Latino Usa

We continue to celebrate our 30th anniversary, bringing you the voices of some of the most influential Latinos and Latinas in the last three decades. In this episode, we catch up with music legend Linda Ronstadt, known as the “First Lady of Rock.” We talk to her about her memories growing up in Tucson, Arizona, and her decision to return to the traditional Mexican music of her childhood. Linda brings us into her life after retiring from music, and her memoir “Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands,” which reckons with her family history.

We start today’s episode at El Edén—the center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where child migrants are processed after being deported from Mexico and elsewhere. Then, before diving into the reasons why Hondurans leave for Mexico and the United States, Maria Hinojosa and Latino USA producer Marlon Bishop talk about some of the history of Honduras. This story was produced in association with Round Earth Media. German Andino, in Honduras, co-reported this story with Marlon. This Peabody award-winning episode originally aired in 2014.

On May 5th, 1993, the first episode of Latino USA aired on more than 50 public radio stations across the U.S. Thirty years later, we look back at the creation of Latino USA, the struggle to showcase Latino voices in public media, and the show’s transformations throughout a changing political landscape in the country. In this oral history of our show, three former Latino USA staff join Maria Hinojosa and go behind the scenes to reflect on what it took to keep Latino USA going over three decades. Press play, and join us as we celebrate 30 Years of Latino USA! #LatinoUSA30 #LUSA30

The rock en español group, Maná, is one of the most successful Spanish-language rock bands of this generation. They've sold over 40 million records worldwide, and this year their "Rayando El Sol" tour broke records previously held by the Eagles and Kanye West, when they played seven sold-out shows at the Forum in Los Angeles. But the band didn’t start out playing stadiums—it all began when one member started an English-speaking band three decades ago in Guadalajara, Mexico. Latino USA sits down with drummer Alex Gonzalez, who tells us how they got their start and became Maná. This episode originally aired in December 2019.

Years ago, Gloria Martinez’s son went out to look for a job and never came back. Gloria would spend months searching for him, and she wasn’t alone—many others, mostly young men from rural and poor urban areas, also mysteriously disappeared. In 2008, the “false-positives” scandal broke—and revealed that the Colombian military had been systematically killing innocent civilians as part of a body-count policy they adopted in the conflict against the FARC, a leftist guerilla group. But over a decade after the scandal was exposed, relatives of the victims continue to seek justice. This episode originally aired in December 2019.

This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the Motive podcast, from WBEZ Chicago. Chicago gangs: Real people. Real stories. A way forward. The new season of Motive explores violence on the streets of Chicago and the former gang members working to stop it. You can subscribe to the Motive podcast here.

At the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year, President Joe Biden outlined his plan to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum at the Southern border. His administration, Biden said, would help “American farmers bring in seasonal agricultural workers from Northern Central American countries under the H-2A visa program.” What does that mean for a program that’s already plagued with wage theft and abuse? In the last installment of our two-part investigative series “Head Down,” we shift the focus to look at the systems put in place by the U.S. government and why they’re constantly failing foreign agricultural workers in the H-2A visa program. As a result, we uncover millions of dollars in stolen wages that, instead of being returned to the workers, end up in the coffers of a U.S. government agency.

This week Latino USA brings you an episode of The Pulso Podcast. Texas 1951. Farmworker Pete Hernandez walks into a bar with a rifle and shoots another man. He is taken to court for murder, but when the state refuses to allow any Latinos on the jury, a rebellious team of Hispanic lawyers signs up for a wild ride that will take them all the way to the Supreme Court, and change the definition of what it means to be Hispanic in the U.S. This episode was Produced & Written by Charlie Garcia, it was edited by Liz Alarcon. Original music by Julian Blackmore. Audio Engineering & Mixing by Julian Blackmore and Charlie Garcia. Special thanks to LULAC historian David Contreras. You can subscribe to The Pulso Podcast here.

In 2018, Diego and Mario joined the U.S. government-sponsored H-2A visa program, leaving their families in their home country of Mexico to harvest blueberries at a farm in North Carolina for six months. They had no idea they were about to become victims of human trafficking and that their lives would be derailed forever. In the first episode of two-part special “Head Down,” we go deep into how a visa program that brings more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers to the U.S. every year is plagued with abuse and wage theft. All of this while the U.S. government plans to expand it.

The summer of 2020 was filled with uncertainty as more than 20 million people in the U.S. were left unemployed — including Kate Bustamante’s parents. Bustamante is a 20-year-old student at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, California. She’s always worked part-time and attended school as long as she can remember. But this summer was different. Overnight, Bustamante dropped out of classes and became her family’s breadwinner. In this personal piece Bustamante, through diary recordings and personal reflections, takes us into her world and what she went through over the summer. The episode originally aired in November 2020.

Gloria Maria Milagrosa Fajardo Garcia was a shy, quiet young woman who joined a band named the Miami Latin Boys. Although she had no plans of international fame, and intended to continue her studies, life had different plans for her. The Miami Latin Boys became The Miami Sound Machine, Emilio and Gloria married, and the newlywed, Gloria Estefan began to take over the spotlight. The rest, is music history. In this portrait of: Gloria Estefan, Latino USA sits down with the icon to discuss her life, her relationships, how she overcame trauma, and how she manages to be excited about everything she does, after so many years. This episode originally aired in November 2020.

This week on Latino USA we’re bringing you an episode from the newly released podcast series Party Crews: The Untold Story. For many Latinx kids in the ‘00s, the party crew scene was a safe space to express themselves as they came of age in the grit and glitter of Los Angeles. A space to make friends, forget about your problems, and dance the night away. But the scene wasn’t always physically safe. There were shootings and police raids. Many adults saw the scene as gang-adjacent and the media-fueled negative stereotypes of kids who were out of control. One of the teens who got caught in that easy narrative was Emmery Muñoz, after she was murdered in 2006. Host Janice Llamoca goes on a Y2K-filled journey back in time to her own party crew days to find out what this scene meant for teens like her and Emmery, and why – to this day – Emmery’s case remains unsolved. From IHeart, VICE, and LAist Studios as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network. You can subscribe to Party Crews: The Untold Story here.

When pioneering trans activist Lorena Borjas first arrived in the U.S. in late May of 1981, she found both community and an epidemic. Through her experiences on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY, Lorena developed a personal approach to connect trans Latinas and trans sex workers to critical medical and legal resources. Decades later, it would be another massive health crisis—COVID-19—that would take the life of this beloved community leader, putting into stark relief her vast legacy. Now, her closest friends paint an intergenerational portrait of Lorena, as a trailblazer, a mentor, and a mother. This award-winning episode originally aired in May 2021.

In 2018, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes decided to take a break from the theater world. Tired of a white, male-dominated landscape, Quiara turned inward, leaning on her memories and stories of the women in her family. The result was Quiara’s first memoir: “My Broken Language.” In 2022, Quiara returned to the stage with the play adaptation of her memoir. On this episode of Latino USA, we talk to Quiara about her memoir, her play, and how grief and joy intertwine in the stories she is bringing to the stage.

Antonia Cereijido interviews former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo about his real life experience, which inspired the Oscar- nominated film Argentina, 1985. They discuss the relevance of the film today given that democracy is under attack in many parts of the world and the role of movies in helping to process painful and unspoken histories, which for both Moreno Ocampo and Cereijido are deeply personal.

Christopher Soto is a Salvadoran-American poet, activist and prison abolitionist. He is based in Los Angeles, but has remained tied to his parent’s home country. Throughout his life, Christopher has taken many trips to El Salvador, but during his most recent visit to the Central American country in the summer of 2022, things were very different: the country’s president Nayib Bukele had declared a state of exception to address rising homicide rates attributed to criminal gangs. More than 65,000 people have been arrested since then, many of them arbitrarily. On this episode of Latino USA, Christopher Soto takes us to El Salvador during a state of exception and we hear about the deep connections between the United States and El Salvador’s carceral culture, as well as the importance of poetry within the prison abolitionist movement.

Villano Antillano and Ana Macho are two Puerto Rican trans and non-binary musicians making waves in the music industry. In their latest projects, Villano Antillano’s debut album “Sustancia X” and Ana Macho’s “Realismo Magico,” both artists use elements of magical realism and science fiction to dream of queer and trans empowerment. In this intimate conversation, we hear the two artists bring some humor into the difficult realities of navigating a transphobic industry, and we dive deep into the sonic worlds of their latest albums.

This week Latino USA shares an episode of the USA v. García Luna podcast, from Futuro Investigates and Lemonada Media. Genaro García Luna’s trial is over, but Maria and Peniley’s investigative work is not. In this episode, they learn that a U.S. senator has requested the DEA and the FBI information on García Luna, including the names of the U.S. officials who vetted him. We listen to some of our series’ protagonists react to the guilty verdict, and Peniley digs into what’s next for García Luna. Finally, our hosts reflect on why the war on drugs was always unwinnable, and they get into some chisme, going behind the scenes of this series. To hear more of USA v. García Luna, head to futuroinvestigates.org.

For this week’s Latino USA, we’re bringing you an episode from the newly released podcast series from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios, La Brega, The Puerto Rican Experience in Eight Songs. By the end of the 1990s, merengue ruled supreme on the radio and TV in Puerto Rico, but the road to get there was long and complicated, coinciding with the growing Dominican population to the island and culminating in perhaps what was the pinnacle of its popularity and takeover in Puerto Rican music, at home and abroad: Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente.” Journalist Ezequiel Rodríguez Andino shares the story of merengue’s ubiquity and how the shift from salsa to merengue brought to the surface serious class and racial tension that still remains today. You can subscribe to La Brega here.

For Ayodele Casel tap dancing is magic. As a young high school student, she dreamed of one day dancing like Ginger Rogers as she recreated Ginger’s moves in her bedroom But it wasn’t until Ayodele Casel was a sophomore at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts that she took her first tap dancing class. That was her entry point into the art form which would eventually lead to a more than 20-year career as a professional tap dancer. As a Black and Puerto Rican woman, Ayodele Casel didn’t see herself reflected in the mainstream image of tap dancers because the form has been largely whitewashed through systematic racism. For that reason, she works tirelessly to remind her audiences that tap is deeply rooted in Black art and culture. In this episode of “How I Made It,” Ayodele takes us through her tap journey and reclaims tap dancing as a Black art form. This episode originally aired in November of 2021.