Aztlan is the first line

About Aztec Parrot

Darren J. de Leon, a.k.a. Aztec Parrot, is an award winning poet from San Bernardino, playwright, podcast/radio producer, street DJ, high school teacher, taquero and community activist. Darren relocated to San Francisco in 1993, after receiving his BA from University of California, Riverside, to study poetry at San Francisco State University’s MA Creative Writing Program.   He has published poetry in various publication including Tlaquilx: Tongues In Quarantine (Hinchas Press), New Chicano/Chicana Writings (University of Arizona Press), Cipactli, and Fourteen Hills. In 1995, he founded Los Delicados: Poetas del Sol with Norman Zelaya and Paul S. Flores. Together they established themselves as a leader in the Latino Spoken Word scene. For 12 years, he produced and hosted Radio 2050, a Latino Arts Radio Magazine for KPFA in Berkeley, CA. 

Currently, Darren lives in San Bernardino, CA in his family’s house of over 50 years. He continues to write, create art, and tend to his garden of vegetables and fruits. An avid bicycle rider, he can be spotted around the L.A. area on weekends pedaling and enjoying the art and literary scene. He produces Podcast Descarga: A History of Los Delicados, and RAMA Blueprints, a podcast about Real Alternatives Program (RAP), a revolutionary youth organization in San Francisco who practiced self-determination and their community (Premiering Spring 2022).

Darren has been a member of Project 1521, a collective of 10 writers who since 2018 – and through the pandemic –  have been writing about the 500 year anniversary of the conquest of Mexico. They came together around painter Sandy Rodriguez’s Codex Rodriguez-Mondragon and other paintings which depicted deportations and police violence in California and connected those incidents to the centuries old process of violent colonization.  An anthology of their work, Tlaquilx: Tongues In Quarantine  was published by Hinchas Press in 2021.

In 2013, Darren moved to Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill to help establish a SF Mission taqueria in NYC. B’klyn Burro continues to this day to serve as San Francisco Mission District ambassadors through their authentic Mission burritos and other favorite dishes in Brooklyn.

In the mid 90’s, Darren was a teacher at Real Alternative Programs (RAP High School) where he developed a curriculum that emphasized the practice of non-violence, composition, and self-expression for juvenile delinquents and the chronically truant. In 2005, he was the Beacon Director  for the Mission Beacon Center at Everett Middle School where he developed youth and family service programs for SF Department of Children, Youth and Their Family (DCYF) and Mission Neighborhood Centers Inc.. He was an original founding board member of Youth Speaks for 7 years. He also worked as the Youth Arts Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ (YBCA)Young Artist At Work program developing the next generation of SF artists. He also worked at YO! SF, a job development program for SF youth through the Department of Workforce Development.