Roberto Avant-Mier and John Carrillo

[00:02] JOHN CARRILLO: My name is John Carrillo. I'm 68 years old. Today is January 5, 2023. We are in El Paso, Texas. I am sitting with doctor Roberto Avant-Mier My relationship to Roberto is friend and colleague.

[00:20] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Good morning, John. My name is Roberto Avant-Mier Avant mier is the way I like to say it in Spanish, but I'm 51 years old today. Today's January 5, 2023. We are in El Paso, Texas, and I'm talking with John Carrillo, who is a colleague, a co worker, a friend of mine, and.

[00:41] JOHN CARRILLO: Yeah, very good. Just a little bit of history. Roberto and I go back to right around 2012, 2013. At the time, I was working on my thesis, my master's thesis, I took a class with Roberto and eventually ended up connecting with Roberto on a very, very deep level. I really admired his area of study, and he ended up becoming my thesis advisor. Roberto I. I remember sitting with you and you telling me a little bit about where you grew up. If you could tell me. Tell me about where you grew up. Tell me what it was like growing up in. In your neighborhood.

[01:32] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Cool. Thank you for asking, by the way, John, thank you for inviting me to do this. Thank you to Storycorps, and thank you personally for inviting me to do this. But. So the question of where I came from is kind of weird, right? So when I was driving up here, we are in. We are in Segundo barrio, right? In El Paso, Texas, downtown El Paso, south Ochoa Street. Centro de la Fem, what's it called? Centro familiar de. Salud. So, as I was driving up here, I was thinking I might have been born here, because anyway, I was born around here. And it's surprising to me that I don't know actually where I was born because I wasn't born in a hospital. Anyway, let me answer the question. So I'm from El Paso, Texas, born and raised. My family roots are in. I think you and I have talked about this. My family roots are smelter town, which is a town that no longer exists, right? But it's a little town that was attached to a sarco not far from here, not far from the University of Texas at El Paso, which is where we work and how we met. But anyway, smelter town was this little town that existed in between, kind of utep, right along the river, really kind of across the river from Anapra and now Sunland Park, New Mexico. And there was a whole community, like a little village that lived there, right? And that's where my family's from. In fact, when I was born. I was born around here because I wasn't born into a hospital. There was some kind of clinic. And my mom tells me, oh, the little clinic in segundo barrio, which is somewhere around here, apparently. Anyway, so when we, when I was born, we moved. We were living in smelter town. The town no longer exists, right? It was, it was raised r a z etern the in 1974. There's all the controversy about the pollution they were putting in the air, lead pollution in the air and all kinds of stuff. So long story short is the environmental stuff was so bad that they basically had to tell the people, the mexican workers, which is my family, in my community, everybody had to leave, right? They got rid of Osarco remained for several more decades. But the town that was attached to Osarco in that area, that industrial area, the town was, you know, basically gone, right? So now if you drive by there, it's just the river and dirt and there's like a little historical market. But anyway, that's my family origins that we, you know, I was born into a smelter town community that two or three years later was sort of, you know, erased from the map. You know, they, they really got rid of the houses and the streets and there's nothing there anymore. And anyway, so my family ended up moving, which was a common pattern for all those families that left that were kicked out of smelter town, which is, you know, there's sort of like a little trail along the west side, basically following Donovan, which is, you know, little mexican neighborhoods of people that your dads, workers, uncles, they worked at Osarco border steel, the southwestern Portland cement Company, you know, whatever, the El Toro. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of communities that were sort of strung along because they were sort of attached to Osarco and smelter town formerly. Anyway, I grew up in one of those, one of those small, little mexican neighborhoods. We call it town and country. Town and country is the neighborhood that I. That I. That I. That I say that I'm from. And if you're from the west side, you kind of know, right? Because there's like, you know, there's Machuka and there's flashlight and then there's town and country. So I would say I'm from the west side, town and country. My family is smelter town, although that no longer exists anymore, if I remember.

[05:03] JOHN CARRILLO: Correctly, having, of course, grown up in El Paso as well. Smelter town was a really isolated little neighborhood, as you pointed out. Pretty much everybody that lived there worked at Osarco, which was a copper refining company. How do you think that living in that community, the fact that it was really isolated from the rest of El Paso, how do you think that affected your outlook on life? Or how did it affect your life, or did it.

[05:48] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: It affected my life, I think, tremendously in that if you grew up in that area, and I didn't grow up in there, right. I was born into it, and then we had to leave by the time I was three or four years old. But if you grew up in that community, there was a really, really strong sense of identity. Right. People were fiercely proud of being from smelter town, even to this day.

[06:07] JOHN CARRILLO: Right.

[06:07] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Well, I mean, first of all, I should say that, you know, in that community, everybody knew each other. You know, the houses were so close, the neighborhood was so isolated. It was its own thing. Right. Even smelter town was not part of El Paso, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not a historian, but I don't think it was officially incorporated as part of El Paso. So I think I have seen, like, postcards or mail that actually said smelter town, Texas. It didn't say El Paso, Texas. Right. And so I hear stories from my mom and from relatives, and what they would do is, you know, go in from smelter town, which is, you know, a couple miles away from here, and they would get on the little highway, which now we call Paisano drive, and they would get on the highway to go downtown, you know, which is basically where we're at right now. And they would go downtown to buy groceries or to the movie theater. And that was a big deal. It was like going to El Paso. Right. I mean, it's just five minutes away now, really. Right. But it was sort of this thing of like, there was a separate. It was its own separate enclave with its own identity and technically not part of El Paso. Right. And that kind of carries on when they get rid of the community and the community leaves and everybody's spread out to some extent throughout El Paso, people were fiercely proud of being smelter town. Right. And that continues to this day for several decades after the 1970s, which is 1974 is the date that that happens. Right. For several decades after that, they would have, you know, community reunions there. I think a community reunion happens till this day. They still have, like, dances in the summer and a golf tournament and a big, you know, the community was very, very sort of, you know, fiercely proud of being from. From smelter town, and everybody knew each other, and people had those you know, people that were my wife have talked, we've talked about this in the past. She's met some of my family and my extended relatives, and she said, yeah, you know, it's kind of weird. It's like everybody knows each other, and that's like a big community thing. But she says it's almost like you all are all intermarried. It almost feels inbred, right? Because your cousin was married to somebody else's cousin, friends, neighbor. And, you know, so everybody knows there's all these kinds of relationships. On top of that, if they weren't married to you, I mean, related to you by blood or by marriage, they were your, you know, they were your extended relatives through, like, church relationships, for example, godparents. You know, I am in touch with today with people that I considered like, sort of like uncles that are not my blood relatives, but they were like my godfather, godparents relationships to me, my sisters, my cousins. And so the whole community was like that, right? It's like, sort of like everybody knew each other, and everybody knew who everybody was. And chances are your dad, your uncle, your grandfather, somebody worked, you know, at a sarco or whatever else. So everybody had that sense of everybody knew each other. And at the very least, if they didn't work with each other, everybody went to church together. Right? San Cristo Rey, which. What is it? Which is the church called San Jose. My mom and all my relatives to talk about, you know, they went to church. There was a big community identity. And like I said, there's the godfather thing. There's all the baptisms and births and marriages. So it was like everybody knew each other. I find it really intriguing. I'm a little too young to have remembered all that stuff. You know, all that stuff happened when I was a kid, I, the late seventies. But as far as I know, to answer your question, the community carried on, even though they were all spread out after the 1970s and eighties. But there was a really strong sense of identity. I think that identity remains today. If you talk to the older people, like my parents and the, you know, the older generation, which are now in their seventies, eighties, you know, they all have a really, really strong sense of that community and that identity. And I think it's really cool, right? I'm always trying to figure out, like, you know, how it was, what it used to be. I love talking to these older people about, you know, what it was like back then. I was a little baby. I don't remember it.

[09:45] JOHN CARRILLO: You know, by any chance, when you were growing up in Smeltertown. Do you happen to know, more or less. How many families were living there at the time?

[09:57] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Ooh, that's a really good question. I wish I knew, John. I don't know. I don't actually know. I wish I could put a number. I'm gonna start asking people just because you asked me.

[10:09] JOHN CARRILLO: Because it really wasn't a big. A big area. I mean. No, I mean, as you point out.

[10:16] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: It was a neighborhood. I think nowadays you and I would call it a neighborhood. But like I said back then, it had its own sort of community identity. You know, this is side story, but. So I volunteer on the weekends at a cemetery because there's an old cemetery not far from here. Again, on the other side of Osarco, kind of. It's called La Calavera. I'm thinking of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is called La Calavera. There's an old cemetery. I think it's just called smelter town Cemetery. Yeah, that's what it's called. Anyway, the cemetery has been there for about 100 years now. And it's abandoned trash, glass bottles, tumbleweeds. Overgrown. Right. And a couple years ago, there were some people that were trying to clean up the cemetery. So I joined with these men. They're all, like, in their seventies and eighties. And they're trying to clean up the ceremony. I'm the youngest guy there, right? Anyway, we go out there on Saturdays, and I'm picking, you know, pulling weeds, picking up glass, picking up. Trying to clean up the cemetery. Because we all have relatives that are buried there. So we're trying to clean up the cemetery on behalf of our family and our ancestors, so to speak. Anyway, those guys, after we work, we work for about 2 hours every Saturday. And after we get done working, you know, somebody pulls out the. The truck bed. And they start telling stories and they talk about, you know, you lived on this one, but I lived on this block and you lived on this block. So there was this sort of sense of like a very small community. It was from the stories that I hear, like a few. I don't want to say a few blocks, but it feels like, you know, they talk about, you know, Gaia, this guy, that guy that. And it was all sort of. It feels to me, sort of small. It feels like they all knew each other. And I. I don't know. To answer your question, to me, when I hear them tell the stories, it sounds like they're talking about a ten block area. Because they, you know, they named these streets and they named the houses and they named who lived where, and, you know, I don't have those memories, but it just feels so small when they talk about it. The question of how many families is really, really, really intriguing. There's a book by Monica Perales, who wrote about. She wrote, there's a book called Smelter Town. Right. And I'm wondering if I look through that book, because she is a historian. I'm wondering if that number would be in there. Now that you asked the question, I'm really curious. How many families live there? How many people live there? Right.

[12:33] JOHN CARRILLO: You mentioned that at one point they raised the town, and people got sent to. Well, ended up moving to different areas of El Paso.

[12:47] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Yeah.

[12:48] JOHN CARRILLO: You and your family, you went to.

[12:52] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Town and country, town and country on the west side.

[12:55] JOHN CARRILLO: And so town and country was. Was it predominantly people from. From smelter town?

[13:02] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I want to say, yeah, for the most part, I want to say that, you know, a lot of people had some kind of connection. If it. Like I said, if it wasn't Osarco, it was border steel, it was the cement company. Um, it was a working class neighborhood. Right. Your. Your family, they worked there. That. That's the kind of neighborhood that it was. Right. Everybody had some kind of connection to.

[13:24] JOHN CARRILLO: That at that point. Did you end up. Did you end up going to a different school? You mean elementary? And then later.

[13:36] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Well, I went to. I went to Robert School, which is that neighborhood. It's right off of Thorne Avenue and Doniphanda. Robert school is a school that I went to. My middle school was Lincoln, which is across Donna fit on the other side. It's sort of the upper valley. Right. But I never changed schools because that was the neighborhoods. That was the neighborhood school. I don't know if you mean that I changed schools from smelter town to. Yeah, I was never in school, because when I. When we lived in smelter town, I think I was three years old. So they, they kicked everybody out when I was about three or four.

[14:05] JOHN CARRILLO: Okay. So.

[14:07] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: But I, you know, the question did you ask my sisters would have, you know, if they were in kindergarten or first. And my cousins, some of the cousins, the school in smelters, I was called EB Jones. So some of my cousins tell stories that they went to EB Jones, and then they had to go to another school eventually.

[14:25] JOHN CARRILLO: As far as high school is concerned, you ended up going to Coronado.

[14:29] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Coronado high school.

[14:30] JOHN CARRILLO: Now, I, again, having grown up in El Paso back in the. Back in the seventies, when I was a young guy, Coronado had a reputation for being predominant one.

[14:49] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: I know what you're gonna say.

[14:50] JOHN CARRILLO: Predominantly white.

[14:53] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: And rich kids.

[14:54] JOHN CARRILLO: And rich kids. Yes. I mean, it is what it is, right? So coming from. From smelter town and then going to Coronado, what was that. What was that experience like for you?

[15:12] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Oh, interesting question, John. Okay, so first of all, you and I, you have talked about this before, right? Because. So for. It's really funny because. Right. So I really resent the assumption that everybody from the west side is a rich kid, right? Because that was not my experience. I've told you this before, right. I get. I get. I get so upset. In El Paso, these identities are. Our identities are based on, like, you know, what side of town are you from and what high school did you go to? And. And even my cousins, I had some cousins that grew up in the northeast, and they, you know, our rivalry was, like, west side, and they were the northeast, right? And they didn't like us because we were supposed to be rich. And I'm like, we're not rich. We're the same family. And, you know, my mom and I was raised by a single mom when you didn't have a dad in the house, you know what I mean? So we weren't rich at all, and I was in a mexican neighborhood, so I really resent all that rich kid stuff, right? But, no, I mean, I don't know what. It's kind of a funny thing to say. I grew up a mexican kid in a sort of the, quote unquote, the nice part of town. Although, you know, very. I think my family background was, you know, humble beginnings, working class background, not rich at all. But anyway, it was. It was weird to grow up with that, right? There was these. These rivalries, other sides of town, the things that people assume. It didn't affect me much when I was in high school, right? When you go through high school, you're so young and dumb and, you know, you, years fly by and then you graduate, and then you move on, whatever. But I didn't really think about it much until coming back years later. I was in the Marines. Went away, came back. I went to college, went away, came back. I got a job. I've come back to El Paso several times. Keep coming back to El Paso. But anyway, it sort of hit me more as an adult when you're an adult, right, as a professor, having come back to the University of Texas at El Paso. The big thing about UTEP, right, is they were. People make such a big deal about a professor that had a job somewhere else, went to another university, and came back home. Right. Because now you're a mexican american professor teaching to, to these young people. Right. And they need to see people that look like us, that have, you know, our names and they sound like us and they have the same background like us. Right. And so they make a big deal out of it. I don't know. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't think about it until I came back, especially coming back to UTEP as a professor, having come from Boston College, which is where I was at before, that's when it really hit me, you know, about, like, wow, I had no idea. I had no idea kind of how I was growing up. I mean, I guess, to answer your question a different way, I always knew I was mexican, right. Mexican american kid. But we just didn't talk about it. Right. Growing up with the kids, we were all mexican. Right. And then you go to high school and, yeah, the rich white kids are part of Coronado story, and they're there, and I wasn't part of that. But you don't think about it that much. You know, you kind of go on and live your life. I'm much more conscious of, like, the racial politics and the, the segregation, if I can call it that, and all kinds of that weird stuff. I'm much more conscious of that as an adult, more so than I was when I was a teenager in the 1980s. You know what I mean?

[18:16] JOHN CARRILLO: I recall having a conversation with you, and we were talking about your military career. You mentioned you joined the Marines. And I remember you made a comment one time. You said that the Marines, the marines made a man out of you. Tell me about that experience. What made you join the Marines? And then, of course, the fact that you had mentioned also that your intention when you left the Marines was to go to a university, get a degree, and then go back to the marines as an officer. Yeah, tell.

[19:07] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Yeah. So, so this is actually kind of a good follow up question to what we were talking previously, which was, you know, moving on from my high school years and how I, you know, what, what I, what I thought I was as a high school kid, whatever. So I got to high school and I didn't know what to do with myself when I was 17 years old, which is not uncommon for any high school kid. Right. I didn't know what I was doing, didn't know what I wanted to do for a life or career, a job, whatever. I had no plan. Right. I was sort of, I think I was a very, I was probably a very average c student in high school, and I say that only that I didn't really try, didn't care. I was more interested in sports and girls and cars than I was getting good grades, right? I'm the first in my family to go to college, so I had nobody pushing me for academics, I had no family member that could talk to me or mentor me, even suggest to me college was possible for me. Speaking of Coronado High School, right, I didn't have any counselor, anybody told me, you're smart, you can go to college. I had nothing, right? So I didn't know what to do with myself when I was 1718 years old, about to graduate high school, so one of my friends, he was joining the marines, some couple other guys were joining the army or whatever, and I don't know, I guess in the circle of friends that I was, that I was part of, right? It just sort of made sense of like, oh, maybe I should do something with myself when I graduate, right? So somehow getting out of here, the neighborhood, I had a cousin that was in prison for drugs, selling drugs. I had friends that were arrested for dealing drugs, stuff like that, right? So I kind of figured out that I needed to get out and do something with myself otherwise, to me, staying in the neighborhood that I was growing up in Washington, kind of a, I don't know, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't the ghetto of any, you know, big city, but I mean, I just figured I needed to go somewhere, I needed to do something, I need to figure out who I was. And that's exactly what happened when I joined the US Marines, right? I joined the Marines. I don't want to say on a whim, but I didn't really have any major life plan, but the marines did help me grow up and mature and I got to travel, I got to do all kinds of cool things, as I've talked to you, right? Jumping out of airplanes, I've been on a ship, I've jumped out of airplanes, I'm a wartime veteran, stuff like that, stuff that I never imagined would happen in like five short years, right? I got to travel at the end of my marine experience, I wanted to get out of the marines, I wanted to come home to go to college, I wanted to get my degree so that I could go back in the marines and be an officer. That was my big plan, right? I had been in the marines and I was saluting the superior officers, right? There's all this language about superiority, right? So you literally have to salute the officers because they have an education and they've got those things on their uniform, and you have to, you know, the language says you have to salute a superior officer, right? So my boat, my big thing was, I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get my four year degree, and I'm gonna go back in the marines, and I'm gonna be an officer, and I'll make more money, and I'll be giving orders instead of taking orders. And I'm gonna show them, right? And the long story short is I got out of the marines. I came home to utepath. I liked college. I liked being with my friends. I liked women. I was dating my wife, right? She became my wife after the fact, right? But she was my girlfriend at the time. So anyway, I didn't want to go back in the marines. So somehow being in college and at the university, I liked classes. I liked the education that was being provided for me. I liked the intellectualism of it all, the idea of doing research and reading books. It was all very, you know, stimulating, obviously. Interesting, fascinating. And I did not want to go back to the marines. So all of a sudden, my life changed, right? The marines made me want to go to college, ironically. And then when I got to college, I didn't want to go back to the marines. And I said, what am I going to do with myself? Right? So, yeah, everything changed. I wanted to. I wanted to pursue academics. I wanted to pursue a degree. And, you know, as you know, I became a, became a, you know, continued from the masters to the PhD, became a university professor. Now I'm back at UTEP. After having gone away a few times, I came back. Now I'm a university professor after all these years, ironically, was there a certain.

[23:14] JOHN CARRILLO: Point that you can remember while you were a student there at the university where a thought popped into your head and you said to yourself, you know what? I like academics. I'm not going back to the marines.

[23:37] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: A moment, a single moment. That's tough. I can't speak to one single moment. It basically is like if you know when you've graduated college, that sort of last year, last semester, the whole last year, you're like, what am I going to do? And you're starting to think about the end of the road is coming to. I didn't, I didn't think I was gonna go back that, that last year, especially that last semester. Like I said, I was dating my wife. I think at that point, it was like, I'm not going back. Like, you know, I can't say there's one moment. It's just sort of was like, you know, a year, a semester, right. At least probably a whole year of, like, starting to figure out, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And for me, it was grad school, right? It was like, oh, I have to have to continue this. I have to continue this, and I have to go to grad school. And then eventually the PhD program. Right?

[24:29] JOHN CARRILLO: Now, you did your graduate work at Boston college?

[24:33] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: No.

[24:34] JOHN CARRILLO: Or Utah?

[24:35] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Utah, yeah, Utah. I went from UTEP to Utah is where I did my PhD, the University of Utah. And I got a job at Boston college. So when I finished the PhD at Utah, that's when I went to Boston, and I was living in Boston.

[24:49] JOHN CARRILLO: How did you end up getting into becoming interested in communication?

[24:55] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Okay. That's actually a real interesting story. So, for the record, I'm a university professor at UTEP. My home department is the department of communication. We study media. Right? We study media. I like to say that we study media. The question of communication was, this goes back to the question that you just asked me. I'm laughing because it's so ridiculous. I feel so foolish and naive about the person I was when I was, you know, when I was a freshman in college, right? I just got out of the marines. I just told you my big plan was, I'm gonna go back in the marines, and I'm gonna become an officer. And so my big deal was, I'm gonna get my degree as quickly as possible. I'm gonna get my degree, and I'm gonna go right back in the marines as an officer, and they're gonna have to, you know, give me the officer title, all that stuff. And so when I got to UTEP, they said, I think it was the. My freshman year, maybe the summer before, I even took one class at UTEP. I'm trying to figure out what my major is going to be. Trying to figure out what classes I'm going to be taking in the fall, right? And they said, well, what did you do in the marines? And I said, well, I was kind of like a radio guy. We did. We did a, you know, we had some training in radio, and we were doing spinning the dial, listening for transmissions. That's a whole other story. But I had it back on a radio. So they said, well, you know, they said, if you. If you do, like, a communication major, there's. The department of communication has electronic media, mass communication, and radio or something. And the trick about that was that if I did that, they would give me some credits for my marine training and the classes I took and my experience. So I think it would have cut off, like, I don't know, something really dumb, like, one or two classes. And I heard that, I was like, whoo. You know, one or two classes less that I have to take. That's gonna give me, like, a fast track to graduation to go back in the rings, which is what I really wanted to do. So the whole reason I did a communication major was because the counselor, the advisor, told me that I might get one or two classes of credit, which I did. And then. So the funny story about that is I ended up graduating in three years. I did my whole undergraduate in three years. But it's because, you know, I got those, like, one or two credits. But I also overloaded with classes in the fall and spring, and I also took summer classes. My whole big thing was to get my degree as soon as possible and get out and go back in the marines, right? So that was the thing. I was, like, on the fast track for graduation. So I did my dumbly, I did my degree in three years.

[27:16] JOHN CARRILLO: Interesting, Roberto. During the time that we first met, of course we connected on a couple of things, but probably the most important, at least for me, was. Was music. And I know that you have a background in music and culture and that intersection of those two things, you've done some research dealing with the history of rock and roll, and to be even more specific, the role that Latinos played in the development of rock and roll. Could you tell me about that?

[28:05] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Sheesh, man, you get me on that stuff, I could talk for 3 hours. Yeah. I mean, so I just confess to you all that I had no big major plan for my life. I didn't know what I was doing. Right. I certainly didn't know what my major was. I was doing it just to. To get my degree as quickly as possible. But I do end up doing media and mass comm is what we called it back in the nineties, right? Mass communication, electronic media. And a lot of the classes that I was really fascinated by was I had the opportunity to take some classes that were, you know, popular music, cultural studies classes. And that's the stuff that fascinated me the most. And that's the stuff that I pursued, both from my undergraduate work to the master's and then to my PhD work at Utah. So I was totally. And this is just my personality, too. I was totally obsessed with. With music growing up. And I'm a big music nerd and a big music geek, and I could go on and on about the music stuff. But what I was really, really excited about and kind of intrigued by as a. As a young person becoming a scholar was the fact that, oh, I can study music, but, like, study some interesting things, like the, you know, the racial part about american popular music history or, you know, culture, class connections, anything, right? Gender stuff. Anytime I read a book or an article that had anything to do with race, class, gender, with regard to pop of the music, it felt to me like I was intellectualizing this thing that I was so passionate about my whole life, which is music, right? So it became this really, really cool, fascinating thing for my life. Would be able to listen to music, to talk about music, but talk about it intellectually, interrogate it, right? Analyze it, think about it in different ways that I had never thought about and that, truthfully, most people don't think about and certainly students don't think about, right? So I became fascinated with the study of popular music, especially with its intersection, intersections with, like, race and ethnicity and culture. And this, to answer the question that you just asked me more directly, was I became obsessed with the idea that latin music. I'm sorry, rock music, which is what I was fascinated with as a kid, right? Rock music had all these, like, latin, hispanic latino connections, right? Going back from, you know, random songs like, you know, la bamba, which anybody can. Can name, you know, songs from the fifties or sixties. But there was like, you know, instrumentation. There were people involved in rock and roll very early on, the roots of. Of rock music, which go back to blues and jazz in the 1920s and thirties. There's these weird latin connections to the birth of jazz and the birth of blues, which feed into rock and roll. Anyway, the more research I did and the more work I did, the more it gave me sort of more fuel to the fire for studying music and connecting to Latinos and making Latinos and Hispanics and Mexicans part of the rock and roll story. So that ends up becoming, you know, my class papers and the master's program. It becomes the dissertation for the. For the PhD degree. It becomes the first articles I ever published and then the book that I published, right? So it became my work, at least for the first part of my career. It became the work that I did, and it was kind of lucky, right? It was just sort of pursuing the stuff that I was passionate about, interested in, intrigued by. It was very organic in the sense that I was just sort of chasing what was out in front of me and that I was finding stuff and finding stuff and finding stuff. And I pursued it, and it became articles, which, you know, and then it became a book, and then it became my sort of identity as a scholar, so to speak. You know, never with any master plan again. I'm not smart enough to have a master plan or have some, like, you know, forethought. Everything was sort of on the fly and reacting to what was in front of me or, you know, adjusting to what was in front of me.

[32:00] JOHN CARRILLO: Looking back on. On your life, are there, you have any regrets?

[32:07] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: That's tough to say, man. I'm 51 years old. I hope it's not over yet. I hope to think I got some. At least a couple decades left. Regrets, regrets in my life. That's tough, man. If you and I, John, were drinking beers right now, I'm sure we could get into a really interesting philosophical conversation about regrets. We all have regrets, don't we? We all have regrets. I mean, I regret being so dumb and foolish when I was 19. Like, to be honest with you, in a way, I think I wish I would have been smarter as a young person getting a degree, college degree. And then, as I was just saying, right, everything that I've done has been, like, by accident, by happenstance, you know, no plan. I didn't really have a mentor. You know, I didn't have anybody guiding me. It was sort of all just on the fly. I was figuring things out or not figuring. I was just doing stuff, right. Trying to. Trying to, like, find out my life, right? Figure out my life. I wish I would have had a better plan. I wish I would have been smarter. I figure as an academic, you know, my first job at. After the PhD was Boston College. And it was a good job for me. But I'm thinking if I had had mentorship and if I had had, you know, the way that some universities or maybe just departments work or the way different universe, if I had gotten, you know, I. I like to think maybe I could have gone further, gone higher, gone somewhere else. You know, I like to think I could have reached some other potential. Not that. That my life is bad. I don't regret my life, but I'm just saying, you know, I wish I would have had guidance. I wish I would have been smarter, me personally, about, like, having a life plan. I wish. I wish, you know, when we think about, like, coulda, woulda, shoulda, I think, man, you know, like, if I had done things differently, I could be somewhere else. I could be making more money. I could be, who knows? At a higher position at a university. I don't know. So I don't know. My regret is not being smarter when I was young, but as you know, right, we're young when we're. I mean, we're dumb when we're young, in our. In our teens, and especially even in the early twenties, right? Before our, what do we call the frontal lobe? Before our frontal lobe has fully developed. Has fully developed, right? We're dumb and we're immature and we think we know everything, but we really don't. Then we get to your thirties and forties. We're like, oh, now I'm 51. I'm like, oh, my God, I was so dumb back then, right? So, I don't know, man. I think I have a lot of regrets in terms of, I wish I would have been smarter, right? As a young person, knowing career, jobs, whatever. I wish I would have been smarter about some things. On the other hand, that's life, right? Because the things that you experience is what makes you who you are. It's what makes me who I am now at this age, right? And if things had gone differently, I wouldn't be the same person, right? I might not be talking to you, John. You and I might not have become friends if things hadn't happened, right? So I don't know, man. That's a tough one. I think there's always regrets and then there's. I don't know. I mean, do we really want to go there? You know? Do we really want to go to regrets? I don't know. We could also talk about, you know, personal regrets, life regrets. I don't know. The older I get, the. The more I think, man, I wish I would have done a whole bunch of things differently, smarter, better.

[35:19] JOHN CARRILLO: But for the record, you ended up with a PhD.

[35:24] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Yeah. Thank you. That makes me feel a little bit better. Five minutes.

[35:33] JOHN CARRILLO: Oh, okay. We got five more minutes. Let's see. Let me think. If there's any other question I have.

[35:38] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: For you, ask me something about music, John. Ask me something about music. Let's talk about music. You just said you're a music guy, and that was our, that was our bond.

[35:46] JOHN CARRILLO: Yes. Okay, music. Let's talk about the future.

[35:50] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Okay.

[35:54] JOHN CARRILLO: We've had discussions about how. How we can see about integrating more of what is happening at KTEP, the radio station, into specifically what you are doing in your class. And you've got some ideas, which I think are really, really good, and I want to work on that with you to explain to us.

[36:21] ROBERTO AVANT-MIER: Yeah, we haven't talked about it much. Right. We should have talked about this, but this is kind of a work thing. But yeah, I. As John was just saying, you know, as I've been saying. So I have a, I have an interest in popular music. It's my research area. It's my teaching focus. Right. Being a popular music researcher and teachers was sort of my identity for at least the first 15 years of my academic story. Right. Anyway, so I teach a class here at UTEP, which is a popular music class for undergraduates. I previously taught a popular music class in our grad student program in the department of communication. So I've been teaching the grad class, but now I'm teaching the undergrad class and I love it. And every time I teach this class, which I'm about to teach this spring, again, it's a repeat class. It just always makes me excited about popular music. Right. It just makes me feel so happy to be talking with students and young people about music. And it just sort of reinvigorates me as a music fan. Right. And, you know, I sort of know who I am as a music fan and as a scholar especially. But when you're talking to young people and they're talking about stuff that you've never heard of, it's interesting, right. It's intriguing and it's fun. And when you get them talking in the class about what they're like and when you require like in class presentations, you know, it becomes this really, really, really fun thing. And it's fun for me and it's fun for them. Anyway, I would like to quote unquote bottle some of that. Right. Some of the in class and maybe bring it to, bring it to the radio in forms of a podcast or something more, I think bigger, more interesting for the students and hopefully the university finds it interesting as well, which is let's get some of these students on the podcast, on the radio, speaking to the mic about the stuff that we're talking about in class because students have a lot to say. And again, I think some students can do some great, wonderful stuff if you're given the opportunity. And it's fun. Sorry. So I want to try to capture some of that. I want to try to bottle it. Maybe we can get it in other format.

[38:19] JOHN CARRILLO: Right. Sounds good. Great. Wow.