Profiles in Revolutionary Excellence: Alexis Uscanga, SGA VP candidate
Voting ends April 4, via V-link, check your student email for link.
Alexis Uscanga has lived a hell of a life for not even being 21. Already, he’s worked as a Congressional staffer for the first Woman, first Latina and first Republican to ever represent the Rio Grande Valley — Mayra Flores. (She was also the first Mexican-born American to serve in Congress.) Uscanga became a Senator-at-Large with the student government association after Flores lost in the 2022 general election, nevertheless proving with her short time in office that electoral trends in the RGV are not always set in stone. Flores’ insane victory, changing RGV political history forever, will be studied by political scientists for decades to come. And Uscanga took part in that. Indeed, he’ll be campaigning for Flores next November and possibly re-join her office staff, if and when she wins.
But at the moment, he’s looking to make UTRGV history, running for Vice President on a fighting platform of bringing real change to his university, upon the institution’s 10 years in existence. Ever since the election of Alberto Adame as UTRGV’s first SGA President in 2015, which was made possible by the campus media coverup of his legitimate impeachment (thwarted by SGA “advisors”) as UTPA’s last President, a continuous and uninterrupted succession of administrative ass-kissers have assumed and occupied SGA’s executive office. This horrid and oppressive logjam could finally be broken this week, after a long and bitter struggle by many brave souls who have dared to fight and reform SGA over the years, but have been crushed for doing so, up to and including removal from office and even removal from campus, forgotten and erased from campus memory.
As Senator, Uscanga has authored various resolutions and been an outspoken advocate for students this past term, which led to anonymous people filing anonymous “articles of impeachment” against him in late January, which failed, being exonerated and cleared of any wrongdoing by the student senate in mid-February. Having survived a Democrat-style, political, sham impeachment, he’s now running for Internal Vice President of the UTRGV student government, on a revolutionary platform of change and transparency, unseen in the new university’s nine-year history, and actually unseen in decades from any of UTRGV’s two legacy institutions.
You’d probably need to go back to the 1970s and 60s to find a comparable example of a student government running as bold of a campaign as the Vaqueros Movement, as I actually once did go back to, during archival research conducted at the university library’s special collections, in 2015, in search of SGA’s origins, for an opening address I delivered at the last ever UTPA SGA end of year gala in history. I found historic articles of student governments who weren’t afraid to stand up to university administrations, published by student newspapers who not just weren’t afraid to publish such material, but actually preferred to publish fighting literature. It’s been that long.
The last two weeks Uscanga and his running mates, Noah Trstenjak and Mikaela Johnson, as well as their slate of courageous and valiant senate candidates, all of whom make up what they call ‘the Vaquero Movement,’ have been meeting face to face with hundreds, and by the end of this week it’ll be thousands of fellow students, talking about real issues that affect their daily lives. I joined them on the campaign trail for a few hours, on the first day of voting, before which they had been going since morning. Student after student, no matter their major, classification, religious affiliation, gender, etc., listened with intense interest to the candidates’ pitch, as if the candidates were saying things the students had always thought but couldn’t for whatever reason say or articulate. The Vaquero Movement candidates were quite literally giving a voice to students in real time.
Uscanga’s detractors, concentrated around the person of Odalys Saenz who’s running for re-election as President against the Vaqueros slate, scare-monger by pointing to his conservative politics, as if they were disqualifying in and of themselves. (The Saenz ticket is administration’s favorite.) They also disregard Uscanga’s incredible story of how he arrived where he is politically. Coming from a family of Mexican migrants, from all sides of his family, who historically supported Democrats, Uscanga was basically raised to be one. As a teen, he admired Barrack Obama and even Beto O’Rourke (this last one I had the most trouble believing) although to his credit he says he never fell for the wretched “AOC.” But after confronting others with opposing viewpoints, he discovered a very important lesson, that is, whatever you are brought up to believe can be wrong. He would overtime begin to question his own biases more and more, and go from somebody who used to abhor Donald Trump, whom he believed to be in principle anti-immigrant, to supporting him in 2020. He’s not alone.
Personally speaking, I don’t agree with Uscanga’s political views. For new readers who may be unfamiliar with my politics, I’m a socialist, a Marxist and a zealous supporter of the Socialist Workers Party. However, we oppose political prosecutions, like the impeachment of Uscanga, which much resembled the sham impeachments of Donald Trump, which (in the end) are a threat to the working-class, just as Uscanga’s impeachment was a threat to all working-class students, and free speech in general. Of course, as with every aspect of capitalist society, down to student government races, everything is a reflection of the broader class-struggle. Nevertheless, despite any political position Uscanga may currently hold, which are always subject to revision, his stances and willingness to follow his political and moral compasses to their logical conclusions demonstrate a capacity for intellectual honesty, integrity, and dignity unseen in the SGA executive ever since 2013-14, during the term of the honorable Aaron Barreiro and Erik Sanchez.
A fake veneer of “non-partisanship” prevails and is projected by Saenz and company, which they weaponize against Uscanga and his crowd, but which they never use against themselves, like when advancing talking points of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” as if that was “nonpartisan.” The veneer of “nonpartisanship” is an illusion. There’s no such thing, as nicely said by former colleague and friend, Aaron, above, “Like it or not, politics is going to be important in this so someone who is politically savvy is needed.” Everybody has political beliefs and biases. We should embrace, be honest about and disclose them up front without shame or embarrassment. However, when it comes to this race, the Vaqueros Movement is running a campaign based on class-solidarity, a call to bring students together to advance the interests of the vast majority of UTRGV students, rather than an aristocratic social group, which is what SGA has become since the merger but also what the Vaqueros Movement is positioned to root-out.
Related Coverage:
Noah Trstenjak's message to UTRGV student body (substack.com)
UTRGV releases candidate debate 8 hours after voting began (substack.com)
jonathansalinas@substack.com
* A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled Trstenjak.