Latino Usa

The following Latino USA story was originally broadcast on May 31, 2019. It was also the recipient of a 2020 Gracie Award from the the Alliance for Women in Media. Huntsville, Alabama has a small, but growing Latino population. It's where Teresa Matías, a single working immigrant mother from Guatemala, lived with five sons. In 2015, Teresa joined a local Catholic church, baptized her sons and found them godparents. The godparents of her youngest son would take a special liking to him. Over the next year, a series of events would begin to unravel —in which the godparents got lawyers and judges involved— eventually resulting in Teresa giving up complete parental rights to her youngest son. But in all these meetings, Teresa, who knows only a few words in English and grew up speaking a Mayan language, never had a proper interpreter. Latino USA chronicles Teresa's story and how she ended up making a life-changing decision without full consent and proper translation.

Latino USA provides an update to a story we recently did about Melissa Lucio, the first Latina on death row in Texas.

Doris Anahi Muñoz always sang. In fact, singing was her first career choice. But reality hit when she realized in her teenage years that she had to secure a career so that she could provide for her undocumented parents. Her dream of becoming a singer came to a halt. Instead, she got involved in the music industry from behind the scenes and became very successful: at 23 years old, she founded her own music management company representing indie Latino emerging artists and launched a series of fundraising concerts for immigrant communities. But soon after she realized she was unhappy.That’s when Doris decided it was time to choose herself and step onto the stage as a singer and musician.

When Elisa Baena and Monica Morales-García first met on their first day as Latino USA fellows, they realized they were speaking a shared language — an ancestral tongue. They were chismeando! Chisme is the Spanish word for gossip. It happens when you speak about someone in their absence, sharing information that’s supposed to be private and not necessarily factual. In this episode of Latino USA, Elisa and Monica travel deep into a chismosa’s universe. They talk to professional chismosas from reality TV, entertainment news and academia to understand why chisme is so central in the lives of Latinas and Latinos.

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa grew up listening to the stories of her rural Afro Puerto Rican community of Puerto Rico, but when she moved to New York, she realized that not everybody had access to this kind of storytelling. After a long career as school teacher and librarian, Dahlma realized that she needed to write the stories her mostly Dominican and Puerto Rican students in the Bronx were missing. Dahlma shares how she found her writing voice and gives us a sneak peak of her new novel, A Woman of Endurance, which centers the experience of an enslaved woman in Puerto Rico.

La Lupe was a legendary Afro-Cuban singer who was once known as the “Queen of Latin Soul.” She was one of the top performers in Havana cabarets amid the Cuban Revolution and became a legendary figure in New York after fleeing Cuba. She worked with some of Latin music’s biggest names, including Tito Puente, and was known for explosive boleros like “Qué Te Pedí” and “La Tirana.” By the mid-1970s, Lupe’s label was acquired by Fania Records and she was pushed aside. She earned the reputation of being difficult to manage and there were rumors that she was a drug abuser, even though her family and friends have consistently denied these claims. Changing tastes in Latin music coupled with her strained reputation led her career to decline by the 80s. This episode of Latino USA is part of our Genias in Music series, remembering notable women and their contributions to their fields throughout history. We question some of the myths about La Lupe that attempted to delegitimize her music and look at how her identity as a

Silvana Estrada has spent her entire life surrounded by the sounds of music: the tuning of a violin, the strumming and plucking of guitar strings, the bowing of a big-bellied double bass. The 24-year-old singer and composer grew up in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico. Music was a way for Silvana to connect with the world around her. “Marchita” —written and recorded entirely in Spanish— draws from Silvana’s jazz background and the folkloric Mexican music she grew up with. The album confronts themes of heartbreak and love, and it’s a product of Silvana’s own pursuit of creative freedom. On this episode of Latino USA, Silvana talks about connecting with audiences across the country, finding inspiration in the world around her, and forging her own musical path.

Independent filmmakers Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera have won many awards throughout their careers, but in 2021 they made history: they became the first married couple to each receive the MacArthur Genius Grant at the same time. In an intimate conversation, Cristina and Alex take us through their journey as filmmakers—from their early experimental student films and developing their craft, to their directorial collaboration in the hybrid film The Infiltrators, which won the audience award at Sundance in 2019. They also share a glimpse into their life as partners and parents, while discussing the power of film to change narratives about Latino identity and representation.

Latino USA presents a recent episode of Latino Rebels Radio that focuses on media representation in our community. Host Julio Ricardo Varela welcomes Stacie de Armas, the Senior VP of Strategic Initiatives & Consumer Engagement for Nielsen, to explain what Latino representation looks like in media, what audiences want and what needs to be done for more diverse programming. To subscribe to Latino Rebels Radio, which is also produced by Futuro Media, click here.

Rodeo —the Spanish word for “rounding up”— is a multi-million dollar sport in the United States, but it’s rooted in the riding, roping, and cattle ranching skills brought by Mexican cowboys to the Southwest hundreds of years ago. Today, most of the top professional rodeo athletes are white, but if you take a closer look, there are a large number of Mexican-American cowboys who live and breathe the sport. In this episode from our archives, Latino USA visits the Tucson Rodeo, also known as La Fiesta de Los Vaqueros, and follows one family’s dreams to turn their kid into a rodeo champion. This episode was originally broadcast on April 7, 2017.

For years, the U.S. Census has undercounted Indigenous migrants, grouping them under the label of “Hispanic” or “Latinos.” This is a problem for communities whose first language is not Spanish or English, but Zapotec, Chinantec, K’iché or any of the various Indigenous languages that are being spoken across the country today. The Indigenous, women-led organization Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, decided to start counting their own community, and put themselves on the map of Los Angeles. In this episode, Janet Martinez from CIELO and Mariah Tso, a Diné cartographer from UCLA, tell us how they built the “We Are Here” map, and why a visual representation of Indigenous migrant languages matters.

On April 27, 2022, Melissa Lucio could become the first Latina sentenced to death to be executed in Texas. In 2008, Melissa was convicted for the death of her two-year old daughter Mariah Alvarez. However, her family and others believe Melissa is innocent and argue that she did not have an adequate defense. In fact, in 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seemed inclined to give Melissa another chance and opened the door for the possibility of a new trial, but the state of Texas appealed that decision and the court backtracked. Now, there aren’t many legal options for Melissa, and her family is racing to save her life.

On the night of the presidential elections in 2016, Xochitl Gonzalez was at the Javits Center in New York City attending an event in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination. She was talking to “other very liberal, Democratic volunteers” when the subject of Puerto Rico came up. Xochitl, born and raised into a Nuyorican family, was stunned and frustrated when she realized that nobody knew anything about the injustices her family’s ancestral home had gone through. It was then and there that she decided that her first book would be about the experiences of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Xochitl’s debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming (2021) tells the fictional story of a Nuyorican family from Brooklyn. Olga, the main character of the novel, is an amalgamation of Xochitl’s own life experiences as a daughter of Latino militant activist parents and her career as a wedding planner for wealthy New Yorkers. In this episode of Latino USA, Xochitl sits down with Maria Hinojosa to discuss why she wanted her first b

In 1916, Maria Grever set foot in New York City with her two children in tow. She was a Mexican composer whose husband allegedly sent her to the city to escape political turmoil amidst the Mexican Revolution. But Maria Grever wasn’t just any composer. She composed anywhere from 800 to 1,000 songs spanning from the early 1920s until her death in 1951. She composed numerous top charting hits, scored for the big movie houses, wrote operas and Broadway musicals, yet many have never heard her name. While her accolades are many, Maria Grever the person is a mystery, making her one of the most famous unknowns in music history. In this episode of Latino USA, we go on a quest to find out everything we can about this prolific composer and why it’s important to remember the women who came before us.

Latino USA presents another episode from the In The Thick podcast. In this episode, Maria and Julio are joined by Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, senior reporter and producer at Reveal, and Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National Security Archive. They discuss Reveal’s new series “After Ayotzinapa”, a three-part investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from a Mexican teacher’s college in 2014. They also unpack the role of the U.S. in Mexico’s drug war, and the human consequences of corruption. You can listen to the full series here. 

After two years, Maria Hinojosa returns to Mexico’s southern border for the latest episode of the award-winning series The Moving Border. In 2020, the series revealed how a complex web of policies, created by the United States under the Trump presidency and supported by Mexico's own government, had created a virtually impenetrable policy wall for asylum seekers. This time, the series explores changes – or the lack of – after the first year of the Biden administration, and their effect on migrants who have spent months, sometimes years, trying to make it through Mexico into the U.S. Finding that the demographic of asylum seekers arriving in Mexico has changed, the report shifts even further south, traveling to the Darién Gap, the jungle at the border between Colombia and Panama, where hundreds of people arrive daily, risking their lives in hopes of making it one step closer to the U.S.

Angelica Garcia’s music is as colorful and eclectic as her many influences, ranging from traditional rancheras, folk and blues to electronic and pop music. In this intimate portrait, Angelica takes us into the worlds that shape her sound: the family parties in El Monte, California, where she first learned to sing; the empty church in Richmond, Virginia where she wrote her first songs; and her current practices of journaling and meditation that lead her to dynamic compositions. As she shares the inspiration behind her songs, Angelica reflects on her relationship with her voice: the memories it holds, and the lessons it has taught her as an artist.

2021 was a big year for Latinos in Hollywood, and now they’re getting some awards season love. With this year’s nominations, the Academy Awards are shining a spotlight on some Latino artists, with hit films like "Encanto" and "West Side Story" in the running for some of the evening’s biggest prizes – and to possibly even make some history. But many critics find it worth asking: is this the kind of representation Latinos and Latinas have been looking for in Hollywood? And after being systematically shut out of the Oscars for nearly a century, is this recognition from the Academy something we should be striving for, anyway? On this episode of Latino USA, Latino and Latina film critics Clayton Davis, Cristina Escobar, and Jack Rico step up to the mic for a roundtable about Latinos in film this past year. Ahead of Hollywood’s biggest night, they discuss the honors (and snubs) for Latino-led films this awards season. They also talk about importance of diversity in criticism, and push the conversation past the to

Alexis Daria now writes love stories about Latina and Latino characters that reflect and celebrate her friends and family. In this episode of Latino USA, Daria takes us through her early morning writing process, reads an excerpt from A Lot Like Adiós, and asks us to ponder, what is so silly about a love story?

This year marks the 10th anniversary since the policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was put in place. It has been described as “extraordinarily successful,” benefiting more than 800,000 people. However, it still doesn’t offer a pathway to legal permanent residency or citizenship. This instability has driven many young immigrants to return to their countries of origin, even if it means abandoning the life they knew. In this episode of Latino USA, you will hear the untold stories of forced return through the voices of Maggie, Madaí and Esme, three women who are trying to form a life in Mexico after growing up in the U.S. and who found their community where they least expected it.