Antena Houston

Founded in 2015 by Marianela Acuña Arreaza, Silvia Chicas and JD Pluecker, Antena Houston was a local collective of interpreters and language justice organizers. Operating from 2015 through 2020, the members of Antena Houston were Marianela Acuña Arreaza, Silvia Chicas, Maria Eugenia Ferreira, JD Pluecker, José Eduardo Sánchez, and Hannah Thalenberg.

Our Vision

The vision behind Antena Houston was the construction of a world with language justice, where each person has a right to use the language in which they feel most comfortable and that no language should be privileged above others. We worked to create a world where nothing—including language—might become a barrier to human rights, justice and liberation. We worked with people-led social movements to create that world, guided by the belief that in order to succeed our movements must welcome people’s full identities.

Mission

We used the tools of language justice to support social movements to be more welcoming of people’s full identities. We worked in Houston and more broadly throughout the Gulf Coast, Texas and the wider South.  Our focus was on developing the capacity of movements and communities to create multilingual spaces where all languages are

included equally. To do this, we worked with individuals, organizations and communities providing interpretation, translation and capacity-building workshops.

Photo (Middle Left): Social Justice Interpreting Training 2017. Member of Antena Houston, Hannah Thalenberg, in foreground.

Photo (Bottom Right): Founders of Antena Houston (L-R): Marianela Acuña-Arreaza, Silvia Chicas, and JD Pluecker