Love and Community with a Tazíta de Té

Welcome to Dímelo! This is a new blog that will be managed by MICCA, and we want it to be a community space where we share writing from our members and our extended networks. Please email us at repMICCA@gmail.com if you have an idea for a post or any questions!

As this is our first post, and as MICCA begins its second year of existence, we wanted to take a moment to think about where we’ve been so far as an organization and where we might be headed. Below we have two reflections: one from MICCA’s first ever president, Elba Mandujano, and one from its current president, Santos Felipe Ramos.

Elba's Reflection:

“Michigan State University! With a student population of approximately 50,543 students, this big ten is known for its athletics and as one of the best research universities in the world. But even with that large number of Spartans at this Predominantly White Institution (PWI), this place can feel very lonely and it is important to know that you are not alone.

My name is Elba Mandujano, I am a first generation Xicana from Los Angeles, California that decided to take a chance and pursue my Master’s degree at MSU. Being away from my familía and friends was a challenge, but being the only Xicanx/Latinx in my cohort and assistantship made the struggle a little more overwhelming. Everyone says graduate school is difficult. The course work can feel like never ending, free time is limited and student loans add up. But folks rarely talk about the lack of understanding from peers and professionals about what you are going through, the mental illness that might come with those nights, and the need to know you are not alone.

There is more to academic success than being able to read a long list of textbooks. For many of us, there is a need for community healing, a supportive network, cultural education, acknowledgement of our triggers, and a familía away from home. This is why MICCA was created. We gathered to build a much needed space with and for Xicanx/Latinx graduate students and community members. A comunidad that heals each other, that organizes, that cooks together, that creates spaces that uplift our spirit and cultura, that builds bridges with other oppressed communities; a FAMILIA.

Our backs carry the weight of generations of our gente’s untold stories and our education carries familias, communities, and cultura, but sometimes academia fails to recognize our narratives. So when the colorful fall leaves and the harsh winter kicks in, there is a tazíta de té and a loving familía reminding you that you are not alone y que SI SE PUEDE!

Resistencia y Unidad,

Elba Mandujano

Co-Founder & Past President”

Santos' Reflection:

“MICCA formed as a group last fall when a group of Chicanxs and Latinxs came together to create a cultural, spiritual, and political home. While it was our intention to make something new, we also saw ourselves in relation to groups like MEChA who have a history of community organizing both nationally as well as right here on MSU's campus. I remember when we were first starting out, someone mentioned how our name was close to MEChA's but was still different enough to be doing its own thing. I think that reflected pretty accurately how we saw ourselves as a group and where we wanted to fit in.

There were a lot of highs in our first year, like when we received an outpouring of support for our first annual Día de los Muertos gathering, and when everyone danced their hearts out at Queerceañera. Being a person of color in a predominantly white institution can take its toll on you emotionally, mentally, and even physically. That’s why I think there seemed to be a kind of magic about our first year, because it felt so good just for everyone in our group to have found each other and to be making space for ourselves that we’d never felt here before.

And then our dear friend Maximillion Monroy-Miller suddenly died last spring. Max had been with MICCA from the beginning. It’s how I met him, and we grew close really quickly because we had so many shared interests: stupid jokes, music, hooping, eating, organizing, etc. We were neighbors, too. Sometimes we'd drop by each other’s house unannounced just to bounce this-or-that academic or political idea off one another. He loved to scheme. I really miss that about him.

I’ll always remember how Max talked about decolonial love, and the need for us to come to the work of liberation from a place of healing, compassion, and joyousness, even in the midst of great turmoil and the justified anger we feel as people of color. But he didn’t just talk about it. He lived it. And I think most who had the chance to know him felt that kind of love from him through his everyday actions.

I'm really trying to come to the work of MICCA this year in that spirit that we always shared with Max, which was full of decolonial love and recognition of the political moment that we're in. MICCA will keep working to create the kind of cultural spaces that sustain us as Chicanxs & Latinxs, as we also send our support to Standing Rock, as we continue to affirm that Black Lives Matter, and as we engage all other work that gets us closer to the kind of decolonial love that Max and others have envisioned.”