects locals' relationship to the powerful, exclusionary class the UT symbolizes. Not that we're not becoming more diverse, but rather that Austin youth are not getting into UT according to numbers suggesting greater parity and opportunity that living in Austin would seem to warrant. Similarly, Uvalde is also a "plantation," if you will, a hierarchy with deep roots in Juan Crow segregation and racism in West Texas. 

While the "man" in "middleman" needs to get updated as a term to current gender-conscious standards, it nevertheless turns out that what we largely see is indeed mostly Latino males holding power in these self-policing spaces. As middlemen minorities, their job is to control their own people, reifying time-honored patriarchal, masculinist identities that get casually reinforced and mystified as "Wild West mythology" as noted by Meyer.

THIS is what those opposing the so-called teaching of CRT in schools don't want you to know—even when the evidence before our very eyes is a flashing neon sign.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

#WeAreAllWestTexas

References

Blalock, H. M., Jr. (1967). Toward a Theory of Minority Group Relations. New York: John Wiley.

Bonacich, E. (1973). A theory of middleman minorities. American sociological review, 583-594.

Pollock, M. (Ed.). (2008). Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in school. The New Press.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215-232.

Valenzuela, A. (2019). The struggle to decolonize official knowledge in Texas’ state curriculum: Side-stepping the colonial matrix of power. Equity & Excellence in Education, 52(2-3), 197-215.

I’m from Uvalde. I’m not surprised this happened.

By Neil Meyer

May 29, 2022 at 1:42 p.m. EDT | Washington Post

President Biden pays his respects at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on Sunday. (Dario Lopez-Mills/AP)

From: THE WASHINGTON POST

OPINION: I’m from Uvalde. I’m not surprised this happened.

By Neil Meyer

May 29, 2022 at 1:42 p.m. EDT

Neil Meyer, a retired lawyer, is a fifth-generation Texan. He now lives in Bethesda.

I was born in Uvalde, Tex., lived there recently and love its complex history and people. Like most, I’ve been struggling under the weight of grief to understand the violence that left 19 children, two teachers and a young killer dead last week. But I’m not surprised.

First, you would be challenged to find a more heavily armed place in the United States than Uvalde. It’s a town where the love of guns overwhelms any notion of common-sense regulations, and the minority White ruling class places its right-wing Republican ideology above the safety of its most vulnerable citizens — its impoverished and its children, most of whom are Hispanic.

Second, at news of the shooting, I was struck to hear the words “Robb Elementary” because I knew of its centrality to the struggle in Uvalde over the past half-century to desegregate its schools. Robb sits in the city’s southwest quadrant. So I knew the victims of the shooting would largely be Hispanic. They have been locked into that school for decades.

In Uvalde, simply put, everything north of Highway 90 is primarily White Republican, and everything south is mostly Hispanic Democrat. The city has about 15,000 residents; more than 80 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Most of Uvalde’s political leadership and the heads of the largest employers are White. At the center of town on the courthouse grounds, you’ll find a monument to Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president — installed when the Ku Klux Klan dominated Uvalde politics. (Some of us tried to get the monument removed after the murder of George Floyd, but that’s a story for another day.)

When I heard reports about the shooter, a young Latino, I winced at the reflexive disclaimer that he wasn’t an “illegal immigrant.” It wasn’t surprising to learn that he was bullied for a speech impediment, may have come from a broken family struggling with drug use and had experienced problems in school. Drug use plagues the city, and the courts struggle under the weight of young people’s encounters with the legal system. About 1 in 3 Uvalde children live in poverty.

The killer allegedly bought his guns at the Oasis Outback, a popular lunch spot for wealthier Uvaldeans, known for its large buffet, hunting supplies and gun shop. On most days you’ll also see groups of Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement there. It’s a monthly meeting place for groups such as the Uvalde County Republican Women, whose Facebook page includes posts decrying “the border invasion.” The Oasis reflects the establishment’s deep cultural reverence for guns, hunting and the Wild West mythology. I wasn’t surprised that an 18-year-old could walk in and easily buy tactical weapons without anyone being concerned.

I wasn’t surprised to see the Republican panel of politicians at a news conference the day after the shooting, almost all White and in top positions of power in the community and the state, taking the lead. In Uvalde, the custodians of order — the chief of police, the sheriff, the head of the school district police — are Hispanic, but here they were largely silent. Unsurprisingly, they now bear the primary blame for the disastrous response at the school.

Finally, I wasn’t surprised to see victims being flown to San Antonio for treatment. The Uvalde hospital was converted in recent years to a critical access facility, limiting its number of beds. The hospital benefited financially, but many residents seeking health care must now travel to distant locations. The negative impact on a community with high rates of poverty — families who can’t afford this burden — is obvious.

President Biden and the first lady visited Uvalde on Sunday to offer comfort to the families of victims at Robb. But Uvalde and other towns like it need more than comfort — we need to know that American leaders will take the overdue steps necessary to keep these communities safe.

Let’s start with banning assault weapons and limiting young people’s access to firearms. The freedom to own weapons that facilitate mass murder is less important than the safety of our children, they’re not needed for hunting, and they don’t need to be sold to 18-year-olds. Most Americans and many Texans agree, despite the rhetoric of Republican leaders.

Let’s also recognize that Uvalde has a sufficiently large law enforcement presence, between the police department, the sheriff’s office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers, Customs and Border Protection and the FBI. We won’t succeed in creating “hardened targets” by arming teachers and other civilians.

Finally, the social conditions that gave birth to deadly violence and the killer’s mental condition can be addressed through our support of community organizations, health-care systems and schools — by supplying resources and legal avenues to identify and deal with emerging threats such as the one posed by this young man.

The deaths at Robb Elementary were predictable and avoidable. Uvalde, the state of Texas and the United States of America failed the children and teachers who died there. We owe it to their memory and to current and future generations to avoid yet another, similar tragedy.

On the topic of Mexicanidad, or "Mexican-ness," by Dr. Roberto Rodriguez

On the topic of Mexicanidad, or "Mexican-ness," by University of Arizona Mexican American Studies professor, Dr. Roberto Rodriguez.  It's important to keep colonization in the equation for understanding the imposition of identity on U.S. Mexicans, even by U.S. Mexicans themselves.

-Angela Valenzuela

Affirming a Macehual or Gente de Maiz Identity 
by Roberto Rodriguez

June 5, 2017 / DIVERSE ISSUES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

A couple years ago, someone from California wrote me to tell me that: “Mexicans are taking over Chicano Studies.”

Apparently, the person did not know I was born in Mexico. And they knew less about what this topic triggers within me. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, I did become part of the Chicano Movement, and thus identified as such during that time, though throughout most of my life, my constant identity has been Mexicano. At times: Me-Xicano.

Because of my parents’ guidance and influence (stories), and because of my relatives from Southern Mexico, I have pretty much always identified as part of the original peoples of this continent, including as hombre de maiz (man of maiz), or macehual, a Maya-Nahua term, for a simple human being. Both of these are identities rooted to the land, though they have nothing to do with nation-states, nor do they acknowledge borders. Many peoples from maiz-based cultures identify as such and ask no one for permission to do so. In this country also, neither of these will be found on Census or any other bureaucratic forms, and they generally are also outside of the mainstream media.

Wells, Annie –– – 134872.ME.0308.walkout Sonia Salazar, 20, a UCSB student in 

Chicano Studies and Belmont HS graduate, joins over 1,000 people to 

commemorate the historic East LA student walkouts of 1968. 

They marched from Lincoln High School (in the background)

 to Hazard Park. The 1968 action launched the Chicano Civil Rights Movement . 

Photo by Annie Wells 03/08/08

I feel comfortable with my own identity, yet, when I received that above message, it resuscitated negative memories that I had from the early 1960s. That was the pre-Chicano movement era, an era in which I was reminded by Mexican Americans almost on a daily basis that I was Mexican as opposed to Mexican American. This was prior to the ascendancy of the terms Chicano/Chicana and Raza or La Raza or gente (people), in the latter part of that decade. But even then, that same attitude persisted while Mexican-Americans were exploring or adopting these new identities.

One of the identities they previously identified with was Spanish. This was not New Mexico, whose residents were notorious for denying their Mexican ancestry, but Los Angeles. Elsewhere, Latin or Spanish American was popular and “respectable.” As Chicano historian Rudy Acuña has noted, “Anything But Mexican.”

While we are not in the same political climate today, we do seem to be part of an era in which the identity of these same peoples continues to change. However, there is a difference between how one sees oneself, versus the “official” terms one identifies with in public.

For me, one’s identity rises to the level of sacred and thus, when the government, media and other institutions impose identities upon individuals, communities or peoples, it can be very violating. This is generally true in regards to peoples of any culture, but especially true for peoples of Mexican descent, that have a long and sordid history of having false identities thrust upon them here. This is referred to as epistemic violence.

After the height of the Chicano movement, umbrella terms such as the government-sponsored Hispanic or Latino/Latina, came to supplant specific terms such as Mexican, Guatemalan Puerto Rican or Peruvian, etc. These umbrella terms generally have always emphasized a European or colonial identity, as opposed to the Indigenous or African roots of the people.

But to be sure, false identities did not begin in this country in the past generation, but instead are rooted in 300-year colonial practices imposed by Spain upon the Americas, especially in Mexico. If one does not understand why this is a problem, it is akin to asking the slave to identify with the slavemaster.

Suffice to say that identities that connote “property of Spain” or Europe, don’t quite cut it in the 21st century — or even the 16th-20th centuries. While perhaps it is confusing to others, indeed, there are some constants here. Most identities are imposed and historically, most U.S. institutions always have suppressed and denigrated the Mexican identity. Incidentally, the word Mexico is of authentically Indigenous origins; it is probably the reason it is generally suppressed here.

That said, like most Mexicans, I will always be Mexicano — or Mexicana, for women — and will continue to identify as gente the maiz and macehual.

When that person warned me about Mexicans taking over Chicano Studies, I asked him if he was familiar with Luis Leal, the “founder” of Chicano literature; poet Alurista, author of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan; Chihuahua-born poet Abelardo “Stupid America” Delgado; journalist Ruben Salazar (killed on Aug. 29, 1970, in East L.A.); Chicano Moratorium co-founder Ramses Noriega; and torture survivor, Olga Talamante. All were born in Mexico and all central figures in the Chicano Movement.

I didn’t even mention Carlos Santana.

Dr. Roberto Rodriguez is an associate professor in Mexican American studies at the University of Arizona.

Let's Decolonize Higher Education

Powerful piece that calls for a decolonization of higher education through the very themes, topics, and methodologies utilized by ethnic studies, as well as by scholars in women and gender studies:

If there are areas of study that deserve more attention after the elections, they are the fields that were at the forefront of critiquing and opposing the extremely and largely intentional slow and ineffective post-racial script of “diversity and inclusion” all along, namely, critical, intersectional and decolonial Ethnic Studies fields as well as Women’s and Gender Studies. Support of these areas may represent the most direct and firm challenge to the current neo-fascist trend in society and to the liberal post-racialism in the academy. They are also the areas that are best prepared to equip students to critically analyze and oppose fascist, racist, and dehumanizing tendencies.

 Thanks to Dr. Aimee Villarreal for sharing. 

Angela Valenzuela

The U.S. Elections, Ethnic Studies, and the University : A View from the Historically Disenfranchised

jeudi 24 novembre 2016

Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
University of South Africa
Frantz Fanon Foundation

Responses to the results of the U.S. presidential election in the U.S. academy have included the idea that the field of political science finally proved to be defunct, and that the times call for more respect and support to areas such as philosophy and the humanities. What these responses miss is that, if anything, the elections made visible the problematic character of hegemonic models of the entire field of “arts and sciences,” including political science, philosophy, and the humanities. They also miss that the most relevant areas of scholarship at the moment might be the ones that are typically relegated to a second-class status or worse : Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies and related fields.
I will avoid commenting much on the overwhelming lack of “diversity” in areas like philosophy and political science, which I think is connected to the very real limit that these areas find in responding adequately to the current situation. But I will note that considering that the racial composition of philosophy departments may be as bad or worse than the collective of Trump supporters in his rallies and the now in power Republican Party, I had a hard time reading a recent defense of college philosophy education as a serious response to the post-election crisis.
In many ways, the university is an engine as well as a mirror of the world, far from its usual presentation as an exceptional space. The same racism, structural inequalities, and phobias that are present in society can be found in the university, just often, but not always, with different codes. Needless to say, racism is not only found in some fraternity parties, but also sometimes in more sophisticated and lethal forms in faculty and administrator’s meetings and projects, including “diversity and inclusion” initiatives.
Consistent with the racial bias in higher education, many academics tend to look at Ethnic Studies fields as illegitimate intruders that challenge the quality of education, or as temporary remedial areas that provide refuge to students of color while the important fields (such as History, Sociology, and English, among other areas) subsume the scholarship produced in those fields and improve it. This is part of the reason why universities have not invested significantly in these fields, and why, what these fields do never gets to represent an important part of the rankings that universities use to rationalize their choice of supporting the units that already benefit from their large size and their alignment with the established rankings. Little attention is given to the limits and problems of criteria for excellence and prestige created and designed in contexts where racial denial and the racist construction of knowledge have been normative.
I would dare to say that many, if not most, of us faculty of color in institutions of higher learning feel like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock in the Saturday Night Live’s skit where they hang out with white friends in election night. [1] The difference is that we cannot afford to laugh because the university space is not as unforgiving as their nice living-room where they hanged out with their white friends. We live in a context where our contributions and the fields that have so prominently called for attention to the significance of racism, sexism, and multiple other forms of structural inequality and phobias keep being ignored and in many cases are aggressively limited and shut down, while white academics share in the scandal of discovering that the country is racist, that race counted for so much, or that people seem to easily disregard racism and the threat on multiple communities as long as they are promised better economic conditions—of course, better economic conditions alone is not solely what many of they want. At the same time, the very same academics tend to remain blind to the racism, sexism, and structures of inequality and phobias that they perpetrate and that are constitutive of the academy itself.
Sanctuaries and the Decolonization of the University
If there are areas of study that deserve more attention after the elections, they are the fields that were at the forefront of critiquing and opposing the extremely and largely intentional slow and ineffective post-racial script of “diversity and inclusion” all along, namely, critical, intersectional and decolonial Ethnic Studies fields as well as Women’s and Gender Studies. Support of these areas may represent the most direct and firm challenge to the current neo-fascist trend in society and to the liberal post-racialism in the academy. They are also the areas that are best prepared to equip students to critically analyze and oppose fascist, racist, and dehumanizing tendencies. This includes not only the theoretical tools and multiple research projects, but also their attention to pedagogies that challenge the walls of separation between our campuses and the communities that surround them.
The critical and intersectional tools and pedagogies developed in decolonial Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs allow us to see, for example, that while calls for making university campuses “sanctuaries” for the undocumented are extremely valuable today, our campuses have never offered a consistently safe space for students or communities of color. Even faculty of color are treated as threatening outsiders sometimes, and students of color take on the added responsibility of reaching out to their communities while their overall time for studying is reduced by added hours at work.
Universities cannot become real sanctuaries for people of color as long as what they consider sanctum continues to be premised on our secondary status, if not the expectation of our disappearance and the mere “inclusion” of our scholarship in the very same fields and structures that have denied those issues entry for so long. We will not go far if we fail to confront the reality that the liberal arts and sciences themselves, not neo-fascist ideologues, are responsible for all this. Likewise, our efforts to address and counter the racist forces that are becoming so obvious today—but that have been dominant all along—will be undercut if calls for increasing the number of sanctuaries for the undocumented collapse into the affirmation of discourses and practices of inclusion, instead of becoming part of the struggle for decolonization.
The opposite of exclusion, in contexts structured by coloniality is not inclusion, but decolonization. Inclusion, in these contexts, is just another form of coloniality.
Long before Trump promised a wall, universities have been increasing their disconnection with their surrounding communities and making it more difficult for those communities to consider universities not only accessible, but also relevant. University policies of “diversity and inclusion” and the increasing disconnect of universities from communities contributed to failing in the effort to produce the kind of student body and scholars who would stand up to the neo-liberal and neo-fascist challenges of the time.
In this context, neither rejecting the vulgar racism and sexism of the Trump campaign, nor voting for Clinton, nor joining campaigns to increase the number of sanctuaries for the undocumented assume the depth and weight of the challenge. The struggle is against racial liberalism, racial neoliberalism, white supremacy, sexism, heteronormativity, and neo-fascism combined, all of which represent a challenge to excellence in knowledge production, not to mention a threat to historically disenfranchised communities, among others. For this reason, as much as calls to secure college campuses as sanctuaries for the undocumented are important, the real challenge for white academics and those who share the perspectives that seem to be most dominant among them is not so much joining these campaigns, but becoming part of the struggle to decolonize the university. That, I anticipate, will be much more difficult to all of them. To be sure, this does not mean that there should not be efforts to bring different sectors together in favor of the sanctuaries—clearly we should strive for that—, but only that a) we cannot allow this cause to become yet another means of strengthening post-racialism, liberal inclusion, and the redemption (without reparations) of whiteness, and b) this is only part of a larger struggle that includes the desegregation and the decolonization of the university.
Critical, Intersectional, and Decolonial Thinking and Research Today
The times call, not for yet another round of self-congratulatory efforts from scholars in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences who aim to “save” their units in a context of austerity and now moral outrage, but for a serious reflection on the entanglement of all of these areas with the order of knowledge, being, and power that naturalizes race and other forms of structural inequalities and phobias. Likewise, the current moment provides yet another opportunity for academics to learn from and support the most rigorous and consistent anti-racist, anti-sexist, and decolonial scholarship and pedagogy there is, found in Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as in Sexuality Studies fields.
This is a moment to identify and develop new strategies of transformation beyond “diversity and inclusion” initiatives. Here is an opportunity to break from the spell of academic liberalism and to support the kind of research that has always identified the limits of post-racial discourses in the academy. Administrators will unlikely find more direct legal means of opposing the neo-fascist trends than by aggressively supporting Ethnic Studies and related areas that have a substantial record of producing critical, intersectional, and decolonial scholarship.
Critical, intersectional, and decolonial epistemic and research fields should receive enough support to serve as matrixes for the transformation of the humanities, the sciences, and, as Johnella Butler has put it, the common good. [2] Their task should include not only innovate research, theory, and methods, but also the creation of civic engagement opportunities that can make universities, not isolated bubbles or quasi-commercial malls that remain inaccessible to working class and immigrant communities, but sanctuaries as well as houses for empowerment and bridges to historically disenfranchised communities.
These units should be given an opportunity to take the lead in challenging the divides between intellectual movements and scholarly contributions, on the one hand, and social and artistic movements, on the other, with the idea that they all can contribute to the task of desegregating and decolonizing our epistemic and social formations. Ethnic Studies and related units that are truly oriented by critical, intersectional, and decolonial perspectives can lead an intellectual and pedagogical wave of critical, intersectional, and decolonial work that can make the entire university more relevant than ever to the 21st century and more responsive to the challenges of our liberal, neo-liberal, and neo-fascist times. Likewise, trailblazers in the efforts to counter the post-racial narrative that greatly contributed to our current situation, and tested leaders in the effort to decolonize the university should be given opportunities to shape the current responses to neo-fascism and to move the university forward in the 21st century.
There are no laws that make these changes impossible. It is rather a question of vision and priorities. Every day that goes by without firm and serious steps in this direction is yet another unnecessary postponement, another lost opportunity.

Notes

[1] See Saturday Night Live, “Election Night,” Nov. 13, 2016. URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHG0ezLiVGc

[2] See Johnnella E Butler, "Ethnic Studies as a Matrix for the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Common Good." In Color-Line to Borderlands : The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies, edited by Johnella E. Butler, 18-41. Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2001.

My thoughts on "Another Victory for Mexican-American Studies in San Antonio" by Angela Valenzuela

This story by San Antonio educator, writer, and activist, Léo Treviño, is about the exercise of political power and how it makes a difference.  Just like the highly contested struggle against the racist textbook by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle currently underway, this story is also about the San Antonio Mexican American community exerting its political power. 

Note:  While I was originally concerned about this report using the Mexican flag on its cover as a way to possibly send a mixed message and stoke nativist fears, I grew less concerned when I looked up the Rivard Report that published this out of San Antonio.  Whereas nativist and some colonized Mexican Americans themselves could still scream about this, the intention appears otherwise. Good.  Now I can move on.

There is much to learn from this story about Mexican American Studies (MAS) that recently came under fire in the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) that you can read more about here.  This struggle for MAS simultaneously underscores community struggles for inclusion in the curriculum, as well as the larger politics of education that are required in order for political minorities—beyond the imperative for curricular inclusion that demographic growth would seem to imply—to achieve substantial voice and presence in the college-level, curriculum.

As with any group and as captured in this piece, the Mexican American experience is so vast that it expands far beyond its traditional boundaries of Mexican American history and literature.  Yet, even this expansion of the curriculum requires an exertion of power with respect to the wishes and preferences of a community for whom one would think in 2016, such matters would not even be an issue.

To draw from Paolo Freire, in the best of worlds, we educate not to domesticate, but to liberate.  My own motivation for going to college was precisely this, to liberate myself and all of my instruction contributed—and continues to contribute to this.  Liberation is a process, not an end state.  We, myself included, are always embarked on de-colonizing our minds that in fact so much of the educational system through its curriculum and instruction, provides.  Sociology professor at Binghamton University, Aníbal Quijano from Peru, in fact addresses this with the concept of the "coloniality of power" (PDF en español;  PDF in English).

I'll resist going on a tangent here, but one of the reasons from the very beginning in the early 1990s when the neoliberal, charter school movement got off the ground that I never saw this as either our community's or as God's redemptive, long-awaited solution to all our problems in education, precisely because it largely left our culturally chauvinist curriculum untouched, while continuing to objectify our communities as objects to whom to administer curriculum, as opposed to communities with whom, in solidarity with its long and continuing history of struggle to forge common cause in and with our civil rights organizations, nonprofits, and community-based institutions.  Never mind their insatiable consumption of public, taxpayer dollars for private ends that "education management organizations [EMOs]" today represent as a whole...

To continue.  I further presume this liberatory disposition to be true of most"ethnic studies scholars" like myself that are differentially located throughout our colleges and universities again, depending on their own respective histories of struggle for inclusion as follows:  African American Studies, Jewish American, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Puerto Rican/Boricua Studies, Asian-American, Women and Gender Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, and so on.  

The historical accounts, theoretical frameworks, core concepts, and guiding research questions that they provide help move us to challenge beyond the system of instruction that is currently wedded at the K12 level to a prescriptive and scripted curricula such as that appearing in Common Core or in existing state standards that either ignore or are largely dismissive of the scholarship, knowledge, and frameworks emanating from these fields.  And even when there is cognizance for at least some teachers and some administrators that are able to link up Common Core and state standards to ethnic studies content, this knowledge may be siloed to "the multicultural education" side of the school, rather than positioned centrally in terms of how school is done, period.

We are domesticated when we think that existing curricular offerings as coming from God or the invisible hand of the market.  As someone in policy who has studied the history of the inextricably intertwined aspects of curriculum and the historical politics of education, nothing could be further from the truth.

Kudos to our friends in San Antonio for moving the needle with respect to the intellectually-inspiring knowledge base and pedagogy that portends a bright future of liberated, as opposed to domesticated, individuals and communities armed with a critically conscious mindset bent on transforming systems and institutions for the betterment of society, domestic tranquility, and humanity as a whole.   

Felicidades!  Congratulations!

Angela Valenzuela

c/s 

#MASforTexas 

#LibroTraficante @LibroTraficante @AztecMuse

#EthnicStudiesNow  #TxTABE 

#criticalpedagogy

#AcademiaCuauhtli

 

 

Another Victory for Mexican-American Studies in San Antonio

Léo Treviño October 20, 2016

Scott Ball / Rivard Report

A Mexican flag at the 19th Annual Cesar Chavez March for Justice in 2015. Photo by Scott Ball.

Updated October 20, 2016

 

Despite the wide range of struggles that Mexican-American Studies (MAS) has faced since its inception in the 1960s, the academic field recently gained a significant victory that advocates and engaged Texans can be proud of.

Just last year, the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) came under fire when its board of trustees under Chancellor Bruce Leslie voted to remove majors from students’ academic records.

More recently, faculty, students, and supporters of San Antonio College (SAC) had ample reason to celebrate when the school’s new Mexican-American Studies Center opened its doors on the near-downtown campus.

Visitors entering the Chance Academic Center needed only follow the scent of burning sage through bland white hallways to a room where Linda Ximenes was blessing the future space of the MAS Program as well as attendees of the event.

Papel picado hung from the ceilings and lent color and authenticity to the purpose of the event. Bookshelves filled with books authored by writers of all ethnicities celebrated the essence of the Mexican-American experience solidifying the space as a center for academic excellence.

Courtesy / Léo Treviño

Son Jarocho musicians and dancers perform at the MAS center’s grand opening.

After the blessing, attendees enjoyed an excerpt of a play penned by MAS program faculty member Mariano “Mono” Aguilar titled Adelita, which opens at the Josephine Theatre on Nov. 3, as well as a local group performing Son Jarocho, a regional folk music fusion of Spanish, indigenous, and African cultures that originated in the state of Veracruz in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico.

MAS Center and Program Coordinator Lisa Ramos wrote her dissertation for her Ph.D. in history on Mexican-American Civil Rights lawsuits and how the racial categorization of Mexican Americans as white affected identity politics and relationships.

“There were no real obstacles but we did have to follow procedural guidelines which takes time but once we submitted, approval followed,” Ramos said of her longtime vision coming into fruition in May.

She credited the smooth process to existing MAS programs and degrees that are offered at other ACCD campuses such as Northwest Vista, Palo Alto, and St. Phillip’s colleges. “We just followed the models from those campuses and developed the curriculum and program from there,” she explained.
Aguilar explained that a designated MAS office had not previously existed on campus. “We were all on different parts of the campus in our respective departments but getting approval for the program gave us the ability to request this space.”

He added that the only MAS courses that were offered prior to the center’s creation were Mexican-American history and Mexican-American literature. “We’re hoping to add more in the upcoming semesters,” Ramos added by laying out the order of things. “We’d received approval for the program in May, for this space in June, and the first classes began this fall semester in August.”

According to Ramos, planning and organizing for this endeavor began more than a year ago. “We’ve been working on the budget, finding people who can teach the courses, and figuring out how to get exposure (for) the course(s) through the school.”

Ramos also gave credit to Tammy Perez, who works in the Spanish department, for getting the course titles and numbers into the SAC catalog so they’re searchable. “That for us was the biggest success because when people are looking for the courses they want to take, we’re now an option.”

Courtesy / Léo Treviño

A list of MAS courses that can be found on the SAC catalog.

As for advertising the event and bringing attention to the center, “Mono (Aguilar) planned all the Hispanic Heritage Month events and incorporated this event into the planning,” Ramos explained.
SAC students seeking to expand their cultural base or gain insight into the Mexican-American experience in the Spring 2017 semester can look in the SAC catalog for Mexican-American History, Mexican-American Literature, and Mexican-American Politics. “We’ll be adding Mexican-American Fine Arts Appreciation in the Fall 2017 semester so hopefully that will bring in more interest than we already have.”

Ramos and her colleagues hope that that interest will extend beyond students who asked questions at the grand opening event or are already enrolled in MAS classes.

According to the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, Latinos make up 54.82% of San Antonio’s population, 59.4% of Bexar County’s, and the percentage of bilingual people in the Greater San Antonio Area is 34.21%.

These numbers speak to the fact that the community centered around Mexican-American Studies is thriving and growing. Students who decide to take MAS classes will be able transfer earned credits to a four-year institution such as the University of Texas at San Antonio, where the Mexican-American Studies program and degree has been in place for more than two decades.

Programs like these set a precedent for a more thoroughly developed social consciousness toward Mexican-American studies and for people who are critically engaged in their future. SAC’s MAS courses offer narratives not traditionally found outside of higher education, inspire learning beyond commonly held truths and values, and prove that the Mexican-American experience not only complements existing history, but is an integral part of it.

About Léo Treviño

Born and raised in San Antonio, Léo Treviño is an educator who works with at-risk middle school aged students on the Southside. After serving multiple tours of combat in the U.S. Army for 10 years, he received dual B.A.s in History and Mexican-American Studies and is currently pursuing a M.A. in Bicultural Bilingual Education. Léo's fierce passion for education reform and the inclusion of Ethnic Studies in public schools serves him well as an activist in the San Antonio and Texas communities.

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