El Tucsonan EP02 Part 2 — Q (Enrique Garcia Naranjo)

Welcome back to Episode 2. This is Part 2 — the back half of my conversation with Enrique "Q" Garcia Naranjo (DJ Q, poet, teacher, co-founder of 1202). If Part 1 was the history, this is the dissertation.

In this half: what a decade of teaching — from a ski-resort town in Colorado to a Tucson juvenile detention center — taught Q about play, failure, and how the safest place some kids have is a cell. Then we go deep into the book he's spent six years on, Que Viva La Raza, Que No: where the phrase "Viva la Raza" actually comes from, the complicated man who coined it, and why Q thinks our inherited ideas of identity are an antidote that was dosed wrong. We get into the Santa Cruz, the monuments Tucson keeps and the ones it takes down, and the line they want to live by: "a warrior in a garden, not a gardener at war."

Members can already watch the full uncut conversation (Parts 1 + 2) on the website.

— Gregorio C., El Tucsonan

🎵 MUSIC CUES
Music in this episode by Q.
"bruto" and "07 FAT"
Find more of Q's music at Barrio Sounds: barriosounds.bandcamp.com

🔗 LINKS
Q & 1202 — @themi7298 · twelvotwo.com · barriosounds.bandcamp.com
El Tucsonan — eltucsonan.com
Become a supporter (full uncut + early access): eltucsonan.com/supporters/sign_in
Sponsor the show: eltucsonan.com/pages/sponsor
Episode 1 with Rey: https://youtu.be/D4L5OEVrY4M
Episode 2 with Q — Part 1: https://youtu.be/XZUkSfR43T0

📚 BOOKS & WRITERS REFERENCED
- La Raza Cósmica (1925) — José Vasconcelos
- Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza — Gloria Anzaldúa
- Octavia Butler (on knowing history to read the future)
- "Latinidad Is Anti-Black" — [confirm author; Q couldn't recall the last name on tape]
- Ariana Brown · Wendy Treviño (poets/sources for the Vasconcelos research)
- Q's own work: Turtle Boy Says (Ojala Zine Press) · Descend a Dissident · forthcoming Que Viva La Raza, Que No (via 1202 + Half Breed Press, Tijuana)

🎬 NAMES MENTIONED
Logan Phillips (Tucson Poet Laureate — opened the Colorado teaching door) · Eva Sierra (educator) · KP (live phone-in) · Gazal / DJ Zaytoon (Q's partner) · Rey (1202) · Diego & the writer homies · Mario & Maria Miranda (Half Breed Press, Tijuana) · Max Milkweed (Ojala Zine Press) · José Vasconcelos · Isaac — in memoriam. This conversation lives because he taught us how to have it.