In this article, I frame critical questions about discourse and power when centering marginalized populations in research. This critical Chicana feminist analysis of early childhood research illuminates (a) the bifurcation of the academy and the "comunidad," (b) voice as "ilusion," (c) research as colonization, and (d) the United States' cultural invention of universal needs. "Destrenzando" (unbraiding and unraveling) research foregrounds and interweaves the personal, political, historical, and cultural into a messy text. In this messy text, the initial subject of our gaze is the participants, but it ultimately ricochets back to the researcher, our research methods, and to questions of (de)colonization. (Contains 3 footnotes.)