Creation-Resistance in our Struggle for a Just and Equitable Multiracial/Multiethnic Democracy in an Epoch of Institutional Unraveling, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Creation-Resistance in our Struggle for a Just and Equitable Multiracial/Multiethnic Democracy in an Epoch of Institutional Unraveling

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 20, 2025

Those of us at the Texas legislature in 2023 in the fight for diversity, equity and inclusion in
Texas and for the multiracial/multiethnic democracy we deserve. Photo credit: Lana Husband

We are living through a time of profound crisis—what I call the Epoch of Institutional Unraveling. Our most essential public institutions—schools, colleges, libraries, courts—are under relentless attack. Built, however imperfectly, to serve the public good, they are now being hollowed out, defunded, politicized, and transformed into tools of exclusion rather than engines of opportunity.

This is no accident. It is the culmination of a decades-long project rooted in neoliberalism, racial capitalism, and white grievance politics. From anti-DEI laws to book bans, from the gutting of voting rights to the criminalization of dissent, authoritarian tendencies are taking root beneath the banner of patriotism and “parental rights.” 

In Texas, the brazen mid-decade redistricting coup d'état sheds light on this agenda with particular clarity. By attempting to rig political maps for partisan gain, state leaders have not only angered the public but also energized progressives and the growing majority who care deeply about democracy. Such maneuvers expose the raw fear driving these efforts: fear of a multiracial democracy, fear of truth, fear of us.

This fear manifests as epistemic control. As the late Michel Foucault (1980) reminds us, knowledge is not merely discovered—it is produced, legitimized, and controlled by those in power. In Texas, Senate Bill 17, targeting DEI in higher education, and Senate Bill 12 that extends similar epistemic regulation into K–12 schools are of great concern.

These laws are not only anti-DEI; they are anti-knowledge. They sanction a return to sanitized, monocultural narratives that erase the histories, contributions, and struggles of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, women, and LGBTQ+ communities.

What is so incredibly ironic is that today, knowledge is not merely expanding—it is multiplying at an unprecedented pace. Buckminster Fuller once described a “knowledge-doubling curve,” and by 2013 IBM projected that in some fields, human knowledge could double in a matter of hours. Yet this acceleration raises urgent questions: Who has access to this knowledge? Who controls its production and dissemination? And whose ways of knowing are excluded or erased in the process?After all, as ethnographers remind us, every way of seeing is also, inevitably, a way of not seeing.

The sheer velocity of information growth does not equate to justice, truth, or liberation—unless we intervene in how knowledge is made, valued, and shared.

Figure 1: Buckminster Fuller’s Knowledge Doubling Curve, with post-1982 addition by IBM Source: https://www.learningguild.com/articles/marc-my-words-the-coming-knowledge-tsunami?utm_source

And this erasure is not limited to policy. It reverberates through our collective cultural memory—what is remembered, celebrated, or forgotten. When Ethnic Studies programs are targeted, when books are banned, when educators are censured for telling the truth, we are witnessing a deliberate effort to reshape memory itself. 

The perverse goal is not only to suppress dissenting viewpoints but to render whole histories unintelligible to future generations. In such a landscape, ignorance becomes not a void, but a construct—built, reinforced, and weaponized in the service of maintaining the status quo.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this moment, we must see clearly: this is not just a dismantling of institutions—it is a dismantling of hope. Of imagination. Of the very idea that another world is possible. So that’s why we must respond not only with resistance, but with creation—with what my dear friend and colleague, the late Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodríguez, called "creation-resistance." That is, the simultaneous act of pushing back and building forward—of saying no to oppression while creating spaces of healing, learning, and collective liberation. It's a new Zeitgeist for our era and for this time.

May we never stop doing what we all do to build a better world.

We see this in Ethnic Studies classrooms that center ancestral knowledge. In community schools like Academia Cuauhtli, where young children reclaim their language and their dignity. In our organizing spaces, our coalitions, and our testimonios before the legislature, these are all acts of creation-resistance. They arise not just from critique, but from a deep and abiding love—for our communities, our cultures, our children, and our future.

The mid-decade redistricting stunt in Texas is a prime example of why creation-resistance is so necessary. Though intended to silence and sideline, it has had the opposite effect: communities are mobilizing, coalitions are expanding, and ordinary people are stepping into leadership roles with renewed urgency. 

From courtroom challenges to grassroots voter education drives, from art that speaks truth to power to neighborhood canvassing, Texans are responding not just with outrage but with imagination. 

We are re-drawing our own maps. These are not only maps of resistance, but also simultaneously maps of respectful relations that provide a sense of care and belonging. We insist that democracy not get stolen in the dead of night. In this way, the very tactics meant to unravel democracy are fueling its reinvention—proving that resistance, when paired with creation, can transform even acts of suppression into catalysts for collective power.

I know many of you feel disillusioned by a political system that seems broken and unresponsive. But I learned early in life that when things get political, we must become more political. Channel your frustration into action: join an organization, a church, a mosque, or synagogue. Find community, find solidarity, and remember that change has always come from those who refused to sit on the sidelines.

That is how we change the course of history. Your voice, your vision, and your vote matter—not just in presidential elections but at school board meetings, city councils, and yes, even as candidates yourselves. Our ancestors endured genocide, slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow—and Juan Crow—so that we could rise in moments like this. Let us not shrink. Let us be disciplined, organized, and loving—because love is a political act. To love is to act, to fight for a world that honors the dignity of all.

References

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.

IBM. (2013). The digital universe study: Knowledge doubling every 12 hours. IBM Research. https://www.industrytap.com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-months-soon-to-be-every-12-hours/3950

Angela Valenzuela, Photo Credit: Sebas
Santana, July, 2025

Reflections on Creative Resistance: A Personal Note on our work at Academia Cuauhtli by Angela Valenzuela Ph.D.

Friends:

I've been silent on the blog due to a lot of work these days that keeps me busy. Also doing a bit of traveling while keeping up with the seemingly unending craziness and horror in full display. Because of the work that many of us in the community do, it's hard not to see and indeed, important to acknowledge, the hopeful signs before us that our work and commitments inspire.

In this vein, I want to share a bit about travel to Oaxaca, Mexico, next week, as well as some wonderful updates pertaining to our Saturday school, Academia Cuauhtli (or "Eagle Academy" in Nahuatl) here in Austin Texas.

The focus of our school is with Austin's most vulnerable community that is working-class, Spanish speaking, and immigrant, with parents that mostly hold poorly-paid jobs as frontline workers in the Austin area.

In partnership with the Austin Independent School District and the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) where we are physically located, our school is a language and cultural revitalization project mostly for fifth- and fourth-grade elementary school girls and boys where they are exposed to a culturally enriching curriculum, including danza Mexica (Aztec dance)—where "danza" means ceremony and not dance. This nurtures in youth a deep sense of not just "identity," but their multiple identities where Indigeneity—including Afro-Indigeneity and Afro-Latinidad—gets centered. Our curriculum shifts from year to year, depending on what our parents and teachers seek.

Texas State University professor Dr. Chris Milk and a group of teachers are working over the Summer, as they always do, to produce a professional, standards-aligned, culturally-rich, Spanish-English curriculum that gets taught not only at Academia Cuauhtli in the Fall, but also districtwide, with mostly bilingual/dual language teachers, taking this up, we understand. Thanks to Jessica Jolliffe for another year of funding for this important work and to Chris for his superb leadership and commitment.

Thanks to excellent initiative and leadership by our Academia Cuauhtli Program Manager Maria Unda, website and communications Director Mateo Villafuerte, and Camp Director Azteca Sirias, another highlight this Summer is Academia Cuauhtli's second annual Aztech Kidz Code Summer Camp. It takes place at the end of July and early August at the ESB-MACC.

At this camp, children and youth will learn to code, create their own games, and learn now to monetize them to plant seeds in their minds of possible futures in technology, graphics, and computer design that are fully consistent with Indigenous identity, epistemologies, and aesthetics. This is coupled with danza Mexica. So happy to see maestra Katya Guzman and maestro Mario Ramirez offering instruction again this year.

Our Academia Cuauhtli maestras, our teachers, rock, too. At least 5 teachers will start 5 Academia Cuauhtli after-school programs in 5 AISD Elementary Schools this Fall. All will make use our curriculum and spread the good, healing medicine to other spaces and places. Hence, we are in a period of growth and expansion as we enter our 9th year of operation.

Regarding Oaxaca, Mexico, 13 of us, all educators, head out on Sunday. We will be meeting with our friends and colleagues at La Universidad Autónoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca (UABJO), or the Autonomous University of Benito Juarez in Oaxaca, Mexico. While there, we'll participate in a symposium at the University and will visit schools taught by Indigenous teachers so that we can deepen our sense of Indigenous pedagogy, curriculum, and practices, and simultaneously with the students and faculty at the university, as well.

Thanks to San Diego State University and Chair of the Dual Language and English Learner Education Department, Dr. Margarita Machado-Casas, as well as to Language Institute Director Fernando Martinez for making this possible. Fernando and his colleagues prepare Indigenous, pre-service teachers to return to their communities to teach in ways that are decolonial, grounded in community-based knowledge, values, and ways of knowing from an asset-based perspective. In the U.S., we might call this a Grow Your Own Teacher program that is also about language and culture revitalization similar to Academia Cuauhtli.

As horrible as the world is right now, Academia Cuauhtli remains an enduring bright spot, a true beacon of hope that fosters resilience and makes our otherwise toxic, current political life as a country, not just bearable, but rewarding and fulfilling.

Ours is a way of knowing that Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez in his book 2021 titled, "Writing 50 Years (más o menos) Amongst the Gringos," describes as "creation-resistance." Another way to think about this is that the day we become bitter, negative, and withdrawn, is the day that "they," the powers that be, win.

These are matters of the soul. And no person or institution is entitled to the taking of ours, or anyone's joy, love, or striving.

Here is a great point to cite Benito Juarez himself, "El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz," or "respect for the rights of others is peace." So simple, yet so profound.

Creation-resistance maps on to other concepts like "transformational resistance," advanced by Solorzano and Bernal (2021), as well as the notion of writing from a "theory of the flesh," as put forward by Moraga and Anzaldúa (1981) where our best thinking is born from that tender and frequently fraught place of lived experience where pain, love, joy, and crushing exploitation reside.

Drawing on Vizenor (1999) and Indigenous scholarship, Sabzalian (2019) marshals the concept of "survivance," where surviving and resisting work creatively to negotiate meaning within educational contexts amidst colonial dispossession. Sabzalian also notes how survivance—and I would add, creative and transformational resistance—disrupt individualized notions of "resilience" and "grit" that unjustly place the onus of achievement and conversely, failure, on the students themselves.

Props to University of Oregon Professor Leilani Sabzalian for winning the Outstanding Book Award of the Year in 2020 by the American Educational Research Association for her book titled, Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. I highly recommend it for the Ethnic Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies college classroom.

It's all a mix that, at its best, invokes what our ancient ancestors termed, floricanto, translated literally as "flower and song." And how better than to create just such a world in the now, in the present, with the children who will also someday be ancestors to the coming generations?

I saw an amazing Netflix movie this week titled "RRR" (meaning “Rise Roar Revolt”), out of India that I highly recommend as it, too, speaks to the power of flower and song to dismantle oppressive symbolic orders and tumble empires, helping me to think of floricanto, creation-resistance, and survivance as liberatory and revolutionary praxis as non-violent, social justice mechanisms for change.

Taken together, these are ways of knowing that are not always explicit—albeit powerfully tacit— where our heartfelt, collective need for greater peace, justice, and unity in the world is neither a slogan nor an idea, but instead, a creative way of life that holds an array of meanings and possibilities for us.

It means uplifting both our youth and families, together with their bilingual education/dual language teachers so that they can teach from an additive, strengths-based perspective, anchored in children's stories, histories, languages, cultures, and identities so that youth can envision positive, bold, and expressive futures for themselves— just as they are—as members of a community that has their backs.

To us all, this IS the movement that nurtures and empowers self in community. Would that all of our communities had such powerful spaces for teaching, learning, reflection, and healing.

Major thanks for UT doctoral students Patricia Nuñez Porras and Julia Hernandez for working hard these past several months to make our trip to Oaxaca happen. A shout out to Tiffany Guridy at LLILAS, as well, for her hard work in addressing the minutia of detail associated with international travel for us all.

As always, we are also indebted to our ESB-MACC family, Director Michelle Rojas, Lori Navarrete, Olivia Tamzarian, Frank Baca, Ulises Gave, and all the other staff for partnering with us on this truly awesome and beautiful journey.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Anzaldúa, G., & Moraga, C. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press.


Rodriguez, R. (2021). Writing 50 Years (más o menos) Amongst the Gringos. San Antonio: Aztlan Libre Press.


Sabzalian, L. (2019). Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. Routledge.


Solorzano, D. G., & Bernal, D. 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.


Vizenor, G. R. (1999). Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. University of Nebraska Press.