KXCI interviews El Sur founder Victor Mercado
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El Sur founder Victor Mercado and Dr. Nadia Alvarez, host of KXCI’s Tejiendo Identidades inside of the radio station’s historic space on Fourth Avenue on a Saturday morning
El Sur founder and publisher, Victor Mercado sat down recently with Dr. Nadia Alvarez Mejia, the host of KXCI Radio’s Tejiendo Identidades to talk about what makes Tucson such a special city, inviting creatives from all over the borderlands to add to the magic of the Sonoran Desert.
It was early on a crisp, Saturday morning when Mercado, who once lived in Barrio Santa Rita walked up the steps to KXCI’s historic home on Fourth Avenue with nostalgia. Mercado is no stranger to this part of Tucson having lived here ten years ago. Mercado is also not new to the world of audio production. The studio has a special significance for him, who used to frequent its hallways with wall-to-wall vinyl records back in 2016 as the producer of Arizona Opera’s Overtures podcast.
A restless entrepreneur, Mercado first pitched the idea for an Opera podcast to then host Joshua Borths. The gist: feature previews of performances like Carmen, Don Giovanni and others to help make Opera more accessible to more diverse audiences. This was the early days of podcasting, so the idea of an audio production about Opera was new territory.
Mercado has been pushing the boundaries of storytelling for years. In 2015, Mercado had just finished putting together a pilot of podcast conversations with local Tucson innovators like Felipe Garcia who at the time was leveraging Tucson’s new City of Gastronomy designation to attract more visitors to the Sonoran Desert.
Tejiendo Identidades reminds Mercado about his early days in the industry. “Having diverse stories is so important. Whether it is in the form of local news, features, or audio production, our stories have to authentically reflect who we are,” says Mercado.
Through Tejiendo Identidades, Dr. Alvarez Mejia and the show’s producer Nenny G have been telling local stories about the identity and culture of the people of Tucson since the early days of the pandemic.
Here is the transcript of the conversation between Mercado and Dr. Alvarez Mejia at Studio 1B.
Dr. Alvarez Mejia: This is Tejiendo Identidades, a mini-program about identity and culture of the people of the Tucson and their work in that community. I'm your host, Nadia Alvarez Mejia, doctor and professional in education.
Victor Mercado: I'm Victor Mercado, I am a Tucsonense, although previously a Nogalense. I live here in Tucson with my wife Veronica, my son, Nicolas, my daughter Zia. I was born and raised in Nogales, Sonora. I came to Tucson after college. I was in L.A. briefly. I worked for a political campaign at the time, and then came back to Tucson. I love Tucson! As a Nogalense we would come here to shop. We do a lot of things here in Tucson. So it's it felt like home. And I continued my career as an educator. My career in service: Schools were the places where I felt the happiest, the most accepted, and I just really liked being and working in school environments. I had an opportunity to be here in Tucson and start my career as a teacher here.
Dra. Alvarez Mejia and Mercado chatting in the studio
Dr. Alvarez Mejia: How do you describe your identity?
Victor Mercado: I'm a fronterizo, first. I think a lot of people who are from the border, whether it's, Yuma or Nogales, or El Paso. Every time that you meet people like that we immediately connect. I think border people are very unique. We tend to move very fluidly in spaces. We move fluidly with language, we code switch.
Dr. Alvarez Mejia: How does your border identity connect with the Tucson community?
Victor Mercado: Tucson is still very much the border. You know, if you think about it, right? I mean, I think my identity is similar to a lot of the stories here in Tucson. Tucson is very rich in its arts and its history and its culture. It's the reason why I personally enjoy working for Mayor Romero. That's one of my roles here. It's also the reason why I started the culture blog, El Sur.
I think a lot of people like you do very similar work with with Tejiendo Identidades. People are very curious about the stories of Tucson and Tucsonenses. There's a very cool vibe here in our community. Being in Tucson is a special place. On my great grandfather's side, his dad and his uncle were some of the original settlers here in Tucson.
They opened the first dry goods store: it was called W E. Felix. I think my great grandfather's dad was like the second person who was baptized in the cathedral here. I feel there's just like a lot of history here for me, and the more I learn about it, it reminds me that I belong here in Tucson. Even though there's been you know, a lot of there's a lot of history, and now there's a border, but at the end of the day, the Sonoran Desert is still one one place, and it’s very special.
Dr. Alvarez Mejia: So people interested in connecting with the blog, how could they find the information?
Victor Mercado: They can go to El Sur Tucson.com. And so also ElSurTucson on Instagram. We feature a lot of stories of people from the community, like Cam Juarez is featured there. We have a lot of stories, a lot of content of what's happening here in Tucson, in the Borderlands. I invite people to check it out. It's been wildly successful beyond what I ever thought it was. I just wanted to create a cool blog where we can share good stories, and it's morphed into something really big.
Dr. Alvarez Mejia: Victor. Thank you so much for sharing this time with us.
Victor Mercado: Thank you for having me, Nadia. ¡Gracias!
