Chisme and Dialogue

Podcast Audio

Transcript

Chisme Symposium Spring 2025 Podcast

[00:00:00] Neomi De Anda: Hello and welcome to the Chisme Symposium. My name is Dr. Neomi De Anda and I'm happy to welcome you back to another episode of the Chisme Symposium. This is for Spring 2025, and today our special guest is Dr. Julio Quintero from here at the University of Dayton. Tell us a little more about yourself, Dr. Quintero.

[00:00:25] Julio Quintero: Well, thank you so much first for the invitation to be here, Dr. De Anda. My name is, Julio Quintero, and I use pronouns he/him. I work in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion here at the university for about six years. But before doing that, I was a faculty member in a couple of institutions of high learning; a couple of colleges. I think the passion that drove me was an understanding of culture and literature, and I used to teach Latin American literature and culture, and I think that is something that still carries me. It's a part of my identity that is still very present. And I was happy that you were able to invite me to talk about chisme using a language that is, or a lens that is focused on Latin American culture and also literature and dialogue. That is something that I'm actually doing right now here at the university.

[00:01:16] Neomi De Anda: I was super excited to have you at the Chisme Symposium here on campus last week.

[00:01:22] Julio Quintero: Yes.

[00:01:23] Neomi De Anda: And, to talk, with our campus community, our faculty, staff, and graduate students.

[00:01:28] Julio Quintero: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:29] Neomi De Anda: But I was most excited to have you in and hear about your own scholarship. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about who you are as a scholar, what you do? Your work, anything you want to highlight?

[00:01:41] Julio Quintero: Yeah, so, I would say like two, I've, I've worked kind of two different areas.

The first area that I worked for several years was the representation of artists in Latin American novels. I did that for a number of years. And then after a lot of issues happening in Latin America and the world, I started to focus more on the depiction of political figures in more contemporary novels, particularly in Venezuela and Guatemala, and also including Columbia.

So I also did that for a number of years. But I think that the real issue for me is of understanding culture in general and using literary tools to understand culture in general. So, why are people using a particular form? What informs a particular practice or a cultural vehicle?

And that's what brought me to this idea of chisme, like to understand chisme; to read chisme from a perspective that it also uses literary tools, like how one would represent in literature. That was an interesting point. And so I'd like to tell you about, a little bit more about what I do.

For a while I was also interested in travel literature, in utopian literature. And I think that was more like looking at preoccupations, at motifs, at repetitions that happen in a culture and then trying to understand them. Why are they taking place? Are they a repetition of what, why are they repeating?

[00:03:28] Neomi De Anda: Thanks so much. Tell us, you have attended I think every single Chisme Symposium we have on campus. So what drew your attention to the Chisme Symposium, one, and then, two, is chisme the word you grew up with or is there a different Spanish language word you use?

[00:03:49] Julio Quintero: Yes, I think that what drew me to the Chisme Symposium, first there is a sense of awe that should exist in everything we do. Right? Like sometimes we take things for granted.

And I think that sometimes we take very concrete human experiences of communication for granted. We expect that everybody knows the rules to things and everybody's familiar to things and that things are giving us culturally we should know what they are, how they function, what the purpose of these things are.

[00:04:19] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:20] Julio Quintero: And I think that happens with chisme. So I grew up in, so in Colombia, in a city, but my family, particularly my mom, both my parents had come from the rural areas during the sixties. The sixties, of course in Latin America is a time of social movement where people are coming from the rural areas to the big cities. My parents were caught in that migration and in the case of my mother, she came from that background. And then, my father and our family continued visiting my mom, my mother's family through out our life. So my life growing up in Colombia was always divided between the city that I inhabited with my family and where I felt I belonged and also the mountains where my family, my mother was from. So every weekend we went there to live and to share with my grandparents. And so you start growing up with these ideas of chisme.

And I would say these visions of chisme or these conceptions of chisme, like chisme is something negative. You have to avoid chisme because chisme is a rumor that usually says bad things about people. Then you start hearing about the gender that the genders we tied to chisme so the woman, right, like the

Chismosa; don't be chismoso don't engage in chisme as a taboo, something that cannot be repeated.

And, and so I grew up with that vision, right? Like, and then being in the US for 20 something years thinking about gossip also as negative. But when I started talking to you, Neomi, about chisme, kind of the light bulbs started to go, right? Because it's not only

Chisme, is not only perceived as this negative thing. So there is something that is unique to chisme, a form of communication that is unique, and is performing ways that might have, I would say a positive impact. Of course, there could be, it could be kind of positive chisme and negative chisme but in, in the, what I was understanding of your perception about chisme about is a communication tool that people in the margins use to survive.

Then of course as I was growing up, I could see that, right? I could see, for example, like, I can tell you something very quickly, don't buy milk. This was the eighties, early eighties in Columbia. So you couldn't buy milk at this store because the owner mixed milk with water.

[00:07:00] Neomi De Anda: Mm.

[00:07:01] Julio Quintero: Something as simple as that, right? Like at that time the milk in the small towns, you couldn't buy it in bottles. You had to go to a store and the person had like this huge jug of milk. But people say, don't go there because it has water. But it was gossip, right? Nobody would tell the person that to their face

[00:07:19] Neomi De Anda: Or that they were in on his secret.

[00:07:21] Julio Quintero: Right?

Like, it's a secret. But those little things, the little piece of knowledge were the ones that could keep your family safe or healthy. And in a small community, right, without a newspaper or without the news, you have to trust chisme,

these rumors, to succeed. And so what is interesting is that being a member of an underrepresented group here in the U.S., I've also seen the importance of chisme made for communities to survive, right? Yeah, I think I'm talking too much here, but that's probably where I would stop.

[00:08:05] Neomi De Anda: Okay, so tell us, for the Chisme Symposium, you brought us a poem. You had sent me this poem last semester. I loved the poem so much, I bought the book and have read the whole poetry book. But tell us a little bit about the poem and feel free to go as long as you want. Talking through the poem, analyzing it, or if you wanna take a break, just take a break.

[00:08:26] Julio Quintero: Thank you. Thank you. So this is one of those things that come to you. Somebody gave me this book of poems because I am Hispanic and I speak Spanish, and the person said, Hey, I have this book in Spanish, I'm gonna give it to you.

But the person hadn't read the book or anything. I took the book and I said, sure, I'm gonna start reading it. So the book is actually in two is, half of it is in English and half of it is in Spanish. And actually the Spanish version is a translation from English. And so this is from a poet that is from Chicago.

His name is José Olivarez. And José is the son of Mexican immigrants and has a couple of books. One is called Citizen Illegal from 2008. He's the co-author of a book called Home Court from 2014 and is the co-host of a poet poetry podcast called "The Poetry Gods." And so the book has a beautiful name.

It's Promises of Gold. Promises of Gold. So I took the book and I started reading it and there were a lot of things that caught my attention from this book. I think the first one is the situations that the, like the, like the narrator, the speaker like brings this very intimate, things are very intimate.

So he's talking up with somebody about what it means to become middle class.

[00:09:46] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:46] Julio Quintero: And, and the person is saying like a half, half tank of gas, for example, or a watch or a cell phone. Like these things that make somebody, middle class that are very intimate. Right. The point that really moved me was a poem called "Poem where no one is deported." And so I, I think I like this poem because it reveals a lot about the speaker, like, about who the speaker is, where the speaker is coming from, the connections of the speaker to their community, the background of the speaker's family.

So it was very powerful. Just to put everything in context, right? We are living in a moment where we are receiving a lot of attention and migration in a lot of places, in the world.

[00:10:35] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:36] Julio Quintero: And, and this poem brings just a different position or a different reading of about the topic of migration and so I, I think it's a great poem and I, I don't know if maybe folks are able to find the poem online, but I'm gonna go to some like interesting sections. And so the way I imagine this poem is the speaker remembering their mom, working in a sock factory.

[00:11:07] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:07] Julio Quintero: Women working in these places, right? Like I, I imagine the speaker relating the experience of growing in a family with probably other brothers and sisters. The speaker in the poem doesn't mention a father figure or another figure in the household only is only mentioned in the mother and the mother being with other women in this factory and then something that is going to happen that is a raid. So the raid is gonna happen.

[00:11:34] Neomi De Anda: An immigration raid.

[00:11:35] Julio Quintero: An immigration raid. Correct. And then the possibility of these women being sent back or imprisoned or sent back to, or not even sent back. So we don't know right. We don't know where they're coming from, but the danger of an immigration raid.

[00:11:51] Neomi De Anda: But be taken away from their families, more than likely.

[00:11:54] Julio Quintero: Correct. And, and knowing that the speaker at this point is a, it's a young man.

[00:11:59] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:59] Julio Quintero: For what we can say. And so, so that's, that is interesting. First, like this fear, so first who's working there, but also like the customs of the women who work there. So the speaker says that the women braided each other's hair during breaks.

Like that act of these bodies getting together in this standard act of taking care of each other's hair about they were wearing rosaries and the, and the fact that these women were always ready. They didn't have a hair out of place.

And this made me very curious because that has been my experience, right? Like Hispanic women being always, or growing with values about always being ready, right? Like, you want always to be ready. Look, ready and, and the speaker says that they're ready for cameras or for God.

And, and this idea of the, the wise women from the gospel, like, like they were wise, right? Like they were ready. And then other thing that caught my attention about this poem is the precarity. The precarity that the speaker is intimating. The speaker is say, you know,  

 si Dios quiere like, they finish their sentences with si Dios quiere and as in the day before, right? Like, as, as something as happening tomorrow. The women were always saying, "si Dios quiere" so the, the immigration, raid happens and when the officers arrive, they find the, the factory completely empty, and the women were absent and safe. And so the officers think that, that, you know, nobody was working there, but the way the women represented what happened was as if, you know, that was God's work.

Like it was God. And then the speaker start saying, well, but you know, the God that my mother taught us is a God of revenge. But the, but in reality, the, the God that I experienced is a God of providence. So this God of always having food ready every day in the fridge for, for the brothers, for the, for the narrator, for the speaker of the poem.

And not knowing where the food came from and the, and the mother is being so thankful, right? Like "Gracias a Dios, Gracias a Dios" and that's what is, when the poem gets a particular view of chisme says a quote, "Gracias al dios del chisme” who heard of all these plans. So it makes me think as, as, as I mentioned, growing up in Colombia, when we say Who starts the chisme?

Right. Like, who started the chisme? Who started this rumor?

[00:14:41] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:41] Julio Quintero: That's like, like for why can't I understand? Is God, right? God started this rumor and then

[00:14:48] Neomi De Anda: God started the rumor that La Migra or somebody was coming, somebody with authority was going to come to the factory.

[00:14:57] Julio Quintero: Right. And the women heard that.

And then the poem says very beautifully, says “and whisper them the rumor into the right ears to keep our families safe.” So this idea of whisper, like sometimes God is represented as in the Bible, as in the prophets, as like it, like God whispers.

[00:15:19] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:19] Julio Quintero:  and, and I think the, the actually breathing right, like breath Ruah is in Hebrew, I think is, comes from that verb.

[00:15:28] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:29] Julio Quintero: That that means to, to breathe, to, to whisper. So like by reading the poem, what I felt is that it's decentering, all these narratives and preconceptions that we might have about chisme being something negative or something that is false and appeals to a narrative where we can see chisme as being something useful for a particular group of people, right?

[00:15:52] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:53] Julio Quintero: Who, who are surviving situations that are very difficult. That are precarious.

[00:15:59] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:01] Julio Quintero: And. But that the speaker, the poem is not misrepresenting these women as, as powerless. It's actually like showing the humanity of these women. But at the same time, the power of these women to trust themselves, to trust their reading of the situation, right?

And act on it. So you might hear a rumor, but you might be not willing or able to follow, you know, through.

[00:16:26] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:27] Julio Quintero: But these women were able to follow through. And so it's a very intimate perspective about a situation, a family, somebody growing in a family and then depicting the people in these circles in ways that are, I would say fair and highlighting their agency.

So intimacy and then giving us a version of chisme that is, I would say surprising. It's surprising. It kind of shows chisme in a way that I've never considered. Right. And it's very, at the same time, very congruent with your own version of chisme and what you try to do with the Chisme Symposium.

[00:17:08] Neomi De Anda: Well, and I loved this poem when you sent it to me because it's the first time that I've seen in print, other than my own writing, somebody really saying or using chisme as a literal theological language.

[00:17:23] Julio Quintero: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:23] Neomi De Anda: So they're saying the God of chisme.

And theological is that, breaking down that word, Theo-logos God talk or the words of God which can be played very well in this poem where it is God whispering to start the chisme. But it is also the community talking amongst themselves and sharing that and that all of that is mixed within that God whisper. I love that about this poem and that you were able to make that connection for me and what a really wonderful gift it was.

So, thank you so much. You mentioned the word decentering. Can you talk more about what, what is your theoretical formatting background that gives you that word and that language?

[00:18:10] Julio Quintero: So, yeah, so I think that it's interesting to think about the word decentering here, right? So you, you have, so like the poems, if you go to a history of poems is, started, you know, with epic, like, this telling of men about their battles. So if you think about a foundational poem, right? Like of, of the, of Western Civilization. And so the Iliad, for instance, Homer's Iliad, which is a long poem. So what's, what is centered is these powerful men in battle, and the women and children and, and animals and other, you know,

folks, you know, creatures, are always kind of at the margin. And I think that is the, I would say that it is always, it can be a tendency of, of, of certain writers. To go in that direction. So to put example of the, some of the literature that I probably familiar with, that is the literature of my country, Columbia.

So what one sees is that the foundational poems sometimes celebrate, right, like celebrate manhood, celebrate men, you know, the rural owner. And so the rural owner that gets infatuated with a woman and that love is cannot happen. But, you see that infatuation, I'm talking about particular novel called Manuela.

But that also happens in other literatures, even in, in this country, in the United States, that where one sees that men, you know, take the center stage, a particular man from particular social backgrounds, abilities, ways to live in the world. So that's kind of at the center and there's nothing good or bad about that is I would say it's just what it is the history that we are told.

That's when one studies literature, they tell you, you should study and read these people. And that's what happens, right? Like there's nothing wrong. That's, that's what it is. That's, that's the tradition, what is given. But at the same time, there's always other literature at the margin that are happening at the same time. Either contesting or complimenting, contesting or creating different world. Like, Siglo de Oro like golden century in Spain. So we were having, attending a play with a colleague from here, from UD, and we wait to listened to Maria Zayas,

[00:20:38] Neomi De Anda: mm-hmm.

[00:20:39] Julio Quintero: Who's a writer from the Golden Age, a woman talking about things that are very contemporary. So talking about, for instance, you know. Dead coming back; dead people coming back to warn, right? Like warn the, the people who are alive, right? Like what we see in Shakespeare, what we also see today in, with Shakespeare in, in Hamlet, for instance, or with the father returning, but things are more, more contemporary, like the zombie or the vampire, right?

Like that, right? So you have a woman who is really trying to challenge. The images and the world, the literary world of the golden century. But I studied literature. I took a few classes on Golden Age.

[00:21:22] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:23] Julio Quintero: And in Spain, and I never heard the word, the name Maria de Zayas

[00:21:27] Neomi De Anda: Okay.

[00:21:28] Julio Quintero: I'm fascinated by Maria de Zayas right now because of these worlds.

[00:21:31] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:31] Julio Quintero: So this idea of decentering is bringing lenses, bringing characters, bringing voices that have been sometimes moved to the periphery of cultural situations or the periphery of other cultural manifestations can reveal things that are very rich.

[00:21:50] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:51] Julio Quintero: So when we think about communication, we might say dialogue. You know, dialogue is the right way to communicate.

[00:21:58] Neomi De Anda: Right.

[00:21:59] Julio Quintero: You are assertive, you are speaking your truth. You are bringing facts. You are letting others speak. So you, you are controlling for airtime. You are thinking about equity in the space and it makes sense, right?

It makes sense. But what about other forms of communication? And if we wanna bring chisme back to the center, if we wanna recenter chisme and say, "okay, why don't we consider for a moment; chisme to be a valued way of communicating." What would that say about our own logic of communication, the way we actually communicate?

What will we gain? If we put chisme in the center, what would we lose too? We always see chisme as something negative, but bringing it from the periphery back to the center can tell us a lot. Right. And even find things that could be surprising, could be new, like in this case with Maria de Zayas, you know, by bringing de Zayas back to the center.

I learned a lot about, about Golden Age in Spain, but also about the connections between Golden Age and other cultural manifestation that are very contemporary.

[00:23:00] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

And what, what can be told or shared.

Neomi De Anda: So you started talking a little bit about dialogue, but that was the topic of your Chisme Symposium here on campus.

So do you want to share some about what you have learned in looking from the lens of Chisme as dialogue?

[00:23:23] Julio Quintero: Yes. So I think that something that was very interesting about bringing chisme and comparing it with dialogue is the fact that I don't know if that's ever been done, right? Like, I don't think that. Usually, when you think about dialogue in, in the things that we do in the dialogue zone, there is an initiative here at the University of Dayton where we create a culture of dialogue.

[00:23:44] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:45] Julio Quintero: And, and I work in this with two colleagues,  Megan Wolf from Multi-Ethnic Education and Engagement Center, and Jason Combs from the Department of Communication. And we do, we enjoy a lot working together. So like what, what we always think about dialogue is everyday conversation. Like we say, like in everyday conversation, you know.

It's mostly about the self. Like I wanna bring the self, I wanna center my myself.

[00:24:12] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:12] Julio Quintero: So, you know, my experience, what I like to do, what I think is important for me, every time that somebody says something in a conversation, I immediately bring it back to me. Somebody talks about the weekend and somebody talks about a particular situation during the weekend.

So instead of saying, how was that, I would probably say, oh, well you did if you did that. I did this. So it's always kind of this competition for attention.

[00:24:37] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:38] Julio Quintero:  in everyday conversation. So dialogue is very different from everyday conversation. It's also very different from discussion. That is what we probably would find in a staff meeting or in a classroom.

[00:24:52] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:53] Julio Quintero: And is very different from debate. That is a particular; it's a concrete way of communicating with some rules. So dialogue is unique in the sense that it brings a number of people together into a space. With some rules, with facilitators, and you behave by those rules. You, instead of saying opinions, you try to go to your own values and deep perceptions.

You examine those.

[00:25:18] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:18] Julio Quintero: You ask questions, and then as you go in the process of talking about who you are and what you believe, you create connections with others, you enlarge your pool of knowledge about an issue because you are sharing things that are actually very deep, right? Like you're talking about your own identity sometimes what you know, what you learn as you grew up, things like that.

And, so I was thinking like, what if instead of thinking about dialogue and everyday conversation, we compare dialogue and chisme. And see like how they connect or disconnect. And so that was a very useful exercise. And I think that the first thing that happened is this connection that can exist in dialogue, like in dialogue, and I don't say this in a negative way, it is just a description, an observation in dialogue

you sit down in, in a circle and everybody's on a chair. And you are supposed to stay on that chair. Like you, you don't, like standing up and going to somebody else to shake their hand or give them a hug, or it would be seen there as something very weird or unacceptable. Right.

[00:26:31] Neomi De Anda: Especially within the dialogue zone.

[00:26:33] Julio Quintero: Correct.

[00:26:33] Neomi De Anda: 'cause there's certain base rules set.

[00:26:35] Julio Quintero: Correct.

[00:26:36] Neomi De Anda: Okay.

[00:26:36] Julio Quintero: Like the distribution of chairs, actually usually it's like in a, in a circle and. So just that, right? Like the fact of going and, and touching another person of, I was thinking about example of braiding the hair.

[00:26:50] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:50] Julio Quintero: Right? Like of the two women braiding their hair and maybe sharing that chisme, right?

Like, did you hear about, so that personal connections sometimes is not present in dialogue. Dialogue requires also an assertiveness. And where you have to be able to express what you think in ways that are very confident, right? This is what I believe.

[00:27:11] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:12] Julio Quintero: Do you have to identify who you are? You have to know who you are and express who you are in, in a way that is transparent, that convinces, where you, you represent yourself well accurately.

So like my, my idea was perhaps, perhaps chisme could be a good, a good connection or a good ingredient in dialogue. Because what I feel in chisme, chisme can be an opportunity for people to come together to share knowledge about an issue in ways where trust is already built.

[00:27:50] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:51] Julio Quintero: I think in dialogue, trust is very important and, and in dialogue we spent the first three or four sessions just getting to trust, but chisme presupposes that trust. So what if you had a group of people working together who had previously met each other and in the dialogue you created smaller spaces for people to talk to, engage in chisme, right?

To engage in knowledge or even rumors from this perspective of the common good from this perspective of knowledge of care, a knowledge of the unknown. Like what should be, what shall we do if, if this were gonna happen, how we, how should we face the unknown?

[00:28:27] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:27] Julio Quintero: What would be the best way to face this menace that is looming in the horizon? How could we approach, I didn't understand what happened. Could you tell me, can you contextualize this for me? Like, chisme this way of sometimes I feel like I engage, chisme in the sense that I don't understand something.

So I go to somebody else and say, this is what I heard but I'm not a hundred percent sure if this is what I heard. Can you tell me more? I made the person say, well, you know, I've been in these situations and I also heard this, and this is my interpretation. And so you engage in this exchange of communication and values and perceptions that could help you feel more included, feel more like you are not out of your element; like you are not out of the norm.

[00:29:10] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:11] Julio Quintero: And so I thought that perhaps what I would say this one shouldn't discount chisme. But, chisme shouldn't be discounted. Chisme could be a good tool for certain moments. I was thinking, for example, a staff meeting in the staff meetings or discussion meetings and I think it's actually to go back to something you said that once we were actually talking about meetings and, and we were talking about the meeting after the meeting.

[00:29:36] Neomi De Anda: Mm. And Yes.

[00:29:37] Julio Quintero: And you came to me and we were saying like, well, we discouraged the meeting after the meeting. And then you came to me and said like, no, no, no, don't take the meeting after the meeting from us.

[00:29:47] Neomi De Anda: Yes.

[00:29:48] Julio Quintero: Because that's, we need the meeting after the meeting.

[00:29:50] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:51] Julio Quintero: To calibrate, to understand, to contextualize, and I feel, and I find that

[00:29:57] Neomi De Anda: especially those of us who feel marginalized in different situations.

[00:30:00] Julio Quintero: Correct. Correct.

[00:30:02] Neomi De Anda: I cut you off. Please keep going.

[00:30:03] Julio Quintero: No, no, no. Yes, because that's right.

Like we, we feel sometimes people, and I would say everyone at some point has felt like they're, they have been misinterpreted or they have misinterpreted somebody. But chisme gives that opportunity, right?

[00:30:17] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:17] Julio Quintero: Like that opportunity to, to calibrate to recontextualize. But because one leaves chisme out of, out of the, out of the realm of what can be studied because of the conception of chisme of something that is negative, right?

[00:30:36] Neomi De Anda: Right.

[00:30:37] Julio Quintero: So because of that preconception, send chisme goes in the periphery. And we discount it.

[00:30:43] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:44] Julio Quintero: But chisme is gonna happen. Right. Regardless. And communities are gonna have chisme, negative, positive. But if we bring chisme back to the center, talks about chisme, brings the utility, and in your case, the theology of chisme, we one can operate with it.

[00:30:59] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:59] Julio Quintero: And, and can, I wouldn't say transform it, but can approach it in ways that can be more creative. And, and use it as a communication tool in different places. You don't have to call it that, but you can call it somewhere else, right? Something else. If we, if we want it right.

[00:31:15] Neomi De Anda: Right. For people who may be a little bit leery about the word chisme or gossip.

[00:31:20] Julio Quintero: Or gossip, yeah.

[00:31:21] Neomi De Anda: Go to the place that it's always negative and I don't want to engage in that and you're forcing me to

[00:31:27] Julio Quintero:  Correct.

[00:31:27] Neomi De Anda: Engage in negative things or sinful behavior and

[00:31:31] Julio Quintero: Absolutely.

[00:31:32] Neomi De Anda: or sometimes my friends who like to, who I will say are very Chismoses. I don't wanna give that any gender.

[00:31:40] Julio Quintero: Thank you.

[00:31:42] Neomi De Anda: But they sometimes, like after a while of sharing, somebody might say something like bruja you know, which also is always very gendered. That's interesting. But like, yell out you, you witch or you demon.

[00:31:57] Julio Quintero: Mm-hmm. Right.

[00:31:58] Neomi De Anda: Now led me down this path, although I feel good at the end of it, and we've been doing it for three hours, maybe not that long, and definitely not at work.

One of the things that stood out to me from this last Chisme Symposium was that you and I had talked about dialogue before and the different setup that feels more artificial and that chisme, has this level of intimacy and ability. One thing that happened, before and during the Chisme Symposium, as people were walking into the room,

[00:32:34] Julio Quintero: mm-hmm.

[00:32:34] Neomi De Anda: Different people whispered things into my ear. So I had like four conversations happening simultaneously and it was something that stood out to me about dialogue cannot allow for this.

[00:32:48] Julio Quintero: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:48] Neomi De Anda: Of four conversations happening simultaneously. I don't know if that like strikes anything for you.

[00:32:54] Julio Quintero: Yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely. I think that, dialogue in, in a certain way is a very modern, like a very modern way of communication because it kind of trusts that the subject is able to explain themselves.

[00:33:11] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:12] Julio Quintero: And that, and that it trusts that there's a message. There's only one message going on at the same time.

[00:33:21] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:22] Julio Quintero: And that message, because the need to understand that message with clarity. So it, it makes every message going back and forth unique. So you have silence. You have a message that goes, maybe a very short pause, then another message goes, then another pause. Then because of this intrinsic respect for everyone. And the, and the idea that for communication to happen, every message has to be only unique and distinct.

[00:33:52] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:52] Julio Quintero: So like, it's interesting. It's, predicated in this very modern assumptions of, like it's, it's very rational. It's a very rational. Right. Like you, you cannot understand two things at the same time.

You, you have to have to in order to understand something. So it's, it's kind of instrumental, right? Like you need, in order to, in order to measure something, you need light and an instrument.

[00:34:17] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:17] Julio Quintero: Right? Like it, you can measure. You have to measure. So you have to measure a, in order to understand a message, you have to measure the message.

And to measure the message. You need the message to be unique. Because if it's combined with something else, then you cannot measure it. But with chisme it's true. It's true. You can have a lot of conversations happening. I, I could imagine us, somebody like stepping to talk and saying something and somebody going back to you and say, Hey, careful with this, right?

Like

[00:34:45] Neomi De Anda: mm-hmm.

[00:34:46] Julio Quintero: Like there's this message, right? This chisme that is shared.

[00:34:49] Neomi De Anda: It's like a footnote.

[00:34:50] Julio Quintero: Like a footnote, right? Yeah. Like a footnote. It provides for this additional context or additional information that I think is very interesting about cultures of chisme.

I think that I could remember, cultures of chisme being, perhaps I'm here, I generalizing and I, I hope it's not the case, but cultures of chisme being, cultures of multitasking.

[00:35:09] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:09] Julio Quintero: Like you see people doing a lot of things at the same time. Like I see, I remember like my mom, my grandmother, my grandfather, like getting together with people in like, I remember like in the corner, right? Like in the corner of our street.

[00:35:25] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:26] Julio Quintero: Back in, in the town where we, my grandparents used to live or they, they lived and, and they in the corner and people passing by. All these people asking questions.

You know, you are talking to somebody, somebody else passes. Hey, have you seen this place? Oh yeah, it's right there. There's a car. The car stops. Somebody ask a question, you continue. Then the grandkids arrive, ask questions, and all these things are happening at the same time and people are able to succeed.

Giving, giving information at the same time, it seems that for the messages to get one on top of the other, the messages get confused, but people are able to find the threads of these messages. And, and if they don't understand, they ask like what you're saying, about your experience during the Chisme Symposium.

You were, you were organizing the Chisme Symposium, were introducing the, the presenter, and people were coming to you with all these messages.

[00:36:20] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:21] Julio Quintero: And you were able to manage all these situations at the same time, right?

[00:36:24] Neomi De Anda: Right. Yeah.

[00:36:25] Julio Quintero: Yes.

[00:36:25] Neomi De Anda: It was really fascinating because I thought these are all going on in my head, but it can still continue to do this, outward space. Well, this is all happening and it's happening, at so many different levels. Which leads me to, and maybe this is a point, maybe this is a question, but one of the things that I've been thinking about and working on in thinking pedagogically, so in our own teaching and learning, that I think there's something connected with chisme notions of apprenticeship, notions of experiential education that help in the multi layering of educational experiences that everyday life within, we’ll use your, use your word chisme cultures, happens so that we are, there's a, a built-in epistemology, but also a built-in pedagogy

[00:37:21] Julio Quintero: mm-hmm.

[00:37:22] Neomi De Anda: That helps to teach and replicate what is happening.

[00:37:27] Julio Quintero: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:27] Neomi De Anda: So the grandchildren you just mentioned are already learning the methodology and nobody is stopping and saying, this is the methodology, let us line it out for you straight out. You do not, we do not need to come and tell you to sit in these chairs and yes, do this, but they're learning the methodology of achievement, but they're also learning the methodology of multi layering and of, intergenerational or transferring of knowledge and different modes of pedagogy.

[00:37:55] Julio Quintero: Yes.

[00:37:56] Neomi De Anda: Thoughts that you have there.

[00:37:57] Julio Quintero: Yes. No, no, that's great. That's great. Yes, because the chisme, kind of chisme is a way of, is kind of your sharing.

So if we, if we see it from the perspective of the poem, right? Like the, the salvific

[00:38:11] Neomi De Anda: mm-hmm.

[00:38:11] Julio Quintero: I would say there's a salvific take or approach to chisme me. Right? But that's, it's interesting because when one discount something because one thinks that is wrong, right? Like chisme, right? Like it's been discounted as negative.

But when you recenter it, you can learn a lot from it and you can see where it is working, like what is the sight in the life.

[00:38:34] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:34] Julio Quintero: To use kind of another way of thinking about the like philosophy, right? Like the, the, the place in life of chisme and, and it's true. It could be, it could be even in apprenticeship where, where you are sharing, you know, you are, you are learning about a, about a to-do, like to do something with someone.

But you're not, you are not only learning what you need to do. You are learning like everything. Wou are learning, you know, the whole ethics, the contexts. Like how this works in what, in what way? So like, I wish I could put a, like being a teacher, right? Like, like I remember being a teacher. So that's what I went to in my, in my undergrad. And we learn a lot in the classroom, but the real experience that we had was when we went and, and worked with other teachers, because then when you're working with other teachers, you understand like the, the wisdom that the teacher is gonna share with you is very different from the, from what you learn in the classroom.

[00:39:40] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:41] Julio Quintero: So the teacher is gonna tell you like, well, when, when the principal says this, this means that.

[00:39:47] Neomi De Anda: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:47] Julio Quintero: When, when a parent says this. It means this other thing. So, so at to what point that is a rumor

[00:39:55] Neomi De Anda: Right

[00:39:55] Julio Quintero: at, to a point that is, that is chisme, right? Like a gossip because there is no, there's no science to prove.

But without that,

[00:40:05] Neomi De Anda: it's not written in a handbook either.

[00:40:07] Julio Quintero: Yeah. It's not in a handbook, but, but your success depends on those pieces

[00:40:13] Neomi De Anda: On those and paying attention to, yeah.

[00:40:14] Julio Quintero: Yeah. So, I think you are up, up to something very important there. Yes.

[00:40:21] Neomi De Anda: Well, I, that was not what I was trying to get from you.

[00:40:25] Julio Quintero: I like it.

[00:40:25] Neomi De Anda: I just wanted to think about those possibilities and

[00:40:29] Julio Quintero: Absolutely.

[00:40:30] Neomi De Anda: the interconnections and I, I really appreciate it. I appreciate it because our background in Latina and Latin American Studies too allows us to have a different level of engagement.

[00:40:42] Julio Quintero: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:40:43] Neomi De Anda: So I always appreciate that as well.

Just one last time. The name of the poem is, the one where no one gets deported.

[00:40:52] Julio Quintero: Yes.

The title is "Poem where No one is Deported. " The author is José Olivarez and the book is called Promises of Gold. It's a book from 2024.

[00:41:05] Neomi De Anda: Thank you so much and thank you for being with us today, Julio, and I look forward to our ongoing conversation about chisme and see where your own thinking goes between chisme and dialogue.

[00:41:16] Julio Quintero: Yeah, thank you Dr. De Anda for the invitation. I really enjoyed this opportunity and thank you, Aiden, for all your support as always.

[00:41:22] Neomi De Anda: Yes. So Aiden Curran is here doing tech support for us today. Thank you so much, Aiden, and to all of you who are listening, thank you as well. Have a good day.