Central to Leaños' art practice and cultural work lies the investigation of the documentary as a transformative discursive system where subaltern histories, untold stories, and decolonial perspectives arise in fictional and non-fictional forms.
This "dead opera" fuses dark-humored animation with Mexican baile folklórico, modern dance, traditional Mariachi music, hip-hop, and borderlands blues.
From 2000 to 2004, Leaños was a part of artist collective Los Cybrids: La Raza Techno-Críitca, which critically engaged high technology from Latino perspectives.
[6] Of Mexican-Italian-American descent, he identifies as part of the mainly hybrid tribe of Mexitaliano Xicangringo Güeros called "Los Mixtupos".
[7] John Jota Leaños became the center of national controversy in October 2004 when he created a poster questioning the heroization of former football player Pat Tillman's death during his military service in Afghanistan.
These are the comments of Leaños, assistant professor of Chicana/o art, before a forum on academic freedom at Arizona State University in early December.
José Cuellar describes Xican@ in his entry on "Chicanismo/Xicanism@" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: is a contemporary extension of the 20th century Chicanismo that is ideologically rooted in the Chicana feminist "Mexic Amerindian" consciousness that rejects machismo, exclusionary ethnocentrism and nationalism while emphasizing our prehistoric tendencies toward interdependence and cooperation that transcends gender, class, race, and geographic boundaries.
One of the main differences Xican@s use to distinguish themselves from Chican@s, is that they do not claim to "'take back' the territory and rights that belong to 'us'", they argue that such a strategy ignores the hybrid cultures that all American urban spaces represent.