Chisme Methodology Transcript

Dr. Neomi De Anda: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Chisme Symposium. This is a one of two part series focused on the topic of Chisme, which some may call gossip, but we will get into the differences of what that may mean. This Episode may be used as a standalone or may work with the other episode, which is on the topic of Chisme and We Don't Talk About Bruno.

So feel free to watch both of them or use them as standalone episodes. This episode is sponsored by the University of Dayton Department of Religious Studies. It also has a partnership support from the Race and Ethnic Studies Program, which houses the Latinx and Latin American Studies Program. At this time that we are [00:01:00] recording, we are recording on May 26, 2022.

We are mourning the loss of two mass tragedies and so many more across the country. And so with heavy hearts, we hold the victims and their families, both of the shootings in Buffalo and in Uvalde.

So I'd like to take some time to welcome our very honored guests, and I'm so happy to be, uh, with them and that they said yes to doing this with us today.

Our first guest is, uh, Dr. Jacqueline M. Hidalgo. Uh, Dr. Hidalgo is a professor of Latina/o studies and of religion. Uh, she's the chair of Latina/o studies program, as well as the associate dean for institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion at Williams college. She is a past president of the Academy of [00:02:00] Catholic Hispanic theologians of the United States, ACHTUS, as well as the new England, Eastern Canada region of the society of biblical literature.

She's the author of Latina/o/x Studies and Biblical Studies in Brill Research Perspectives and Biblical Interpretation 3.4, as well as Revelation in Aztlán, Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement from Paul Grave McMillan. With Efrain Agosto, she also co-edited the collection of essays, Latin X, the Bible, and Migration, also from Paul Grave McMillan.

She is a student of scriptures as human social phenomenon with particular interest in how certain Latina/o/x communities make contest and refashion their own scriptures, why they do so, and what consequences especially in terms of social power dynamics, such as relations with other [00:03:00] ethnic communities as well as internal tensions around race, gender, sexuality, and belonging.

Welcome Dr. Hidalgo. Our second guest is Dr. Matilde Moros. Matilde Moros PhD is a theological social ethicist working in the field of gender, sexuality and women's studies, the ethics of resistance and subversion of hegemonic worldviews and narratives of power, her teaching and learning toward a counter narrative method of decolonial transnational feminist ethics.

Feminist social ethic must respond to sexual and gender violence and the multiple intersections of which race and its various social constructions have led to the exclusion from the centers of power of many peoples, including Latin American and Latinx communities. Dr. Moros’ research on the communal and historical effects of organized [00:04:00] resistance to engender and sexual violence has led her to an approach to liberation ethics in which recovery of resistance methods has become the primary focus.

Thank you and welcome also Dr. Moros. Both Dr. Hidalgo and Dr. Moros and I have previously recorded a podcast through the HTI Open Plaza series, so you can find a previous podcast on Chisme on this very topic with the three of us. So this is actually a second part episode and they are also, um, wonderful interlocutors and scholars as well as great human beings and friends and people who, as we talk about some of these topics have been the closest among.

First of all, we're going to do a little overview on what is Chisme. [00:05:00] I've been working on the topic of Chisme since 2008. I presented it at the 2008 Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States Colloquium. Uh, I never thought that now in 2022, I would still be talking on the topic of Chisme.

Much of that has since to do because of the support and recommendation and slight nudging, a little bit of pushing and extra articles sent from Dr. Hidalgo very regularly to make sure that I keep reading and working in this topic. Much of it has to do in that paper, eventually published Dame Chisme, Dame Chocolate.

Uh, published in the Journal for Hispanic Latino Theology, I argue that telenovelas Dame Chocolate and Betty la Fea act as conduits, primarily through the communication of Chisme, for provoking epistemological change in the understanding of human agency. [00:06:00] as a necessary and unalienable part of human dignity.

So what is Chisme? If we look at the historical roots of both Chisme and gossip, we find an interesting array. The historical roots for the word Chisme are unknown. Speculation has led to two dominant thoughts. It may come from chinche, a broad category for a number of parasitic bugs, including bed bugs. That does not sound very good.

The second one is that Chisme may arise from schism, or schismar, which translates to enter into discordance or divisions. Uh, these definitions of Chisme seem to carry quite negative connotations, and the history of the word gossip actually comes from a very different place.

The 14th to 18th century texts that include the word gossip use it to mean godparent. From the 14th to late 19th century, a gossip could be one of a number of [00:07:00] women invited to present, to be present at the birth of a child. Gossip as one, mostly a woman, who engages in idle talk, can be found in documents.

Gossip can be found used by people like Shakespeare and Milton, and a common definition today is to talk idly about people's other documented affairs. That seems to go back to the 17th century. We can see that using the given dictionary definitions of the words Chisme and gossip allow for much more speculation about both words, but gossip lends itself in a historical sense to more positive connotations.

Yet, for me, I think that really gossip has so much more, uh, to do about, my experience has taught me to call that which Willimon speaks, and the definitions given by the Oxford [00:08:00] English Dictionary, as Chisme, not gossip. And while I do not want to deny that Chisme may cause division among it, among individuals, I believe Chisme has a variety of other effects.

The way Chisme functions within many of our own communities, as well as a variety of other Latino/x communities, may encompass the notion of a sponsor or someone who cares for an individual and spreads news of the individual out of concern. Chisme also provides demarcations for who belongs within the boundaries of certain circles of trust.

When one chooses to Chisme with one another, one chooses individuals one trusts. People who do not trust one another hardly ever engage in Chisme with each other. I'd also like to add the following list to some of the things that have already been said. Engaging in Chisme shows human [00:09:00] finitude.

Chisme often includes how one person has fallen short and what we believe is necessary to live one's best life. Chisme allows ourselves to understand ourselves better. It compels us to be self reflective. Chisme upsets the daily rhythms of life because it is usually based upon questionable behavior and can be an interpretive tool that forces us to reexamine ourselves within certain normative contexts.

Some say we are always discerning what God asks for our lives, because Chisme makes us engage and interpret moral behavior. It can help us with that discernment. Chisme provides a way for us to express in daily life that we are humans filled with contradictions. As has been stated, we share Chisme with those we trust and with whom we'd like to build closer relationships.

In the book, The Archives of Conjured Gender Theory and Religion, Solimar Otero, [00:10:00] uh, spectacularly claims, quote, Chisme is a seductively powerful and quick form of storytelling that works specifically because it plays with the boundaries of secrecy and the impropriety of revelation, end quote.

Pietro Semoli, uh, in her article in 2009 states that Chisme, quote, in everyday conversation can be assigned the following functions, a., economy of information, b., maintenance of relationship between partners, c., definition of the speaker and the hearer’s persona at the time of the Chisme exchange, d., the reproachment, estrangement, or readjusting of potions in the scale of values, beliefs, ascription, ascriptions, et cetera, of gossip partners, end quote.

She also claims Chisme is an act of storytelling [00:11:00] engaged by all people of all genders and has been a topic engaged by psychology, sociology, and computer science.

In that same article, she leans on Nicholson, who says Chisme makes a person more positive and that supervisors should include themselves in the Chisme and call it management by wandering about as well.

Um, a number of authors have come together to look at Chisme and have included that in the moral realm, so this is Patricia Fasano et al in an article titled El sentido del Chisme en una comunidad de pobres urbanos that was published, also in 2009, so clearly this is a topic that has spanned across Latin American theorists for quite a while as well, [00:12:00] and they claim that the ethical moral realm of Chisme proposes an ethos rather than a moral system because an ethos is a moral made hexes gesture and posture is defined by moralities therefore it opens plurality and because it equally values discourse and practice.

Um, so the relationship between moral values and practices dynamic values are constantly changing and adapting to actual practices as happens in life while simultaneously helping to form those same practices. The practices and gestures which form these ethos are multiple with the possibility of Chisme being one.

Chisme unites various characteristics of ritual with an emphasis on the capacity for Chisme to help in overcoming ambivalence.

And then finally, [00:13:00] in an article published in 2019, Abhijit Banerjee et al., Benaziri, Abhijit Benaziri et al. state that regarding gossip and sharing important information in communities of about 1, 000, quote, individuals who are nominated from their community are indeed more effective at diffusing a simple piece of information than other individuals, even village elders.

They further state, quote, when asked for nominations, villagers do not simply name locally centered individuals, but actually name people who are globally centered within the village. So it seems that people who have lots of connections within the village are the people who also share information through the sense of Chisme at a much, [00:14:00]

and a much cleaner level than others in the community. So now I'm going to turn to Drs. Hidalgo and Moros. Dr. Hidalgo will begin with a presentation on Chisme and scriptures, and then Dr. Moros will talk much more about Ethics and Chisme and, uh, women and gender studies. So Dr. Hidalgo.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: Thank you, Dr. De Anda for that introduction and for the really helpful and expansive overview.

Um, I, I want to talk a little bit from the context of coming out of biblical studies, kind of more narrowly construed and thinking about scriptures in a, in a broader way. One of the things I want to say about the field of biblical studies, it has its own fraught history. It seemingly obviously focuses on the Bible, though in another time I might unpack that along a [00:15:00] variety of ways.

But one of the shifts that has happened in biblical studies in the last 30 years or so has been more of a sort of opening up of methods of interpretation, a sort of breaking away from thinking about there just being one way and one approach one can take to reading the Bible and instead recognizing that, um, we as human beings come from a variety of different contexts and places and backgrounds.

And so we are interacting with the, the biblical text when we interpret and, and, that's going to alter, um, what we see in it, the meanings that, um, make themselves sort of the present themselves to us in different ways. Um, but it's going to alter even how we think about the Bible, the kind of relationship we have with it, the ways that we engage with it.

In among Latinos and Latinas, um, who study, uh, the Bible, especially there's been a turn that's been informed by, you know, [00:16:00] Latinx theologies, by Latinx studies in a broader way, which is this emphasis on bringing out our own indigenous epistemological traditions, um, drawing on the, the sorts of knowledge making frameworks that everyday life that are part of, um, the homes that, that we live in and that we come from, and aren't necessarily the knowledge making frameworks that are always practiced in the dominant academy.

And I don't want to unpack all of those things of what I might mean by the dominant academy, but, um, following sort of the work of someone like William James Jennings, let's sort of just take for instance, that much of the academy in the United States has at its, um, in its critical formative years has a deep and entrenched relationship with histories of colonialism and enslavement.

And so there's a very much, uh, uh, discourse of mastery that often shapes the sort of dominant academy. [00:17:00] Now, if we think about what Chisme is, it is actually specifically the discourse of those who are not the masters, right? And, and this is a really important thing to hold on to when I want to turn to think about what that might help us understand better about the Bible and about scriptures in a broader way.

If we're thinking about the sort of ways of making knowledge that happens among those people who are not the ones holding power, but actually might be trading information about the people holding power, um, and trading information among each other about the people holding power. Um, and in terms of biblical studies, this is considered relevant because while the, the, like, if we think about the formation of the text, we have their written texts for most of human history.

Writing was a highly elite phenomenon. I mean, it still really is. So like to value writing, to value the written word is still a very sort of elite professional phenomenon, but it was [00:18:00] much more so prior to the advent of the printing press. So when we think about the moment when most of the texts that we receive as the Bible come into formation, um, to, to write itself is, is an elite activity, but just because the biblical texts are being written by elites, doesn't mean that we're talking about a community where writing is valorized in that kind of way, or that there are elites on the same order of the kind of elites we think of when we think of the modern day professoriates, right?

Like we're talking about the different context, um, but one of the things that I think is important to bear in mind is that oral tradition had greater valence and power for most of the moments when the text we receive, we get from the Bible were being written. They were being written in a context where the oral tradition was actually much more valued.

Um, and so, uh, determinations around writing and what went into writing was much more [00:19:00] about, um, fashioning texts that could be, um, you know, engaged with and traded around, but with the assumption that you always had a kind of accompanying oral tradition and practice, these texts were being read out loud, they were being performed.

That was how most people were receiving them. So that's one of the important dynamics. to think about. And so when I think about the formation of the text that we have in the Bible, many of them contain stories that were first oral stories that were traded. And then even in being written down, they're kind of meant to be traded orally, they're meant to be exchanged in a more communal context.

And then one of the other things that I, I like to point people to, and this came up in, in our last conversation on the podcast and, uh, and Dr. De Anda kind of asked me to expand upon it a little.

So I'm going to expand upon that, which is to say that, you know, often in religious settings, there's this sort of, [00:20:00] insulting of people for being chismosa, for being gossipy, or for trading the bochinche, like, you know, you shouldn't do that, it's bad, like, don't, and I think it's really actually interesting if we think about instead imagining that these biblical texts that are supposedly so foundational to Christian tradition only exist because of people engaging in Chisme, in gossip.

Um, and one of the people I love to pick on in this regard because I think people tend to think of him and in such a high, you know, lauding way is Paul. And basically, quite fundamentally, the Letters of Paul only exist because of Chisme. Like, and, and this is, this is, if you look throughout his letters and you start reading for Chisme, it starts popping out at you in different ways, you know?

So first of all, like one of the obvious examples is you look at 1 Corinthians 1:11, um, Paul's talking about the whole reason he's [00:21:00] writing this letter to the Corinthians is because of stuff that's been reported to him by Chloe's people. I've heard that there are quarrels among you. And so like from Chloe's people. And so I'm writing to you.

So like this whole, the whole basis of this is about Chisme. It's, you know, Chloe's people obviously matter. Paul is establishing himself in as having a connection to the Corinthians through Chloe’s people who must also somehow have value within this sort of Chisme knowledge circle, um, you know, he, he regularly Paul will regularly talk about like, um, You know, I, I boast about you to other people when he's writing.

So like he'll, this comes up in second Corinthians, the second letter to the Corinthians and chapter nine, where he says, like, I want you to know that I go around talking about how great you are to other people. Like, this is part of what he was saying, you know, I know your eagerness, which is the [00:22:00] subject of my boasting about you to the people of Macedonia.

Um, you know, this is something he talks about there. Um, you know, and another examples that he also trades on what he knows is gossip about himself. So in, in the letter to the Galatians, um, he talks about, you've heard no doubt of my earlier life in Judaism. And something that you'll notice in all of these passages that I've given you is that like hearing orality, like, You know, I've heard from Chloe's people about you.

I boast to other people. So I'm telling other people's stories about you, or I know you've heard about me. So you're seeing that this sort of way that this kind of back and forth, that is exactly this kind of Chisme conversation. It's a really fundamental epistemological structure of the letters.

It's a way that Paul, establishes connection with the people to whom he's [00:23:00] writing and establishes the authority for sending them a written letter. I'm part of your little Chisme circle. See, like, so please listen to what I have to say. Whether they actually listened to what he had to say, we have no idea.

Um, because what happens is Paul's letters get enshrined in this written form that we treat as scriptural and that we give authority to into a certain kind of way. Because other people treated these letters with a certain kind of authority, but we don't know if the Corinthians or the Galatians actually bought Paul's Chisme.

They may not have. We have no idea. Right? So like that's, that's all there is to it. Now, I use that to talk about like, it's one fun thing to think about how scriptures were formed by Chisme, but I also think it's important to think about what Chisme can help us do in thinking about scriptures in a broader way.

Um, and this is something I want to point to, I think it's important. To think about what Chisme [00:24:00] is doing as a form of knowledge and that it is a revelatory form of knowledge. And so there's a way in which we can think about how Chisme can sometimes have power that rivals the scriptural. And here I think about if you think about Jean Pierre Ruiz's work about kind of the embeddedness of, um, revelation in daily life.

What Chisme is fundamentally about is, you know, it is about trading information, um, and sort of sharing stories that give insight into things that might have been hidden. Um, so sometimes they can be stories that are, uh, if you think about again, that's why I'm saying this is not the discourse of the masters when the masters are lying about who they are or what they're doing,

And Chisme is that like story that says, you know, this person, he claims that he's all, that he's all that, that he's this sort of like great guy who, [00:25:00] you know, follows the rules or whatever, but really he's having an affair with so and so or like really he took money and like stole it and hid it. Like this is a good way of like giving warning.

Um, one of the things that we talked about last time is, you know, something that came out in the middle of the sort of high point of the Me Too accusations against, Harvey Weinstein is how many women warned other women about Weinstein, right, that this was an important way of providing information orally to try to warn people about what one of these dominating figures was doing and the way that they were abusing power.

And so we, you know, we can sort of understand Chisme as having this really valuable role of providing information and knowledge that's being purposely obscured and hidden by the powers that be. And one of the ways that it, you can think of it as therefore [00:26:00] having a scriptural function is that scriptures are supposed to be that that revelation of the knowledge that matters.

Right, and they are supposed to be what brings a community together. And so sometimes it might be that Chisme have serving a role of challenging the dominant norms of how people interpret scripture by helping us to see it differently, helping us to see its function differently. The final thing I want to open up is that I think Chisme tells us something really important about who has the power and the authority to make knowledge and on what terms.

And so there's a kind of authorized level of knowledge and where Chime draws its power is in sort of helping us to see when things are wrong or false in that authorized and sort of dominant form of knowledge. But it requires the authority that's made in relationship. The authority for [00:27:00] Chisme comes because of the relationships we have with each other.

Um, and I, and in the sort of world of fake news, and we might point to that later, this is something that I think is valuable to help people think about. I think A good critical Chisme studies would actually give us the tools to take apart fake news because it would help us to think about who has the power to offer certain kinds of knowledge, what they get out of presenting certain kinds of knowledge, and whether we should trust them and why, and who we should trust and why.

Um, and so I think like a kind of critical Chisme studies, like grounded in this sort of history of thinking about, like I said, really, we've often overvalued the written word in, in a sort of formal authorized practice, but in the actual lived practice, we still very much value that kind of oral connections.

And if we sort of [00:28:00] retool and rethink the lessons we've learned from that. It might help us to undo some of the damage of this overly authorized written word that is social media these days. So that'll be my last word. I look forward to hearing what Dr. Moros has to say.

Dr. Matilde Moros: Well, thank you, Dr. Hidalgo and Dr. De Anda, um, for this invitation and for this opportunity to have a conversation again together and the stimulation of hearing both of your angles in terms of research and my own research, um, as a trained Christian social ethicist who's not working in that sort of focus field, but I went broader to go more for gender, sexuality, women's studies, but I apply what I learned to my teaching,

so I'm going to, um, talk a little bit more about, uh, Chisme as a counter narrative, which is what I think we're all talking about counter [00:29:00] narrative to mainline narratives or dominant narratives of whatever truth is being sold out there, whether it's fake news, whether it's, um, you know, the, the gospel of whatever the academy is or the very gospel of our, our understanding in terms of scripture right, Truth with a capital T, all the ways in which we call something true.

And in terms of my own training my research ended up focusing on what happens when we live in a world that has hidden reality in terms of how history happened, how race making happened, the violence with which conquest, colonization, sexual violence that then made us into mestizos and mulatos and all these categories of people, the violence with which we maintain social classes and social castes, etc.

How does that happen? And what are the tools that people have in terms of mechanisms of resistance [00:30:00] to, to that supposed truth, right? How is it that people maintain a sense of themselves, a sense of their history in the midst of so much brokenness and violence? And, and that is a natural segue to working with gender, sexual and women's studies, because, um, we talk about the silences that are imposed,

this erasure that happens, right? We don't get written into history. We're sort of submerged as other genders, other races, other classes of people that somehow don't exist, um, but for the official truth. So I, I see Chisme and I see my work more with regard to the scandal of silences and the scandal of, of truth making because silences are never really silent.

As you explained, right? Those who are forced to be silent end up Uh, warning each other and I think that Chisme has multiple purposes in that [00:31:00] way. Um, my current work focuses on the, the method of testimonio and I use this in my classes. Um, testimonio is something that I learned as a child when my parents were involved in human rights work in Latin America, um, which means its your own story, you tell your own Chisme.

You're the one that, that lived political violence. You're the one that was Tortured or imprisoned, etc. You're the one that experienced whatever genocidal violence you're the only one that has the Chisme and you get to reveal it, whether it's for political purposes. For sort of social purposes for, um, uh, changing laws, whatever it is.

Um, and using that it with today's young people, I'm teaching undergraduates with regard to social violence out there, right? Whether it's gendered violence, uh, sexuality, whether it's learning about racism, especially with my intro level classes, where we learn about all [00:32:00] kinds of structural violence and especially after 2018, where people were involved in social protest.

I started getting this feeling that a lot of people were able very easily to point out there. Those people, right, the system us them kind of category those people are at fault the system is those people, those people that have power, but we are telling that Chisme, we don't have power, and I wanted to change the the rules a little and say wait a minute.

We're all part of the system. And we have power, even when it's telling the story and sharing the story. We have power when we are advocating for that and we have to begin with ourselves and our stories, telling the scandalous Chisme of we too have privilege, not just, we have been silenced, we have been erased but what is it that, that gives us privilege in a system [00:33:00] that says that we don't exist?

And so, I'm having my students work on this, uh, power of testimonio, um, reflecting on their own lives as we move through, through our classrooms. And I've learned that the power of Chisme or testimonio, as I'm reclassifying it, is that it has this moral ethical element as Dr.

De Anda was, uh, sharing. And so, in which when we talk about social justice, all of a sudden, we are now reinscribed in history because we are part of it, right? So, so these things happened to me as a child, or I experienced racism, or I experienced sexual violence. When I'm able to share that, right, voicing that, all of a sudden, I'm no longer this silenced or erased piece.

Even if I'm just sharing it. With one person, um, but it becomes sort of this awakening, right? Um, and then it allows me to see that there are other forms of knowledge out there, that there are other forms that may not be the, the formal ways [00:34:00] of creating knowledge, but that knowledge exists in, in the many ways in which we are all part of nontraditional culture.

So, I teach a lot of undergraduates that are first generation that are immigrants. That are racialized others that come from very poor backgrounds. And so, some of the things that I'm working with our students who, for example, are feeling shame because they're recognizing that their whiteness gives them privilege, but they themselves grew up poor, they grew up in a trailer park, they grew up with a very conservative religious background that ends up being abusive.

And they recognize it as abusive now. That taught them a lot of things about gender, sexuality, social class, race, etc. That they now recognize in a very scandalous way as not having been truth. This idea of other knowledge can also teach us about healing and [00:35:00] living and even joy after having survived violence.

So, I see Chisme as playing that role because it's the Chisme that you heard that then you convert into another form of Chisme, right? The many ways in which Chisme evolves. And also, this idea of Chisme as this coded message, right? even when you are doing self-reflection and then sharing with another, the Chisme was this, but in that Chisme there was something that was coded and when I hear it now, I can recognize fake news, for example, right?

And my own lived experience as a child, how Chisme was used in a world where we didn't have internet. I'm that old, we didn't have the iPhone, we couldn't just text each other. I'm that old. We didn't even have landlines in the city where we live very few landlines were afforded so people would do something that we call them Venezuela where I grew up, echar la bola a rodar. To [00:36:00] get that ball rolling, right?

So, a story would begin here, and it would move as a Chisme and people would all be informed that there would be some sort of political rally or that there was going to be protests to go get your groceries because we're going to be under lockdown or, right, it was a way of informing each other politically.

So, I saw it as a mechanism of political organizing. And putting yourself in this story, and then that allows me then to see, um, in terms of you were talking about dignity, or this idea of building and sustaining communities. In the 21st century where we do have all these mechanisms of sharing information there's so much information that still doesn't get shared.

So, when I teach for example my decolonial feminist classes and we talk about solidarity, and we talk about sort of collaborative work. Well, how does that happen when we don't even know what's happening across the [00:37:00] world? We don't know their Chisme is we're not involved in social action. We're so immersed in our own Chisme here.

In some ways it happens through other ways of engaging in Chisme, right? How is it that people who are maybe still part of communities that are depending on oral traditions who may have cell phones, but really are not involved in our struggles here and we're not involved in their struggles, how do we connect, right?

And so, my students have started talking about these mutual aid and local organizing, and how those local organizations are connected to local organizations elsewhere so in a way it's almost like relearning what those first communities of oral traditions were learning through Chisme that Chisme does still have power beyond all the ways of communication that technology gives us access to there's other ways of being empowered, whether it's through [00:38:00] social organizing with um, um, political movements, workers movements, women's movements.

Um, it's not about who gets to travel where but, um, someone who's organizing here heard from someone who's organizing there so you don't technically have to travel. And it becomes like Paul's letters right I heard by somebody who went there that you all are organizing in this way.

So, I'm sending you information because I'd like to see if the way we're organizing in this way. Right. Or we heard that you build this kind of, um, strategy to get water. And now in our community, we no longer have water, even though we're in a first world nation. So we're going to try and use that mechanism.

So, learning from people who maybe don't have the same access to power, but have a different sense of power. So, I'm seeing that Chisme or testimonio then can allow us to see ourselves in the world from a different [00:39:00] perspective. Maybe I thought I had no power, but I have a different kind of power. And I'll stop there.

And maybe I went too sort of esoteric, but I see the ethics of what's happening in terms of, um, how we understand knowledge, how we produce knowledge and how we acquire knowledge. Coming through this idea of Chisme beyond the gossip, right?

Chisme as a mechanism of power, Chisme as a revelation of resistance methodologies that have not died out, and Chisme as this possibility for future uh, ways of communicating beyond utopias, what's actually happening on the ground, uh, when people are organizing locally and, and get to know each other through some sort of Chisme, um, and so I'll stop there so we can engage in conversation, um, but I find [00:40:00] that, that Chisme as we've been taught as this bad thing where we, we gossip and we can hinder someone.

Chisme as scandal can be more of exposing injustice, exposing a history that's been hidden and exposing the true power that we each have. Because we're parts of communities that still value the oral tradition and value community in a different way so I'm seeing it as a powerful tool, rather than as this thing to be chastised to dump not be used because it was this way that those gossipy women already were less than empower or those gossipy old women very specifically.

Um, we're sort of maligning people, right? Rather than sharing wisdom, sharing mechanisms of, uh, being in power in a different way. [00:41:00] Um, and, and sharing being in community in a different way, which I think we're now all in an age group in which we're now those Viejas Chismosas and we're sharing the Chisme of the power of Chisme.

So, um, so here we are.

Dr. Neomi De Anda: Thank you both, Dr. Moros and Dr. Hidalgo. I am still getting comfortable with being of the age of las viejas chismosas. I, uh, I still want to pretend I'm younger than I am, but that's not true. And many days I get very excited to claim that I'm not young anymore. So, uh, but as you were talking, both of you, uh, mentioned Chisme and power, but I really do think that Chisme is a form of social networking of bringing people together of building power groups, or just groups, network [00:42:00] groups with each other's and, uh, each other and being able to bring people together and so I have two questions based on that just on your thoughts one is, is this form of social networking, something you see continuing on and should it be something that we keep sharing very publicly.

So that's one, like, is, is outing Chisme as a form of power, maybe outing too much about our own forms of power. And then the other one is about, uh, social media and Dr. Hidalgo, you mentioned social media a little bit, but, uh, is social media and sharing on social media, Chisme, fake news, what, [00:43:00] how would you classify it? What would you call it?

And maybe what is it that uh, studies of Chisme and thinking about Chisme could help us in how we navigate social media and, and especially if you have professional tips on how to share professionally on social media because I'm starting to see a whole lot of interesting shares that I think, I'm not sure I would ever hire that person or want to ever work with that person.

So just, those are all, it's a whole loaded can but feel free to take out any worm you wish,

Dr. Matilde Moros: You know, doesn't scripture say something about those who have eyes to see and those who have ears to hear like what we share publicly about Chisme as power. I don't think everyone even understands unless they're part of communities for whom this is powerful. I hear an awful lot [00:44:00] of conversations about narrative and storytelling and, and I think each community understands that in its own terms.

But when you're talking about Chisme and the power of those who have been deemed powerless. Only those who've been deemed powerless understand. I think even scripture, I am of deep belief that it's full of encoded seeds and messages that, you know, for some, it becomes this religious rigorous thing, but they really don't get the point.

It was written for a particular audience. It was told in a particular way and only people who have experienced that get it. The liberative word of scripture is for those who need liberation and yearn for liberation. Those who are subjugating others do not get it. God loves them, but they didn't get the point.

And even those who were being oppressed, think about the disciples, still didn't get it, still didn't get it. So, it's [00:45:00] not about romanticizing those who grew up with Chisme, but that there are coded messages, even in our conversation today, that I don't think it will be revealed. Right?

Much like the Book of Revelations, half of us don't get nothing. Like what? Things are shining and what? Then they got lifted up where? What's going on here?

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: No, no one, no one actually gets that book, okay? Just to be clear.

Dr. Matilde Moros: Exactly that. Right.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: Someone else's Chisme, you can't get it. So there are a couple of different things that I, I think about, and I think, you know, I want to take the, the, the ways that we've created community and turn it against us in, in certain kinds of ways, um, and to use it to, to manipulate us.

So then the third piece is like, you know, going back to what I said, Chisme studies could actually help us undo that by helping us really read, you know, think [00:46:00] carefully about when does, when is Chisme good Chisme the way Dr. Moros was pointing to like when it is it when is it doing the work of undermining abusive violence when is it doing the work of helping people in oppressed circumstances share revelatory wisdom and knowledge for survival for undermining dictatorship or, or tyranny.

Um, and when is it doing the work of, you know, like, when is it actually doing the work of Reproducing the, the power dynamics as they are reproducing a sort of dominating order. I think that when we think about how Chisme as function when we know when something's good Chisme and bad Chisme in a variety of ways.

I think really thinking that through can help us to think about. What's fake news when we see it? You know, I, my, um, you know, [00:47:00] my brother in Costa Rica, this is an example. Um, Diego, he was talking about, there was this moment a few years ago where there was this WhatsApp message being passed around of, um, supposedly of Nicaraguans burning the Costa Rican flag.

And as soon as Diego saw it, he said, I know this is fake news. And like, the reason, you know, I know it's fake news is I think about like, Why, why would anyone be doing that? Why is this being circulated and sent around? And what does this actually look like to me? And it's sort of thinking about the power dynamics that's going on in the storytelling. And I think a good chismosa, she knows the power dynamics that shape the storytelling.

Dr. Neomi De Anda: And it also points to that, uh, Chisme just isn't a thing, it's a practice. Because you said a good chismosa, you have to be able to practice it and, and train and retrain in it, which is what something Dr. Moros you were pointing to. I [00:48:00] wanted to pick up to the piece

Dr. Matilde Moros: Building one narrative. I think that people who have been raised in the practice of a Chisme as a mechanism of community building have an, a built in hermeneutic of suspicion, which I think is the problem with people who've been fed one narrative, one story, one idealized patriotic Christian religion, whatever.

One narrative means that you have stopped suspecting that something is awry when you don't fit into that narrative. And that's problematic because you will not understand scripture. You will not understand when God is speaking to you. You will not stop when that bush is burning and talking to you because you're like, Oh, the bush is burning. Let me run away.

But you won't see that your album was being played with, that you were being fed false narratives that you were being told to run away rather than to listen. [00:49:00]

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: So I'm still going to run away from the burning bush. I'm sorry. Acknowledge together, so that there isn't sort of like one person who gets to demand things.

And then to Dr. Moro's point, it also reminds us to have a hermeneutic of suspicion. Like we enjoy Chisme, we enjoy engaging in it. But we're also always gonna know that may or may not be true. Like there's a little bit of the like, this was a fun story. It may not all be true, true in a kind of like factual sense.

The truth of it is different than than that, right? Um, yeah.

Dr. Neomi De Anda: That's also a mix, not just a hermeneutic of suspicion, but something you taught me, Dr. Hidalgo, the hermeneutic of generosity, being generous about who you're hearing the Chisme happening, or even when we read our texts and study our material, that we started hearing a narrative over and over being generous about that. So, sorry, I cut you off.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: No,

Dr. Neomi De Anda: I just wanted to jump in and say that, but both of those are working [00:50:00] simultaneously together.

Dr. Matilde Moros: And an element of grace. Because if I hear something about one person and it could be just so damaging, do I just jump in and repeat that? What's the purpose of that? That kind of Chisme is what I'm not interested in and I think it's just you know, very, um, that may be what people are complaining about.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: It has no meaning to me, and it is not relevant, and I'm not, I'm not interested in hearing that in a negative way, only in a fun way, like, you know, and like, there can be good stories about it. Oh, that person was with that person in a good way. Um, I think it's very much about what are the stories about in relationship to what that person does and has done and says they're about and the kinds of power.

Dr. Matilde Moros: That they put on nervous about in terms of how do we get people to really do introspection and to re-engage in community, right?

Can you force people to do that? No. What kind of crises [00:51:00] has to be present for that to happen? Right? They're already in apocalyptics sort of thinking, right? The world has ended according to what I know, and I want to make it great again.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: I think to your, you know, to your point to try to bridge that back to Dr. De Anda's question about thinking about religion, I think that the study of Chisme teaches us a lot about trust and distrust and what, what builds trust between people and what undermines trust between people. And so, I think, you know, your point about religious institutions and all, and a lot of institutions right now being vulnerable to, to distrust, that would be nice.

Dr. Neomi De Anda: So, on that note of possibilities, we'll bring this to an end. Thank you both because I know that part of what the Academy does for people from minoritized and underrepresented groups is to try to keep us separated [00:52:00] and part of that is keeping us very busy. So thank you for this two hours of time that you have given us and the time that you spent preparing and the time you will spend thinking about this in the future, uh, and it's just such a gift to be with both of you. You've lifted my spirits. So, uh, I hope you're all well and thank you everyone for joining us.

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo: Thank you.

Dr. Matilde Moros: Take care.

Neomi De Anda

Hello and welcome to the chisme symposium. This is a one of a two part series focused on the topic of chisme, which some may call gossip. But we will get into the differences of what that may mean. This episode may be used as a standalone or may work with the other episode which is on the topic of chisme and "We don't talk about Bruno", so feel free to watch both of them or use them as standalone episodes.

This episode is sponsored by the University of Dayton Department of Religious Studies, it also has a partnership support from the race and ethnic studies program which houses, the Latinx and Latin American studies Program.

At this time that we are recording - we are recording on May 26, 2022 - we are mourning the loss of two mass tragedies and so many more across the country. And so, with heavy hearts, we hold the victims and their families, both of the shooting in Buffalo and in Uvalde.

I'd like to take some time to welcome our very honored guests. I'm so happy to be with them, and that they said yes to doing this with us today. Our first guest is Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo. Dr. Hidalgo is a professor of Latina/o/x studies and of religion. She's the Chair of the Latino studies program as well as the associate Dean for institutional diversity equity and inclusion at William's college. She is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic theologians the United States (ACHTUS) as well as the New England eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature. She's the author of Latina/o/x a case studies and biblical studies in Braille research perspectives and biblical interpretation 3.4. As well as Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement from Palgrave Macmillan with Efrain Agosto, she also co-edited the collection of essays Latinx, the Bible, and Migration, also from Palgrave Macmillan. She is a student of scriptures as humans social phenomenon with particular interest in how certain Latina/o/x communities make, contest, and refashion their own scriptures; why they do so; and what consequences, especially in terms of social our dynamics such as relations with other ethnic communities as well as internal tensions around race, gender sexuality, and belonging. Welcome Dr. Hidalgo.

Our second guest is Dr. Matilde Moros. Matilde Moros, PhD is a theological social ethicist working in the field of gender sexuality and women's studies. The ethics of resistance and so burst subversion of hegemonic worldviews and narratives of power. Her teaching and learning toward a counter narrative method of decolonial transnational feminist ethics. Feminist social ethic must respond to sexual and gender violence and the multiple intersections of which race and its various social constructions have led to the exclusion from the centers of power of many peoples, including Latin American and Latinx communities. Dr. Moros research on the communal and historical effects organized resistance to engendered and sexual violence has led her to an approach to liberation ethics in which recovery of resistance methods has become the primary focus. Thank you and welcome also Dr. Moros.

Dr. Hidalgo, Dr. Moros and I have previously recorded a podcast through the HTI Open Plaza series. So, you can find a previous podcast on chisme on this very topic with the three of us. So this is actually a second part episode and they are also wonderful interlocutors and scholars, as well as great human beings and friends.

First of all, we're going to do a little overview on “What is chisme?” I've been working on the topic of chisme since 2008. I presented it at the 2008 Academy of Catholic Hispanic theologians of the United States colloquium. I never thought that now in 2022, I would still be talking on the topic of chisme. Much of that has to do, because of the support, and recommendation, and slight energy and a little bit of pushing extra articles sent from Dr. Hidalgo very regularly to make sure that I keep reading and working in this topic. In that paper eventually published, "Dame Chisme, Dame Chocolate: God, Life, and Gossip in Telenovelas" published in the journal for Hispanic Latino theology, I argue that telenovelas like “Dame Chocolate” and “Betty la Fea” act as conduits primarily through the communication of chisme for provoking epistemological change and the understanding of human agency as a necessary an inalienable part of human dignity.

So what is chisme? When we look at the historical roots of both chisme and gossip we find an interesting array. The historical roots for the word chisme are unknown. Speculation has led to two dominant thoughts. It may come from chinche, a broad category for a number of parasitic bugs including bed bugs. The second one is that chisme may arise from schism or cismar, which translates to enter into discordance or divisions. These definitions of chisme seem to carry quite negative connotations. And the history of the word gossip actually comes from a very different place.

The 14th to the 18th century texts that include the word gossip use it to mean godparent from the 14th to late 19th century it got some could be one of a number of women invited to be present at the birth of a child. Gossip can be found used by people like Shakespeare and Milton. We can see that using the given dictionary definitions of the words "chisme" and "gossip" allow for much more speculation about both words. because it lends itself in a historical sense to more positive connotations yet for me, I think that really gossip has so much more to do. My experience has taught me to call that which will amongst speaks and is the definition is going on, by the Oxford English dictionary as "chisme" not "gossip."

While I do not want to deny that chisme may cause division among some individuals, I believe, chisme has a variety of other effects. The way chisme functions within many of our own communities as well as a variety of other Latino communities may encompass the notion of a sponsor or someone who cares for an individual and spreads news of the individual, out of concern.

Chisme also provides demarcations for who belongs within the boundaries of certain circles of trust. When one chooses to chismear one another one chooses individuals one trust. People who do not trust one another hardly ever engage in chisme. I'd also like to add the following list to some of the things that have already been said.

•     Engaging in chisme shows human finitude chisme often includes how one person has fallen short and of what we believe is necessary to live one's best life.

•     Chisme allows us to understand ourselves better. It compels us to be self reflective. Chisme upsets the daily rhythms of life because it is usually based upon questionable behavior.

•     It can be an interpretive tool that forces us to reexamine ourselves within certain normative contexts. Some say we are always discerning what God asks for our lives. Because chisme makes us engage and interpret moral behavior, it can help us with that discernment.

•     Chisme provides a way for us to express in daily life that we are humans filled with contradictions, it allows us to track our experiences against those of others and so functions as a language of the people. As has been stated by other authors chisme involves intimacy and vulnerability.

•     We share chisme with those we trust and with whom we'd like to build closer relationships.

In the book "The Archives of Conjure: Gender Theory and Religion" Solimar Otero spectacularly claims “Chisme is a seductively powerful and quick form of storytelling that works, specifically because it plays with the boundaries of secrecy and the impropriety of revelation.” Pietrosemoli in her article in 2009 states that chisme “a) in everyday conversation can be assigned the following functions an economy of information, maintenance of the relationship between partners; c) definition of the speaker and hearer’s personae at the time of the chisme exchange; d) rapprochement, estrangement, or re-adjusting of potions in the scale of values, beliefs, ascriptions, etc. of gossip partners.” She also claims chisme as an act of storytelling engaged by all people of all genders, and has been a topic engaged by psychology sociology and computer science. In that same article she leans on Nicholson who says chisme makes a person more positive and that supervisors should include themselves in the chisme and call it management by wandering about.

A number of authors have come together to look at chisme and have included that in the moral realm, so this is by Patricia Fasano et al. in an article titled “El sentido del chisme en una comunidad de pobres urbanos.” That was published, also in 2009 so clearly, this is a topic that has spanned across Latin American theorists for quite a while as well. And they claim that the ethical moral realm around chisme proposes an ethos, rather than a moral system, because an ethos is a moral made hexis, gesture and posture…and is defined by moralities therefore it opens a plurality and because it equally values discourse and practice. So the relationship between moral values and practices, dynamic values are constantly changing and adapting to actual practices, as happens in life, while simultaneously helping to form, those same practices, the practices and gestures, which form these ethos are multiple with the possibility of chisme being one. Chisme unites various characteristics of ritual, with an emphasis on the capacity for chisme to help in overcoming ambivalence.

And then, finally, in an article published in 2019, Abhijit Banerjee et al. state that regarding Gossip and sharing important information in communities of about 1000: “Nominated individuals are indeed much more effective at diffusing a simple piece of information than other individuals, even village elders.” They further state “when asked for nominations villagers do not simply name locally centered individuals but actually name people who are globally centered within the village.” So, it seems that people who have lots of connections within the village are the people who also share information through the sense of chisme at a much broader and much cleaner level than others in the community.

So now I'm going to turn to Doctors Hidalgo and Moros. Dr. Hidalgo will begin with a presentation on chisme and scriptures. Then Dr. Moros will talk much more about ethics and chisme and women and gender studies. So Dr. Hidalgo.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

Thank you, Dr. De Anda for that introduction and for that really helpful and extensive overview.

I want to talk a little bit from the context of coming out of biblical studies kind of more narrowly construed in and thinking about scriptures in a broader way. One of the things I want to say about the field of biblical studies that it has its own fraught history it seemingly obviously focuses on the Bible, though in another time I might unpack that along a variety of ways. But one of the shifts that has happened in biblical studies and the last 30 years or so, has been more of a sort of opening up of methods of interpretation as sort of breaking away from thinking about they're just being one way and one approach, one can take to reading the Bible, and instead recognizing that we as human beings come from a variety of different contexts and places and backgrounds, and so we are interacting with the biblical texts, when we interpret and that's going to alter what we see in the meanings that make themselves sort of the present themselves to us in different ways, but it's going to alter even how we think about the Bible the kind of relationship we have with it the ways that we engage with it.

And among Latinos and Latinas who study the Bible, especially, there's been a turn that's been informed by you know that Latinx theologies by Latinx studies in a broader way, which is this emphasis on bringing out our own indigenous epistemological traditions, drawing on the sorts of knowledge, making frameworks that are that that are part of our daily life. The homes that that we live in, and that we come from and aren't necessarily the knowledge, making frameworks that are always practiced in the dominant academy and I don't want to unpack all of those things of what I might mean by the dominant Academy, but following sort of the work of someone like Willie James Jennings let's sort of just take, for instance, that much of the Academy in the United States has at its critical formative years has a deep and intense relationship with histories of colonialism and enslavement, and so there's a very much a discourse of mastery that often shapes the sort of dominant academy.

Now if we think about what chisme is it is actually specifically the discourse of those who are not the masters. Right and, and this is a really important thing to hold on to when I want to turn to think about what that might help us understand better about the Bible and about scriptures in a broader way if we're thinking about the sort of ways of making knowledge that happens. Among those people who are not the ones holding power, but actually might be trading information about the people holding power and trading information among each other about the people holding power.

And in terms of biblical studies, this is considered relevant because, while the like if we think about the formation of the text we have, they're written texts. For most of human history writing was a highly elite phenomenon. I mean it's still really so important to value writing. Devaluing the written word is still a very sort of elite professional phenomenon, but it was much more so, prior to the advent of the printing press so when we think about the moment when most of the texts that we receive as the Bible come into formation to write itself, as is an elite activity, but just because the biblical texts are being written by elites. That doesn't mean that we're talking about a community where writing is valorized in the same kind of way or that there are leads on the same order of the kind of elites. We think of when we think of the modern day professorial right. Like we're talking about the different contexts.

But one of the things I think is important to bear in mind is that oral tradition had greater valence and power for most of the moments when the text we receive we get from the Bible were being written. They were being written in a context where the oral tradition was actually much more valued and so determinations around writing and what went into writing was much more about fashioning texts that could be, you know, engaged with and treated around, but with the assumption that you always had a kind of a company oral tradition and practice.

These texts were being read out loud. They were being performed that was how most people were receiving them. So that's one of the important dynamics to think about and so when I think about the formation of the texts that we have in the Bible, many of them contain stories that were first oral stories that were traded and then even in being written down they're kind of meant to be traded or even later were meant to be exchanged in a more communal context. And one of the other things that I like to point people to in this came up and in our last conversation on the podcast and Dr. De Anda kind of asked me to expand upon it a little so I'm going to expand upon that we just say that you know, often in religious settings there's this sort of insulting of people for being chismosa or for being gossiping or for trading upon chinche like you know these shouldn't do that it's bad like don't.

And I think it's really actually interesting if we think about instead imagining that these Biblical texts that are supposedly so foundational to Christian tradition only exist because of people engaging in chisme -in gossip. And one of the people I love to pick on in this regard because I think people tend to think of him, and in such a high, you know, lauding way is Paul. And basically quite fundamentally the letters of Paul only exist because of chisme. This is as you look throughout his letters and you start reading for chisme, it starts popping out at you in different ways. You know so first of all like one of the obvious examples, if you look at first Corinthians 1:11 and Paul's talking about the whole reason he's writing this letter to the Corinthians is because of stuff that's been reported to him by Chloe's people. I've heard that there are quarrels among you and so like from Chloe's people and so I'm writing to you. So, like this whole the whole basis of this is about chisme. It's you know Chloe's people obviously matter. Paul is establishing himself in as having a connection to the Corinthians through Chloe's people who must also somehow have value within this sort of chisme knowledge circle. You know, he regularly Paul will regularly talk about like. You know I boast about you to other people when he's writing. So, like till this comes up in second letter to the Corinthians in chapter nine where he says, like, I want you to know that I go around talking about how great you are other people. This is part of what he was saying, you know I know your eagerness, which is the subject of my boasting about you, to the people of Macedonia, you know, this is something he talks about there.

You know, an another example that he also trades on what he knows is gossip about himself. So in in the letter to the Galatians, he talks about you've heard no doubt of my earlier life in Judaism. And something that you'll notice in all of these passages that I've given you is that, like hearing orality like you know I've heard from Chloe's people about you. I boast to other people's I’m telling other people's stories about you or I know you heard about me. So you're seeing that this sort of way that this kind of back and forth, that is exactly this kind of chisme conversation it's a really fundamental epistemological structure of the letters. It's a way that Paul establishes connection with the people to whom he's writing and establishes the authority for sending them a written letter. I'm part of your little chisme circle see like, so please listen to what I have to say. Whether they actually listen to what he had to say, we have no idea. Because what happens is Paul's letters get enshrined in this written form that we treat as scriptural and that we give authority to into a certain kind of way. Because other people treated these letters with a certain kind of authority, but we don't know if the Corinthians or the Galatians actually bought Paul's chisme. They may not have we have no idea.

Right, so like that's that's all there is to it. Now I use that to talk about like it's one fun thing to think about how scriptures were formed by chisme. But I also think it's important to think about what chisme helps us do in thinking about scriptures in a broader way.

And this is something I want to point to I think it's important to think about what chisme is doing as a form of knowledge. And that it is a regulatory form of knowledge and so there's a way in which we can think about how chisme can sometimes have power that rivals the scriptural. And here I think about you think about Jean Pierre Ruiz's work about kind of the embedded newness of revelation in daily life, what chisme is fundamentally about is you know, it is about trading information. And sort of sharing stories that give insight into things that might have been hidden. So sometimes they can be stories that are, if you think about again that's why I'm saying this is not the discourse of the masters. The masters are lying about who they are, what they're doing and chisme is that, like story that says, you know this person he claims that he's all that he's all that. That he's this sort of like great guy who you know follows the rules or whatever, but really he's having an affair, with so and so or like really, he took money and like stole it and hit it like this is a good way of like giving warning.

One of the things that we talked about last time is you know something that came out in the middle of the sort of high point of the me too accusations against Harvey Weinstein is how many women warned other women about Weinstein right that this was an important way of providing information orally to try to warn people about what one of these dominating figures was doing and the way that they were abusing power. And so we you know we can sort of understand chisme as having this really valuable role of providing information and knowledge that's being purposely obscured and hidden by the powers that be. And one of the ways that you can think of it as therefore having a scriptural function is that scriptures are supposed to be that that revelation of the knowledge that matters. Right and they are supposed to be what brings the community together, and so, sometimes it might be that she's may a serving a role of challenging the dominant norms of how people interpret scripture by helping us to see it differently, helping us to see its function differently.

The final thing I want to open up is that I think chisme tells us something really important about who has the power and the authority to make knowledge and on what terms. And so there's a kind of authorized level of knowledge and where she's made draws its power is in sort of helping us to see when things are wrong or false in that authorized and sort of dominant form of knowledge. But it requires the authority that's made in relationship, the authority for chisme comes because of the relationships we have with each other. And in the sort of world of fake news, and we might point to that later this is something that I think is valuable to help people think about. That, I think, a good critical chisme studies would actually give us the tools to take apart fake news because it would help us to think about who has the power to offer certain kinds of knowledge, what they get out of presenting certain kinds of knowledge and whether we should trust them and why and who we should trust and why.

And so I think like a kind of critical chisme studies like grounded in this sort of history of thinking about like I said. really we've often overvalued the written word in a sort of formal authorized practice, but in the actual lived practice we still very much value that our kind of oral connections and if we sort of retool and rethink the lessons we've learned from that it might help us to undo some of the damage of this overly authorized written word that is social media these days. So that'll be my last word, I look forward to hearing what Dr. Moros has to say.

Matilde Moros

Well, thank you Dr. Hidalgo and Dr. De Anda for this invitation and for this opportunity to have a conversation again together and the stimulation of hearing both of your angles, in terms of research and my own research.

As a trained Christian Social ethicist who's not working in that sort of field of focus but I went broader to go more toward gender sexuality women's studies, but I apply what I learned to my teaching. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about chisme as a counter narrative, which is what I think. We're all talking about counter narrative to mainline narratives are dominant narratives of whatever truth is being sold out there, whether it's fake news, whether it's you know the gospel of whatever the Academy is or the very gospel of our understanding in terms of scripture right truth with a capital T. All the ways in which we call something truth and in terms of my own training, my research ended up focusing on what happens when we live in a world that has hidden reality in terms of how history happened how race making happened, the violence with which conquest colonization sexual violence that then made us into Mestizos and Mulatos and all these categories of people. The violence with which we maintain social classes and social paths, etc.

How does that happen? What are the tools that people have in terms of mechanisms of resistance to that supposed to truth right? How is it that people maintain a sense of themselves a sense of their history, in the midst of so much brokenness and violence. And that is a natural segue way to working with gender, sexuality and women's studies, because we talked about the silences that are imposed this erase sure that happens right we don't get written into history we're sort of submerged as other genders other races other classes of people that somehow don't exist. But for the official truth, so I see chisme, and I see my work more with regard to the scandal of silences and the scandal of truth making because silences are never really silent, as you explained right if those who are forced to be silent and up warning each other, and I think that chisme has multiple purposes in that way.

My current work focuses on the method of testimonio. And I use this in my classes. Testimonio is something that I learned as a child, when my parents were involved in human rights work in Latin America. Which means is your own story you tell your own chisme you're the one that that live political violence you're the one that was tortured or imprisoned etc you're the one that experienced whatever genocidal violence. You're the only one that has the chisme and you get to reveal it whether it's for political purposes for sort of social purposes for changing laws, whatever it is. I'm using that it with today's young people on teaching undergraduates with regard to social violence out there right whether it's gender violence, sexuality. Whether it's learning about racism, especially with my intro level classes, where we learn about all kinds of structural violence and especially after 2018, where people were involved in social protest I started getting this feeling that a lot of people were able to very easily to point out there, those people.

Right, the system asks them kind of category those people are at fault, the system is those people, those people that have power, but we are telling that chisme we don't have power. And I wanted to change the rules, a little and say wait a minute we're all part of this system, and we have power, even when it's telling the story and sharing the story. We have power when we are advocating for that and we have to begin with ourselves and our stories telling them the scandalous chisme. We to have privilege, not just we have been silenced, we have been erased, but what is it that that gives us privilege in a system that says that we don't exist. And so I'm having my students work on this power of testimonial reflecting on their own lives, as we move through our classrooms and I've learned that the power of chisme or testimonio as I'm reclassifying it is that it has this moral/ ethical element as Dr De Anda was sharing in which, when we talk about social justice, all of a sudden, we are now re inscribed in history. Because we are part of it right so these things happen to me as a child or I experienced racism or I experienced sexual violence when I'm able to share that voicing that all of a sudden I'm no longer this silenced or erase piece, even if I'm just sharing it with one person. But it becomes sort of this awakening right, and then it allows me to see that there are other forms of knowledge out there that there are other forms that may not be the the formal ways of creating knowledge, but that knowledge exists in in many ways in which we are all part of non traditional cultures. So, I teach a lot of undergraduates are first generation that are immigrants that are racialized others that come from very poor backgrounds. And so some of the things that I'm working with our students who, for example, are feeling shame because they're recognizing that their Whiteness gives them privilege, but they themselves grew up poor they grew up in a trailer park they grew up with a very conservative religious background that ends up being abusive. And they recognize it as abusive now that taught them a lot of things about gender sexuality social class race, etc, that they now recognize in a very scandalous way as not having been truth so. This idea of other knowledge can also teach us about healing and living and even joy after having survived violence, so I see chisme playing that role, because, as the chisme that you heard that, then you convert into another form of chisme right the many ways in which chisme evolves and also this idea of chisme is a coded message right, even when you are doing self-reflection and then sharing with another the chisme was this, but in that chisme there was something that was coded in when I hear it now, I can recognize fake news, for example, right. And my own lived experience as a child, how chisme was used in a world where we didn't have Internet. I'm that old. We didn't have the iPhone. We couldn't just text each other, I'm that old. We didn't even have landlines in the city where we live, very few landlines were afforded so people would do something that we call them Venezuela, where I grew up - echar la bola a rodar - to get that ball rolling right. So a story would begin here and it would move as chisme and people would all be informed that there would be some sort of political rally. Or that there was going to be protest to go get your groceries because we're going to be under lockdown. Or right, it was a way of informing each other, politically, so I saw it as a mechanism of political organizing and putting yourself in this story and then that allows me then to see in terms of you were talking about dignity or this idea of building and sustaining communities. In the 21st century, where we do have all these mechanisms of sharing information there's so much information that still doesn't get shared.

So when I teach, for example, my decolonial feminist classes and we talked about solidarity and we talked about sort of collaboratives work? How does that happen when we don't even know what's happening across the world? We don't know their chisme. We're not involved in social action we're so immersed in our own chismes here. In some ways it happens through other ways of engaging chisme, right. How is it that people who are maybe still part of communities that are depending on oral traditions who may have cell phones, but really are not involved in our struggles here and we're not involved in their struggles, or how do we connect? Right, and so my students and I started talking about these mutual aid and local organizing and how those local organizations are connected to local organizations elsewhere, so in a way it's almost like a real learning what those first communities of oral traditions were learning through chisme. That chisme does still have power beyond all the ways of communication that technology gives us access to there's other ways of being empowered whether it's through social organizing with political movements workers movements women's movements. It's not about who gets to travel, where but someone who's organizing here heard from someone who's organizing there, so you don't technically have to travel.

And it becomes like Paul's letters right, I heard by somebody who went there that you all are organizing in this way, so I'm sending you information because I'd like to see if the way we're organizing this way right or we heard that you build this kind of strategy to get water and now in our community, we no longer have water, even though we're in a first world nation so we're going to try and use that mechanism so learning from people who maybe don't have the same access to power, but have a different sense of power so I'm seeing that chisme or testimonio can allow us to see ourselves in the world, from a different perspective, maybe I thought I had no power, but I have a different kind of power.

And I'll stop there, and maybe I went to sort of esoteric, but I see the ethics of what's happening in terms of how we understand knowledge; how we produce knowledge; and how we acquire knowledge coming through this idea of chisme beyond this idea of gossip. Chisme as a mechanism of power; chisme as a revelation of resistance methodologies that have not died out; and chisme as this possibility for future ways of communicating beyond utopias what's actually happening on the ground when people organizing locally. And get to know each other through some sort of chisme. And so i'll stop there, so we can engage in conversation. But I find that that chisme as we've been taught as this bad thing, where we we gossip and we can hinder someone chisme as scandal can be more of exposing and just exposing a history that's been hidden and exposing the true power that we each have because we're parts of communities that still value the oral tradition. And value community in a different way, so I'm seeing it as a powerful tool, rather than as this thing to be chastised to not be used because it was the way that those gossipy women already were less than empower or those gossipy old women very specifically. Were sort of maligning people right rather than sharing wisdom sharing mechanisms of being empowered in a different way. And sharing being in community in a different way, which I think we're now all in an age group in which we're now, those of you who just use, most of them were sharing the chisme have the power of treatment. So here we are.

Neomi De Anda

Thank you, both Dr. Moros and Dr Hidalgo! I am still getting comfortable with being of the age or las viejas mas chismosas.I still want to pretend I'm younger than I am, but that's not true and many days I get very excited to claim that I'm not young anymore.

But as you were talking both of you mentioned chisme power, but I really do think that chisme is a form of social networking of bringing people together of building power groups or just groups network groups with each other's and each other and being able to bring people together, and so I have two questions, based on that just on your thoughts. One is this form of social networking something you see continuing on and, should it be something that we keep sharing very publicly so that's one like is outing chisme as a form of power, maybe outing too much about our own forms of power and then the other one is about social media and actually that will you mentioned social media a little bit. But, is social media and sharing on social media chisme, fake news? How would you classify it? What would you call it, and maybe, what is it the studies of chisme and thinking about chisme could help us and how we navigate social media and, especially if you have professional tips on how to share professionally on social media because I'm starting to see a whole lot of interesting shares that I think I'm not sure I would ever hire that person or want to ever work with that person. So those are all this whole loaded can but feel free to take out any worm you wish.

Matilde Moros

You know this is scripture say something about those who have eyes to see and those who have ears to hear like. What we share publicly about chisme power, I don't think everyone even understands unless they're part of communities, for whom this is powerful. I hear an awful lot of conversations about narrative and storytelling. And I think each community understands that in its own terms, but when you're talking about chisme and the power of those who have been deemed powerless. Only those who have been deemed powerless understand I think even scripture I am a deep belief that it's full of encoded seeds and messages that. You know, for some, it becomes this religious rigorous thing, but they don't get the point, it was written for a particular audience, it was told in a particular way and only people who have experienced that get it. The liberative word of scripture is for those who need liberation and yearn for liberation, those who are subjugating others do not get it.

God loves them, but they didn't get the point and even those who were being oppressed think about the disciples. Still didn't get it still didn't get it so it's not about romanticizing those who grew up with chisme, but that there are coded messages, even in our conversation today that I don't think it will be revealed. Right, much like the Book of revelations half of US don't get nothing like what things are shining and what did they got lifted up we're here.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

No one, no one actually gets that book. Okay, just to be clear.

Matilde Moros

Exactly that right that.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

Because you're exactly right it's so embedded in someone else's chisme. You can't get it.

You know I want to think about this the sort of way that you are pointing to Dr. Moros about you know how social media social media is. It relies on the sort of power that chisme has held within communities, but it will did in a different way and so to some extent, like I say that one can think about social media as being like. It is our contemporary form of scripturalization, and by that I mean that you know it's a sort of taking what had been the sort of like narrow and more focused traditions of a of a particular set of people and trying to encase it and something that can be more mobile and can be for more people, and there are there are pros to that, but there are also cons to that there are things that really get lost, and I think.

One of the important things that that you both really you know brought  up in both of your remarks about how chisme works is a social phenomenon. It depends so much on the embodied connections between people. And so, social media is trying to like give us chisme in a in a disembodied way to some extent, because it is a way of trying to forge other kinds of Community but they're always going to be losses and gains with that you know, when I think about you know, and I feel like Dr. De Anda but there were sort of two sides of your question like when you think about the people we know who post things on social media in ways that make us go UMM! Like that is not someone, I want to hang out with. Like I think it's important that people, I think we often forget because we sort of will take the social media and we'll think about ourselves, maybe a sharing with our closest networks. And where the kind of stories we tell in the way we tell them have a particular kind of balance, because they're forged within the network we know.

But here's the thing about social media people way outside of those networks and out of the kind of know of your interaction or reading them, and so they. You know, like I was saying about all scriptures were, this is an interactive meaning making relationship. What you put out there is not all there is to it there's also where I'm coming from and how I see it, and so like and how I how I receive it, and so there can be this real tension, where you know people don't.

There is some kind of power there that definitely other people want to harness against most people, and I think what we've seen with fake news is exactly the ability to do that to kind of take. But the ways that we've created community and turn it against us in certain kinds of ways, and to use it to manipulate us. So, then, the third piece is like you know, going back to what I said chisme studies could actually help us do that By helping us really you know think carefully about when this. When is chisme good chisme? The way Dr. Moros was pointing to like when is it when is it doing the work of undermining abusive violence when is it doing the work of helping people in oppressed circumstances share regulatory wisdom and knowledge for survival for undermining dictatorship or tyranny. And when is it doing the work of you know that, like when is it actually doing the work of reproducing the power dynamics, as they are reproducing a sort of dominating order, I think that when we think about how chismes function, and we know when something's good chisme bad chisme in a variety of ways, I think, really thinking that through can help us to think about.

What's fake news when we see it, you know I my you know my brother in Costa Rica, this is an example, Diego, he was talking about, there was this moment, a few years ago, where there was this whatsapp message being passed around of supposedly of Nicaraguans burning the Costa Rican flag and as soon as Diego saw it, he said. "I know this is fake news." And, like the reason you know I know it's fake news is I think about like why would anyone be doing that. Why is this being circulated and sent around and what does this actually look like to me and it's sort of thinking about the power dynamics going on and the storytelling. And I think the good chismosa she knows the power dynamics that shape the storytelling and that's where I think we can be helped.

Neomi De Anda

It also points to that chisme just isn't a thing that's a practice we can use. That for a good chisme, you have to be able to practice it and train and retrain in it. Which is what something Dr. Moros you're pointing to I wanted to pick up to the piece.

Matilde Moros

Building one narrative I think that what I have been raised in the practice of chisme as a mechanism of community building have a built in hermeneutics of suspicion, which I think is the problem with people who've been fed one narrative one story one idealize patriotic Christian religion, whatever. One narrative means that you have stopped suspecting that something is awry when you don't fit into that narrative. And that's problematic because you will not understand scripture you will not understand when, God is speaking to you, you will not stop when that bush is burning and talking to you because you are all that was burning when we run away. but you won't see that your album looking played with that you were being fed false narratives that you were being told to run away, rather than to listen.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

So you don't want to run away from the burning Bush? I'm sorry.

So that there isn't sort of like one person who gets to demand things. And then to Dr. Moros' point, it also reminds us to have a hermeneutics of suspicion. Like we enjoyed chisme. We enjoy engaging in it, but we're also always going to know that may or may not be true like there's a little bit of the like this was a fun story. It may not all be true in a kind of like factual sense the truth of it is different than that right.

Neomi De Anda

Yeah that's also a mix, not just a hermeneutic of suspicion, but something you taught me Dr. Hidalgo, the hermeneutics of generosity - being generous about who you're hearing the chisme happening or even when we read our text study or material that we started hearing a narrative over and over being generous with that. Sorry I cut you off.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

No.

Neomi De Anda

I just wanted to jump in and say that, but the both of those are working simultaneously together.

Matilde Moros

And an element and grace, because if I hear something about one person, and it could be just so damaging do I just jump in and repeat that what what's The purpose of that that kind of achievement is what I'm not interested in, and I think it's just you know very. That may be what people are complaining about.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

It is not relevant and I'm not I'm not interested in hearing that in a negative way only in a fun way like what you know and like there can be good stories about it Oh, that person was with that person in a good way. I think it's very much about what are the stories about in relationship to what that person does and has done, and says they're about and the kinds of power that they.

Matilde Moros

How do we get people to really do introspection? And to reengage in community right, can you force people to do that know what kind of crises, has to be present for that to happen, I mean they're already an apocalyptic sort of thinking right, the world has ended, according to what I know, and I want to make it great again.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

I think, to your you know to your point it to try to bridge that back to Dr. De Anda’s question about thinking about religion. I think, for the study of chisme teaches us a lot about trust and distrust and what builds trust between people and what undermines trust between people, and so I think you know. Your point about religious institutions and all and a lot of institutions right now being vulnerable to distrust.

Neomi De Anda

So on that note of possibilities will bring this to an end, thank you both because I know that part of what the Academy does for people from minoritized and underrepresented groups is to try to keep us separated and part of that is keeping us very busy. So thank you for this two hours of time that you have given us and the time that you spent preparing and the time you will spend thinking about this in the future. And it's just such a gift to be with both of you you've lifted my spirits, so I hope you're all well and Thank you everyone for joining us thank you, thank you.