Program | LEAD Summit XIV

LEAD Summit 2025 Program

"Telling Our Stories - Our Way, Our Voice:

Latino Representation in the Arts, Media, and Education"

LEAD Summit XIV

Friday, October 3rd, 2025
8:00 am - 2:00 pm
Santos Manuel Student Union – South
California State University, San Bernardino

Program Detail

9:00 AM: Procession / Performance - " Raíces y Resistencia: Storytelling as Legacy and Liberation"

This performance-procession is a living altar, a moving invocation of Latino ancestral and cultural storytelling traditions—oral histories, testimonio, dichos, folk practices, songs, prayers, and incantations—brought to life through voice, movement, rhythm, and ceremony. These expressive forms have long served as vessels of memory, identity, and intergenerational wisdom across Latino communities.

Each step of the procession embodies a different form of storytelling, unfolding like pages of a communal book written across generations. Participants become both carriers and creators of memory, enacting the wisdom of abuelas and the defiance of those who resisted silence. This is not just performance—it is reclamation, remembrance, and resistance.

The Opening: Invocation of the Ancestors
A circle forms. Drums pulse. A collective prayer rises in Spanish, Nahuatl, and English. Offerings are placed—corn, feathers, photos, handwritten stories. An elder steps forward to share a testimonio, grounding the space in truth.
The Procession Begins
Slow, intentional steps. Along the path, voices echo dichos and proverbs, called and responded to like sacred riddles.
“Camarón que se duerme…”
“¡Se lo lleva la corriente!”
The crowd becomes a call-and-response chorus of survival.
Stations of Memory and Resistance
At different intervals, the procession pauses for embodied storytelling. One station reimagines a curandera’s ritual, another features a song passed down from migrant laborers, sung by youth in harmony. Stories of exile, joy, rage, and faith are woven into the air through chant and dance.
Language as Spell, Sound as Spirit
Spoken word artists emerge, reciting incantations—half poem, half prayer. Words spiral into drums, into clapping, into feet stomping ancestral rhythms. This is palabra viva—living word. The air thick with smoke and breath and sound.
The Gathering: Collective Offering
At the end, participants contribute something to a shared altar: a written memory, a whispered story, a note to an ancestor. A final communal chant rises, affirming that cultural storytelling is not a relic—it is alive, a powerful tool of survival, resilience, and resistance.
Intercessors: Makuill Ollin Ocelotl, Aztec Dance Calpulli
Grand Marshals: Bel Hernandez and Enrique Castillo, 2025 Annual César E. Chávez Memorial Breakfast Padrinos de Honor

9:45 AM: Morning Featured Speaker - “Visions in Color: Artivism, Aesthetics, and Identity”

Highlighting Chicano/Latino artistic expression through visual arts, textiles, murals, ceramics, fashion, photography, and street art that speak to political, cultural, and social movements.

This creative landscape is not just aesthetic—it is insurgent, communal, and deeply rooted in histories of struggle, resilience, and identity. Chicano and Latino artists have long transformed everyday materials and public spaces into powerful platforms of cultural affirmation and political critique. Their work pulses with color, symbol, and ancestral memory—redefining beauty on their own terms.

From the walls of barrios to the runways of resistance, murals have served as monumental testaments to pride, protest, and place. These public canvases depict revolutionary icons, farmworker uprisings, Indigenous cosmologies, and neighborhood saints. They do not ask permission—they proclaim presence, painting the stories that textbooks and mainstream galleries overlook.

Textiles and fashion become sites of storytelling—woven with motifs of migration, colonization, and celebration. Traditional embroidery, reimagined with modern silhouettes, honors the craft of ancestors while challenging eurocentric standards. Fashion is not just adornment—it is armor, archive, and artistic resistance.

Ceramics and folk art, often dismissed by institutional art spaces, carry the textures of daily life and spirituality. Clay becomes political when it holds the fingerprint of a migrant mother, when it carries the symbols of resistance fired into its surface. These forms tell stories of home, land, and survival.

Photography captures the overlooked—family portraits in front yards, protests in the streets, quinceañeras in full regalia, the sacred in the mundane. The lens becomes a witness, an archive of cultural affirmation and generational beauty.

Street art and graffiti—bold, ephemeral, and uncontainable—mark territory, declare solidarity, and speak to youth navigating borders, identities, and systems of surveillance. From stencils to wheatpaste to full-scale murals, this art disrupts, honors, and dreams.

Through all these mediums, Chicano and Latino artists engage with movements for labor rights, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant justice, queer liberation, and cultural survival. Their work is not decorative—it is declarative. It is how communities speak when they are not heard, how culture endures when it is erased, and how spirit resists when it is tested.

This artistic expression is a form of collective memory—a way to tell our stories when others won’t. It is both rooted and radical, ancient and emergent, personal and political.

Introduction/Moderator: - TBD
Featured Speaker: María Esther Fernández - Invitation WIP
Artistic Director, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture

10:30 AM: Panel - “Curriculum Justice: Centering Latino Voices in Education”

Innovative practices, programs, and policies that prioritize Chicano/Latino histories, literature, and experiences across PK–12 and higher education—especially in Ethnic, Chicano, and Cultural Studies—are essential interventions in the pursuit of educational equity, cultural affirmation, and transformative pedagogy.

These initiatives challenge dominant narratives and traditional curricula that have historically marginalized or erased Chicano/Latino voices. By centering the lived realities, ancestral knowledge, and intellectual contributions of Chicano/Latino communities, educators and institutions create spaces of belonging, critical inquiry, and liberation for students of all backgrounds.

In PK–12 settings, these practices may include culturally sustaining curricula that incorporate bilingual storytelling, community-based histories, and literature by authors such as Rudolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, and Juan Felipe Herrera. Classroom environments are transformed through the integration of family knowledge, local cultural landmarks, and social justice-oriented learning projects. Programs that engage students in exploring their own identities—through art, poetry, oral history, and civic engagement—help foster a sense of pride, agency, and academic confidence.

At the higher education level, Chicano, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies programs play a vital role in shaping critical thinkers, cultural workers, and future educators. These departments serve as intellectual sanctuaries—interdisciplinary spaces where theory meets praxis, and where students are encouraged to interrogate power, colonialism, migration, race, gender, and language. Innovative models include community-engaged research, cross-generational mentorship, testimonio-based learning, and curriculum that bridges classroom and community, archive and activism.

Policies that institutionalize Chicano/Latino studies—such as graduation requirements in Ethnic Studies, the creation of tenure-track lines in Chicana/o Studies, and funding for culturally grounded teacher training—are key to ensuring sustainability and systemic change. These efforts push back against tokenization, underrepresentation, and the ongoing political attacks on Ethnic Studies across the country.

Importantly, these educational innovations are not just about representation—they are about reclamation. They reclaim the right to tell our stories, to learn from our own intellectual and cultural traditions, and to imagine liberatory futures rooted in justice and community.

Chair/Moderator: Dr. Miguel Zavala - TBD
Panelist: Dr. Veronica Valadez - TBD
Panelist: Dr. Gabriel Orosco - TBD
Panelist: Dr. Carmen Beck - TBD

11:15 AM: Dr. Tomás Rivera Featured Panel - “La Palabra as Power: Spoken Word, Música, Poetry, Literature, and the Politics of Voice”

Lyricism, rap, spoken word, music, literature, cantos, corridos, and contemporary poetry that speak truth to power, challenge erasure, and build solidarity.

These expressive forms are more than artistic genres—they are tools of testimony, resistance, and radical imagination. Across generations, Chicano/Latino communities have used the power of the word—spoken, sung, written, and performed—to make the invisible seen and the unheard felt. Whether on the stage, in the street, or between the pages of a book, these forms carry the weight of history and the fire of possibility.

Rap and spoken word function as urgent declarations—raw, rhythmic, and rooted in lived experience. They confront systems of oppression while affirming identity, community, and creative brilliance. In barrio backyards and university open mics alike, young artists are redefining what it means to resist through rhyme, often blending Spanglish, code-switching, and ancestral languages into a sonic rebellion that transcends borders.

Cantos and corridos, with their deep ties to oral tradition, memory, and rural life, chronicle histories often left out of official narratives. These ballads give voice to everyday people—farmworkers, revolutionaries, migrants, madres, and outlaws. They preserve truth through melody, passing down stories from one generation to the next. Whether sung in protest or remembrance, they remain acts of cultural survival and fierce remembrance.

Contemporary poetry and literature, shaped by the legacies of authors like Gloria Anzaldúa, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Carmen Tafolla, continues to evolve, weaving together autobiography, critique, and prayer. These texts confront borders—physical, linguistic, gendered, spiritual—and make space for new ways of seeing and being. They are blueprints for healing, for dreaming beyond trauma, for building bridges across difference.

Music, whether it's hip-hop, punk, son jarocho, or reggaetón, pulses with the heartbeat of diasporic struggle and joy. It becomes a rallying cry in times of uprising, a balm in moments of grief, and a celebration of cultura every time it's blasted from a car stereo or poured into a plaza. In rhythm and sound, solidarity takes shape.

Together, these forms challenge the ongoing erasure of Chicano/Latino experiences in mainstream discourse. They demand visibility, spark dialogue, and cultivate belonging. They remind us that storytelling is not only survival—it’s revolution. In every verse, chorus, and stanza, we remember: the people have always had the power. These words are how we reclaim it.

Chair/Moderator: Dr. Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, CSUSB
Hector Flores, Las Cafeteras - TBD
Panelist: Henry “HenGee” Garcia - TBD
Panelist: Jerry Tello, co-founder of the National Compadres Network - TBD
Panelist: Kirk Whisler, President - Latino 247 Media Group - TBD

* Dr. Tomás Rivera (December 22, 1935 – May 16, 1984) was a Mexican American author, poet, and educator. As an author, Rivera is best remembered for his 1971 Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness novella ...y no se lo tragó la tierra, translated into English variously as This Migrant Earth and as ...and the Earth Did Not Devour Him. This book won the first Premio Quinto Sol award. From 1979 until his death in 1984, he was the chancellor of the University of California, Riverside, the first Mexican American to hold such a position at the University of California.

12:45 PM: Afternoon Featured Speaker - “The Golden Age of Rock & Roll: Celebrando the Eastside Sound and Beyond”

The “Eastside Sound” refers to a unique, genre-blending musical movement rooted in East Los Angeles, California—a powerful expression of cultural identity, resistance, and artistic innovation that emerged from the heart of Chicano communities. Developed primarily from the 1950s through the 1980s and continuing to resonate today, the Eastside Sound draws on an eclectic mix of rhythm and blues, doo-wop, Chicano rock, soul, surf, garage rock, and eventually punk, producing a sound as layered and vibrant as the neighborhoods that birthed it.

Influenced by African American musical traditions, East LA bands like Thee Midniters, The Romancers, and Cannibal & the Headhunters infused Motown sensibilities with Chicano flavor. Their harmonies, horns, and heartfelt lyrics captured the spirit of working-class youth coming of age in a racially charged, postwar Los Angeles. These bands not only performed at backyard parties and community dances but also found national acclaim—Cannibal & the Headhunters even toured with the Beatles.

Thee Midniters, perhaps the most iconic of the Eastside Sound pioneers, blended social commentary with electrifying arrangements—using music to challenge stereotypes, uplift community pride, and chronicle the Chicano experience. Their track "Chicano Power" became a rallying cry for cultural affirmation during the civil rights era.

In the 1970s, Ruben and the Jets—a project led by Ruben Guevara and supported by Frank Zappa—picked up the torch, fusing doo-wop harmonies with theatricality and political edge, continuing the tradition of blending soulful nostalgia with pointed cultural reflection. Their work kept the Eastside Sound alive while also pushing it into experimental and hybrid territory, honoring the Pachuco aesthetic while innovating within it.

As the movement evolved, it gave rise to Chicano punk in the late 1970s and 1980s. Bands like The Brat, The Plugz, and Los Illegals erupted from the underground with a raw, urgent energy. These groups merged punk’s DIY ethos and anti-authoritarian stance with Chicano narratives—writing songs about police brutality, border politics, gentrification, and bicultural identity. Their sound was loud, unapologetic, and deeply rooted in East LA’s political realities.

Throughout all its phases, the Eastside Sound was not just music—it was a cultural declaration, born in garages, living rooms, street corners, and dance halls. It provided a soundtrack for generations navigating racial discrimination, cultural hybridity, and social transformation. The movement’s legacy can still be felt today in the rhythms of Chicano soul revivalists, Latinx punk bands, and LA’s vibrant indie scenes.

The Eastside Sound is a sonic mural of East LA—echoing with rebellion, pride, heartache, and joy. It reminds us that art created at the margins doesn’t just survive; it shapes history.

Introduction/Moderator: - TBD
Featured Speaker: Little Willie G (Willie Garcia) - Invitation WIP
Legendary Chicano vocalist and songwriter, Thee Midniters

1:15 PM: Capstone Presentation – “Telling Our Stories - Our Way, Our Voice”

Critically examining media representation, cultural power, and the Latino presence—and persistent absence—in film, television, theater, publishing, and digital platforms is essential to understanding how narratives shape identity, belonging, and power in society. For too long, mainstream media has marginalized, misrepresented, or altogether erased Latino communities, reducing us to stereotypes, token characters, or background noise. What we see—and don’t see—on our screens and in our scripts reflects deeper structural inequities in whose stories are valued, funded, and circulated.

This work begins with interrogating the cultural gatekeepers—studios, publishers, producers, and algorithms—that control which stories get told and who gets to tell them. Despite the vast and growing Latino population in the United States, media representation remains disproportionately low, often limited to narrow tropes: the gang member, the maid, the hypersexualized figure, the undocumented migrant. These depictions flatten our complexity and erase the richness of our cultures, histories, and futures.

Latino absence is not accidental—it’s systemic. It reflects a broader cultural amnesia that ignores our foundational presence in the Americas and our vital contributions to every sphere of society. Representation is not just about being visible—it’s about being seen accurately, fully, and on our own terms. It’s about disrupting whitewashed narratives and asserting agency in storytelling.

The push for authentic, empowering, and intersectional representation demands a reimagining of who is behind the camera, in the writers' rooms, on editorial boards, and in the executive seats. It calls for Afro-Latino, Indigenous, queer, undocumented, disabled, and working-class voices to be centered—not as an afterthought, but as an artistic and political necessity.

In film and television, this means moving beyond inclusion to actual authorship—Latino writers, directors, and producers telling stories that reflect our multiplicity, from bilingual family dramas to speculative sci-fi rooted in ancestral knowledge. In theater, it means supporting original plays that speak from and to our communities, staged in both traditional and grassroots spaces. In publishing, it means making room for experimental, hybrid, and unapologetically diasporic literature—not just the “marketable” narratives palatable to mainstream audiences.

Digital platforms and social media, while often more democratized, still reflect algorithmic bias and systemic exclusion. Yet they also offer powerful tools for community storytelling, independent content creation, and media justice movements that resist invisibility and commodification.

Ultimately, this critical examination is not only about critique—it is about creation. It is about building new cultural imaginaries where our stories are not merely included but centered, honored, and celebrated. It’s about reclaiming narrative power and ensuring that future generations of Latinos see themselves reflected—not just as survivors, but as protagonists, visionaries, and storytellers of their own lives.

Chair/Moderator: Dr. Debora Perez Torres, Assistant Professor, CSUSB
Panelist: Bel Hernandez - TBD
Panelist: Enrique Castillo - TBD
Panelist: - TBD
Panelist: - TBD