Presenters
Cecilia Ballí is a writer and journalist. She has written extensively about Tejano history and culture, immigration, among other subjects. She has published stories in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Columbia Journalism Review; in 2000, she became the first Latina or Latino writer at Texas Monthly. Ballí is also a cultural anthropologist who taught for six years as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a Professor of Practice in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is also the founder of Culture Concepts, a creative and strategic consultancy focused on ethnographic research, cultural analysis, and storytelling. Her latest story for The New York Times Magazine chronicled a championship season among Texas’ most elite high school mariachis, and is being developed into a scripted and unscripted television show by Fremantle. The daughter of former migrant farmworkers, she grew up crossing the border and is a proud tejana and fronteriza. She’s roamed around Texas much of her life, but presently lives in San Antonio.
Israel Aranda, born in Houston, TX, first began his musical career with violin in middle school orchestra, later switching to mariachi music before moving on to high school. At the age of sixteen, Israel accompanied Mariachi Imperial de America in their first prize professional win at the 1997 Mariachi Extravaganza in San Antonio, TX. A year later, under the tutelage of Alfonso Guera, he led Mariachi MECA to win first place in the high school category at the Mariachi Extravaganza. Most recently, Israel was involved with Minnesota Opera’s rendition of Cruzar La Cara De La Luna in November of 2023. Presently, Israel is involved in recording new mariachi music and is a member of Mariachi Alma de Mexico. Israel has a mariachi music repertoire of over 150 songs that are performed from memory.
Norma C. Garcés is a bilingual, bicultural educator and accomplished leader with a long history working with youth of color and their families going back over 30 years. Ms. Norma currently serves as the Executive Director of Academia Cesar Chavez, a culturally-affirming public school with a bilingual education program serving grades PreK-8 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was previously the Executive Director of El Colegio High School; during her tenure she created a resilience-based environment where 100% of all graduating seniors have been accepted into at least one post-secondary institution, a program that was also identified as being the #1 school in the state for making education relevant to Latinx youth, as well as one of the safest schools to attend. In 2019, Ms. Norma was a recipient of the prestigious Bush Foundation Fellowship, which gave her the opportunity to complete a Masters degree program at Columbia University.
Moderator
Bianet Castellanos is an anthropologist, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of American Studies, and director of the Institute for Advanced Study. She is an affiliate faculty in American Indian Studies, Chicano and Latino Studies, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. Her new book, Indigenous Dispossession: Housing and Maya Indebtedness in Mexico (Stanford University Press), analyzes how Maya families make sense of the cultural, political, and legal ramifications of neoliberal housing policies that privilege mortgage finance over land redistribution. It was awarded the Gregory Bateson Book Prize, Arthur Rubel Book Prize, and Edward Bruner Book Prize. She served for five years as a board member of El Colegio High School in Minneapolis.
