About this Artist

Miguel Villegas Ventura also known as Una Isu, is a trilingual Ñuu Savi (Mixtec) rap artist, Indigenous migrant rights activist, organizer, Tu’un Savi (Mixtec) language instructor, and dancer who has been featured in programs such as Univision (Aquí y ahora), National Geographic, La Jornada, Radio Bilingue, Excélsior TV and Imagen TV to name a few. His work has been documented in universities such as El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford. He has been mentioned in published books such as Voces de jóvenes indígenas oaxaqueños en el Valle Central: Forjando nuestro sentido de pertenencia en California, Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race, and Revealing Rebellion in Abiayala: The Insurgent Poetics of Contemporary Indigenous Literature. Anthropology courses offered by Professor Lynn Stephen in the University of Oregon use Una Isu’s songs as a window on understanding issues regarding immigration history and the U.S.-Mexico relations, Mexican and Central America immigration, farmworker movements and cultures. He has participated in international events such as Secretos De Socrates México: Los Grandes Debates in the year of 2016. In that same year he also performed in the cradle of Hip-hop, in Bronx, New York, along with Zapotec rapper Mare Advertencia Lirika and Mapuche rapper Luanko. In 2017, he was part of the international festival Estruendo Multilingüe that took place in the Museo Universitario Del Chopo, in México city. In 2019 he opened up for Venezuelan international rapper Akapellah at the Festival de Poesía en Voz Alta. He has been invited to attend as a guest speaker at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference hosted in New York and at the Primera Cumbre Latinoamericana de Rap: Voces del Hip Hop hosted in Morelia, Michoacan. He has performed at University campuses such as Fresno State, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, University of Oregon and University of Texas at Austin. 

Photo credit: Laura Pardo Photography