In November 2023, we walked around the empty streets of downtown Lockhart. Juania wrote a contract for Dee Lalo Garcia on the back of a tarot card from Typewriter Tarot. This contract was for his forthcoming debut essay collection, Bien Chingon: Vatos and Other Essays. Once Juania read his work in a nonfiction workshop in the Texas State University MFA program, she knew that Dee was a singular voice and continued to encourage him to write after graduation.
The following is an edited and condensed transcription of that interview.
CC: We’re so excited to publish your book this fall. Scorpio season 2026. What’s the Bien Chingon origin story? When did you have this collection in your head? How did it manifest for you?
DG: It started as my MFA thesis manuscript at Texas State University. At that point, I saw the vision for Bien Chingon. The whole thesis, the whole sentiment that started this whole thing was like, what can be my breakup love letter to Laredo? While still finding peace for both sides, you know? That’s the starting thesis for the project, and it culminated into Bien Chingon. Through trying to understand myself through Laredo and my experiences in Laredo, I just discovered that the larger-than-life aspect that I feel from a lot of people in my hometown, the chingones, is really what I’m in love with and what makes me feel like Laredo isn’t what people perceive it to be. Whenever I bring up Laredo in social settings outside Laredo, people are like, “Oh, Laredo?” Ohhh.” And I’m like, “Yeah, Laredo, what about it?” So there’s my battling that and my battling my internal shit with the community in Laredo. And I say that, and I’m like, do I sound like I’m trying to start beef with Laredo? But in a way, no (laughs). I want to not expose, but explore.
CC: I’m curious about the things that people are scared to say in Laredo? And that internal struggle that you have with Laredo?
DG: Laredo has changed massively in the past 10 years. Growing up, I was told that Laredo was very close-minded. And for me, as a young queer kid, I always dealt with that and reckoned with that and was like, I need to get the fuck out of here. And now, within the past 10 years, Laredo has gone through the red wave with the Trump administration. Now there are new aspects, and I’m wondering if people are willing to talk about them.
Juania Sueños: One of the things I love most about your work is the language and how dynamic, playful, and rich it is. And how it reflects different parts of our culture. And it’s not stereotypical Spanglish, it’s so much more than that. I just want to know how that comes to you? And also, who is your intended audience? And if you feel like there are any cultural symbols; the example of “the tortilla” comes to mind. How do you use these symbols and how are you pushing back against that, like oh it’s starting to seem trite but also why not use it. How is it tied into your diction and going in and out of different realms of language?
DG: This book is very much in conversation with Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands. I can’t get around it. It’s the tia to Bien Chingon, for sure, for sure. Bien Chingon is my way to try to understand where the “wild tongues” are now, because Laredo has such a specific, sharp wit and humor that reflects in our use of Spanglish.
I’m bored. I’m bored. I’m bored with the use of the tortilla and the argument against the tortilla. It’s so contrived to me how people are so opposed to using common images and feelings from home that they feel degrade or bring us down. That gives “crab” to me. That’s crab bucket mentality. There’s a TikTok that went around for a minute about this girl who was sharing her poetry and she had the tortilla and rolled her r’s, and it was an good poem. It wasn’t bad. It was cool that this writer was putting her work out on TikTok. But man, did she get hate. Only because she used images of the tortilla and everyone was like, “I’m so tired of the tortillas.” Like, what’s wrong with the tortillas? At the same time, I get it. There’s a lot of tortillas. But I feel like every writer approaches tortillas in a different way or abuelitas, tamales, we all hold different sentiments and realities for all of us and why is that a bad thing to explore. And why am I still tired of the images?! (laughs). I guess it’s my reckoning of that aspect of clicheness that has to come about because I’m a literary chicano dude. Burn the tortillas. Burn them!
CC: Microwave them, that’s what I wanna read about.
JS: You remember Estoy Enamorada by Yolanda Perez? It’s like a dad and a daughter arguing, the dad is like, “Pero ella sabía tortear en fogón tú puro microwave”? That is better than some of the tortilla poems because it’s such a specific detail! Like cause they’re part of daily life and they’re a staple food and it’s an art to make them and a bonding activity and whatever, whatever. It just reminded me that in Mexico, contemporaries aren’t using those images, but it’s like the border Mexican-American writers that can’t get away from it. That’s fine, because being part of the larger literary canon is new to us.
DG: I love the tortilla. But then, also, the tortilla canon so far has been the same sentiments and images, and I’m just wondering what else we can do with tortillas? Especially with Tongue Out of Cheek [an essay in Bien Chingon] a lot of the time I feel it’s not actual Latino literature unless I acknowledge the tortilla, but then it’ll make me cliche if I do use the tortilla. And as an icon in training, you have to embrace the cliches sometimes, you know? You have to be in conversation with the cliches. At some point the cliches are just references in the conversation before we cringe over them ourselves and declare them as cliches. It’s cringe. It all goes back to cringe.
CC: You’re so right. I feel like we’re a critical people, tied back to the crabs in the bucket thing. We’re ready to attack. I see it all the time on social media. I’ve seen TikTok comments talking shit about Mexican-American literature using the same cliches. As Juania mentioned, we’re very early into the canon. That iconography is so tied into the literature and culture and it’s a way to pander. We can weaponize the concha to get a crowd reaction.
DG: Weaponize the concha and cafecito.
CC: It’s a way to get an emotional reaction out of the audience…
I know several people in Laredo who left and often talk about brain drain there. How do you reckon with that as an Austinite?
DG: There’s a sense of privilege to that, and I don’t like it, but it’s also something I’m trying to understand and come to terms with. It’s so funny that so many of my ideas come from Facebook comments. That’s where discourse happens in Laredo and it’s so focused. Barnes and Noble is about to open in Laredo finally after so many years. We’ve had a Books-A-Million, another chain, and it’s been the only bookstore in Laredo for three years. We’ve had a couple of indie bookstores come and go, shout out to Phoenix Bookstore cause they did a lot of good work in Laredo, they delivered books during the pandemic. In the Facebook comments that announced the news about Barnes and Noble, the first comment that had a bunch of fucking likes, said everyone who reads in Laredo left Laredo. Very few of my friends stayed back in Laredo. They left for good colleges or found routes to other things. I know people that went to conservatories, I know people who left because they were meant for the arts. Some people became models, some people became icons in their own right. I keep thinking about that Facebook comment.
CC: I’m curious, in your vision, who is reading Bien Chingon?
DG: Bien Chingon is a culmination of experiences from a misfit and someone who considered themselves on the fringe. The people that I know that will also be interested in this are also people who found themselves on the internet and found identity through the internet and pop culture. At least for me, the hybridity and border life, I was able to make it my own and fill in the spaces through my computer. Through Tumblr, through Geocities. So I know that this book speaks to a larger audience than Laredoans or South Texans. This is for the Chicana girls, gays, and theys and the straights that are ready to embrace it.
CC: How does one adopt the Bien Chingon lifestyle?
DG: One adopts the Bien Chingon lifestyle by accepting that there are aspects of them, by that I mean, their attitude, their personality, their cadence. Everyone has access to embrace what makes them unique. People who I consider bien chingon are honed into that. When people know that and are honed into that, they are automatically considered icons.
When you’re bien chingon, you know you’re an icon. Yeah.
CC: What does Bien Chingon smell like? What are the top notes?
It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, you overspray that shit. But when it comes to being a Laredoan, when it comes to being wanted to be seen and heard, you project that silage as much as possible. You spray that shit as much as you can, okay? Ultimately, that’s what Laredoans do. We embrace the silage. We embrace the projection. Being in Laredo it’s all about the projection, the good and the bad. This is why whenever I go anywhere people are like, you smell so good, and I’m like yeah cause I sprayed myself at least 8 times, and I’m aware I smell like a toxico – that’s the point.
CC: That speaks to the rasquache aesthetic too. The Mexican urge to overdo something.
DG: We have our own version of bougie, and part of the bougie-ness is making sure you’re overprojecting in some way, literally or figuratively..
The hot cheeto girlies, the most Bien Chingon of all, smelled like corn nuts, hot cheetos, and Victoria Secret’s Bombshell. To me, that smelled like heaven. That means I’m safe. I’m in a safe place if I smell that.
This book would not exist without my hot cheeto girls.
CC: Any questions you want us to ask you?
Any parting mamadas? (laughs)
I know by the nature of this book existing and being out there, it’s impossible to make everyone happy. I know my experiences don’t speak to everyone else’s experiences. Navigating nuance seems to be a challenge for a lot of folks these days, if what I see online is any indication. Not only in places I’m writing about like Laredo and their relationship to social media but worldwide too, especially in the algorithmic age. But I’ve made peace with that.
I guess for me, it doesn’t take much nuance to understand the classic chicano literary figure – the one that fits and thrives in that utopian vision we all dream of, me included. But as a queer person – more specifically as a neurotic gay-guy edglored-in-recovery – trying to take on or mold myself into that role gets complicated.
And that’s all I ever see in my algorithm – the Aztlan of it all. All respect to the utopia, but I’m trying to find the futurista, cyberpunk-esque fronterizo I know we can all escape to. Suffice to say, I’m bored of the pillars and everyone being proper and nice. I think it’s time to push boundaries and buttons that, with reason, are meant to be pushed. How else will we get there?
We need a menace out there. And I want to be that menace. I am that menace.
