Huizache Movin' On

The many lives of Huizache

Michael Sedano

I’d just graduated from working for a living when Abel Salas asked if I knew Huizache? I did not. I learn from Abel Huizache grew as the brainchild of author Dagoberto Gilb. Him I knew, been following his writing since stumbling across a collection of stories, Winners On the Pass Line. Abel invites me to a kick-ass party celebrating the launch of the current issue.

There was pedo in Victoria, Tejas. As a result, Huizache moves to northern California where the Huizache tree doesn’t grow. Ni modo. Davis becomes the new centro for Huizache with a new editorial team. How impressive, I think, that UC Davis’ Office for DEI, C/S Depto, and other University organizations, support the literary arts magazine founded in 2011 by Dagoberto Gilb

Ya, quíen sabe porque, maybe DEI got axed at UCDavis, maybe “budget constraints”, maybe Texas wanted Huizache back? At any rate, Huizache has a new home at UTEP, El Paso Texas and a new editorial board.

There’s no geographical limit to excellence. Huizache established itself as the definitive monitor of contemporary Chicano writing, no matter where it’s housed. 

Huizache 12, Fall 2025, is on the market now, with an engaging array of graphics, essays, stories, and poetry. Plus, there’s a bonus volume, A Central American Folio: Part 1 and Part 2.

That bonus volume offers a bilingual treat. It’s one of those dual books, turn it over and it’s a different book with its own contents. Part 1 is Curated by Francisco Aragón, translations by León Salvatierra. Salvatierra curates and translates Part 2. It’s a collection of work by writers from America Central who live in the San Francisco Bay region.

H12 arrives as the swansong of Huizache’s UC tenure. The issue publishes people you know from extensive publication, like Lorraine M. López, Yxta Maya Murray ,Rigoberto Gonzáles, and Sesshu Foster, and writers who’ve published in journals with limited circulation whom readers are “discovering” in H12. 

There are six “special portfolio” sections that feature drawings and some hybrid text-drawing collections. One portfolio, “Dacaments” by Fidencio Fifield-Perez, is printed in color on polished paper. Authors obviously enjoy seeing their work in a prestige journal, I wonder if artists can be as pleased, seeing their continuous tone quality reduced to 120 lines per inch and puro b&w?

Readers will appreciate some gems in the overall high-quality work. Rigoberto Gonzáles’ “Dead You.” Dead you thinks about, remembers, your father. The story revolves around a child’s love for a father who enjoys eating like its his last meal, a father who had to retire from the fields owing to Parkinson’s Disease. There’s a gulf between father and this son, the one in his grave. Distance means little, when you’re dead and you realize “the greatest gift your father ever gave you was you.”

David Dominguez tugs at my heartstrings with a poem titled after a sweet childhood memory around a wood-burning stove, a voice singing that title, “Amorcito Corazón.” The poem is an ode to middle-class domesticity, turned completely inward. I like to compare the feeling of the piece to memories of early Chicano poetry, chest-thumping insistence that we exist, or the quiet calm of a Jefita making early-morning tortillas. Como hemos cambiados, and that’s a good thing.

Eric Alan Ponce’s Mc Nífica relates a companionship between primos separated by language and cultura. The primo from Chile is challenged by English, the storyteller challenged by Spanish. Out of their confluences over a comida chatarra hamburger—in Chile the fancy McDonald’s burger is the title—a star-crossed lovers tale emerges, quondam lovers electrocuted by a defective machine. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is.

Huizache comes from a rich history of Chicana Chicano publishing. El Grito from Quinto Sol set the standard, the Chicana Chicano, or, today, might be called Chicanx Canon. That standard got zapped by Revista Chicana-Riqueña that emerged to challenge the canon, pointing out that Latina Latino--“Latinx” per Huizache’s masthead—literature extends beyond the borders of Berkeley hasta to Central Ameríca and Puerto Rico. Huizache XII proves the point. Así somos.

There’s now an open question. Will Huizache 13 be like Huizaches one through twelve, or does the western edge of Texas produce a different eye? A ver.

Order the full set or subscribe to the biannual publication at this link: https://huizachemag.org/