2 days ago

El Tucsonan EP02 Q Uncut

Three hours with Q — Quique Garcia Naranjo, AKA DJ Q, multi-disciplinary artist, poet, teacher, and co-founder of the 1202 collective.

We talk Tucson as a crossroads, what cumbia and Club Congress meant to a generation, what COVID broke and rebuilt in us, dance floors and why the Maverick gets it, teaching kids in Aspen and the Pima County juvie, and the manuscript Q has been working on for six years — a deep dive into where the word "raza" actually comes from, what José Vasconcelos's La Raza Cósmica was really doing, and the Nazi propaganda machine hiding in the foundation of modern Mexicanidad.

This is the full members-only cut. The public version will drop in two parts.

— Gregorio Contreras, El Tucsonan

Chapters coming once timecodes settle.

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📚 BOOKS & WRITERS REFERENCED

- La Raza Cósmica — José Vasconcelos (1925)

- Aspects of Mexican Civilization — José Vasconcelos (1926, University of Chicago lecture)

- Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza — Gloria Anzaldúa

- Notebook of a Return to the Native Land — Aimé Césaire

- We Are Owed — Ariana Brown

- Cruel Fiction — Wendy Treviño

- Latinidad Is Anti-Black — Tatiana (full attribution forthcoming)

- Parable of the Sower — Octavia Butler

🎙️ Q's earlier manuscripts

- Turtle Boy Says — via Ohala Zine Press (Max / Milkweed)

- Descended Dissident

📰 Coverage referenced

- Larry Itliong and the Filipino farmworkers — the labor history Cesar Chavez's narrative often omits

- The Lázaro Cárdenas / Timón magazine investigation — Vasconcelos's Nazi-funded propaganda directorship, 1940

🎬 Other names mentioned

- Logan Phillips — Tucson Poet Laureate

- Eva Sierra — Writing the Community grant, University of Arizona

- Anna Flores — who put us onto Césaire

- Mario & Maria Miranda — Half Breed Press, Tijuana

- Body — astrology study, longtime collaborator

- Isaac — in memoriam. This conversation lives because he taught us how to have it.

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🔗 LINKS

Q & 1202

twelvotwo.com

El Tucsonan

eltucsonan.com

Become a supporter: eltucsonan.com/supporters/sign_in

Sponsor the show: eltucsonan.com/pages/sponsor

Episode 1 with Rey: [link to EP1]

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This conversation engages with sensitive historical material including colonial violence, Holocaust history, contemporary geopolitical conflict, and accusations against public figures. Q is clear throughout that he is "only reflecting what's been said" and speaking from research and lived experience. Specific historical claims should be cross-referenced for academic use. Our goal is to make these conversations accessible — not to replace primary research.