Estevan Rael-Galvez and Edward Chacón-Lontín

Edward "Eddie" Chacón-Lontín (EC) introduces himself and explains how he changed his last name to include Chacón in recognition and acknowledgement of his mother.

Estevan Rael-Galvez (ER) talks about the impetus for having this conversation today: He wants to share his project Native Bound Unbound, which is building an archive of every instance of Indigenous slavery across the Western Hemisphere and gathering descendant stories.

EC reflects on how he learned about his own past and heritage later in life.

EC talks about a sticker reading “remember the past, imagine the future” that his mother carried around in her older years.

EC and ER reflect upon the gift of having met each other.

ER reflects on the significance of names: Names were imposed upon enslaved people, and the descendants of these people sometimes reclaim the names given to them. ER also talks about his and EC's intentional decision to place their mothers' maiden names first in their last names, a conscious breaking of Spanish tradition which typically places the father's last name first.

ER introduces the need that can sometimes arise in their communities to forget. Forgetting can work as a mechanism for survival.

EC describes how his mother’s family did not want her to marry his father because he was “outside of [her] race.” Her family held great pride in being 100% “pure Spanish."

EC shares about the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross on his mother’s front lawn when she was thirteen.

ER talks about the prominence of EC’s ancestors who are very well-known throughout the Southwest, including the novelist Eusebio Chacón.

EC remembers his grandmother on his father's side, Teresa, making tortillas by hand.

ER emphasizes that there is not a single New Mexican who is not in some way shaped by, connected to, or descended from the Indigenous enslaved.

EC remembers his mother characterizing people who inquired about their heritage as rude and telling EC, “we are nobody special."

EC talks about moving forward from not sharing.

EC describes how it felt for ER to show him all of this history and make these connections and parallels to EC’s identity and past.

ER and EC talk about how they will continue on this journey of remembering and give thanks for their friendship of awakening – recuérdate.