Locating the Dis(located) Voices

Toni, along with Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, was extending us an invitation to come together against the barriers of inclusion that are erected against us to keep our voices contained or to silence.1 Women of color from the Global South have fought for decades to be included and to be located within academic conversations, to be cited, and to be credited as producers of knowledge. The philosopher Sayak Valencia explains in "Epistemopolíticas del Border" in this issue, "lxs Doctorxs Blancxs del Norte, quiénes no solo insisten en explicarnos nuestros mundos desde sus perspectivas, sesgos, y privilegios sino que además expropian y se apropian de nuestra producción de conocimiento y, tras blanquearlo, edulcorarlo, y despolitizarlo, nos devuelven nuestros conceptos en su idioma 'sin acento,' con copyright para citar según MLA o Chicago, como requisito principal para ingresar a un mundo de extractivismo académico que aún les rinde pleitesía"2 Valencia's critique embodies the extractive nature of the academe and scholars in the Global North as well as the ways in which publications, journals, and editors circulate specific types of knowledge by reproducing structural racists practices and xenophobic ideologies that reify American exceptionalism. Some impediments to realizing our full vision included the following: (1) publishing original texts as some submissions had already been published and circulated in journals in their respective countries and languages;(2) building trust between the authors and the journal because some authors chose not to submit a text because of their past experiences with US journals;(3) precarity as a real condition that caused life-altering transitions for some authors and limited access for reaching other authors we would have liked to include;(4) some of the authors in this issue do not speak English, thus obtaining their permission and trying to create alternative methods of giving permission that were recognized by the press were challenging. [...]from the open wound that is the US-Mexico border, Guillermina Gina Nuñez-Mchiri and Areli Chacón Silva report on their work to establish the LEAD Program, a new leadership and community engagement model for Latinas in Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.