Latino USA

By Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

What's Latino USA about?

Latino USA offers insight into the lived experiences of Latino communities and is a window on the current and merging cultural, political and social ideas impacting Latinos and the nation.

4.9

3,325 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

The Archivists: The Unseen ...

12.01.2023

After months of working closely with the archivists and librarians of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas in Austin, the Latino USA team wanted to dig deeper into the history and treasures in the ...

Latino USA episodes:

12.01.2023 The Archivists: The Unseen Fight to Preserve Our Stories After months of working closely with the archivists and librarians of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas in Austin, the Latino USA team wanted to dig deeper into the history and treasures in the ...
11.28.2023 United Stateless Podcast This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the United Stateless Podcast. United Stateless Podcast documents the stories of "returnees", people who immigrated to the US, largely as children, and have since returned to their home country. In the ...
11.24.2023 By Right of Discovery On Thanksgiving Day, hundreds of people gather on Alcatraz Island, the famous former prison and one of the largest tourist attractions in San Francisco, for a sunrise ceremony to honor Indigenous culture and history. Fifty years ago, an intertribal group ...
11.21.2023 Bad Mexicans: Borderland History that Resonates Today At the turn of the 20th century, revolution was starting to brew in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. A group of Mexican revolutionaries had fled to the United States and were working to overthrow a dictator in their home country. They were ...
11.17.2023 Dolores Huerta: Don’t Let the Haters Divide Us Latino USA continues to celebrate 30 years of being on the air, as well as bringing you important conversations as part of our ongoing political coverage. For this episode, Maria Hinojosa sits down with legendary labor leader and civil rights ...
11.14.2023 How I Made It: Futuro Conjunto What will the music of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sound like 100 years from now? That’s the premise at the heart of Futuro Conjunto, a multimedia sci-fi project by artists Charlie Vela and Jonathan Leal. Futuro Conjunto is an expansive ...
11.10.2023 Gustavo Dudamel’s Harmony in Times of Crisis Gustavo Dudamel is one of the most famous and acclaimed conductors in the world. He’s been the Music and Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, when he was just 27 years old. El maestro is the best-known ...
11.07.2023 Classy with Jonathan Menjivar This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the podcast, Classy with Jonathan Menjivar. In this episode, we can’t talk about class without talking about race. Through eye-opening conversations with two people of color in the fashion industry, Jonathan ...
11.03.2023 Kamala and the Latino Youth Vote Maria Hinojosa and Latino USA producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. join Vice President Kamala Harris aboard Air Force Two as the vice president makes her way to Miami, Florida, as part of her “Fight For Our Freedoms” college tour. Later, Maria ...
10.31.2023 Portrait Of: Gabby Rivera When Gabby Rivera wrote her coming-of-age novel “Juliet Takes a Breath” in 2016, she didn't know that it would get her attention from an unusual place: Marvel Comics. They asked her to write for America Chavez, their first queer Latina ...
10.27.2023 City of Oil Los Angeles, you might be surprised to learn, sits on top of the largest urban oil field in the country and has been the site of oil extraction for almost 150 years. Today, nearly 5,000 oil wells remain active in ...
10.24.2023 The Art of Growing Into Yourself With Y La Bamba Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos is a Chicanx artist and musician who has been playing under the name Y La Bamba for nearly 20 years. As the child of immigrant parents, Luz Elena struggled to feel seen in the music industry, ...
10.20.2023 My Uncle Juan, the Bracero In this episode of Latino USA, historian Mireya Loza and her uncle and former bracero Juan Loza meet at his home in Chicago to reflect on the legacy of the long-running and controversial labor Bracero Program and its impact on ...
10.17.2023 How I Made It: Grupo Fantasma Takes On The Wall When Austin's cumbia-funk institution Grupo Fantasma went to record their seventh album at a studio in Tornillo, Texas, they had no idea that right next door was a tent city for detained immigrant youth operated by ICE. When they found ...
10.13.2023 Puerto Crypto In 2018, just months after Hurricane Maria, an eccentric group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts arrived in Puerto Rico. They came with big plans for the island—to help rebuild after the hurricane, and in the process create a high-tech cryptocurrency paradise in ...
10.10.2023 How I Made It: Omar Apollo Omar Apollo, a rising star in the indie R&B scene, began making music on his own by teaching himself chords from YouTube videos and honing his sound in an attic in a small town in Indiana. His first breakthrough came ...
10.06.2023 When Alaska's Snow Crab Went Missing In 2022, the Bering Sea snow crab season was canceled for the first time in history. Essentially 10 billion snow crabs went missing. The cause? Warming waters due to climate change. In this episode, Latino USA producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. ...
10.03.2023 Caliber 60 This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the Caliber 60 podcast. Avocado consumption has exploded in the U.S. over the past decade. But what’s rarely seen is the rotten underbelly of this industry, controlled by armed groups in ...
09.29.2023 Mary’s Journey One in four women in the United States have a family member in prison—and those carrying the resulting financial and emotional burden are disproportionately women of color. Mary Estrada is one of them. She’s been taking care of her husband ...
09.26.2023 Portrait Of: Miguel “Too proper for the Black kids, too Black for the Mexicans," sings Grammy award-winning artist Miguel Pimentel. Miguel is the son of an African-American mother and a Mexican-born father. He's known for his eclectic sound, shaped by his home: Los ...
09.22.2023 The Growing Call to Abolish Student Debt The call for the abolition of all student debt has never been louder– but how did we get to a place where this demand is possible? Latino USA dives into the history of the student loan system in the U.S., ...
09.19.2023 It’s My Podcast and I’ll Cry If I Want To Five years ago, Latino USA producer Antonia Cereijido was only an intern and still in college when she did what a lot of people do when they're not sure what their life will look like after graduation: she cried in ...
09.15.2023 Belonging, Recruitment, and Remembrance Latino USA continues to mark its 30th anniversary and look back on its reporting throughout the decades. One topic the show has heavily reported on is Latinos serving in the military and today we take a new look at that ...
09.12.2023 Ballet Brothers Brothers Isaac and Esteban Hernández have performed on some of the most prestigious stages in the world. But their journey to the top rank of their industry had a unique start. Originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, Isaac and Esteban's first ballet ...
09.08.2023 The Revolutions of Gioconda Belli Gioconda Belli is an award-winning Nicaraguan author. She has published novels, essays, poetry collections, and a memoir called “The country under my skin,” which recounts her time as a member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front—fighting to free her country ...
09.05.2023 9/11’s Immigration Legacy The September 11th attacks left nearly 3,000 dead, many more injured and an entire nation traumatized. The 24-hour news cycle that followed focused endlessly on the identity of the terrorists: non-citizens who had been able to exploit “vulnerabilities” in the ...
09.01.2023 At the Mercy of the Courts In this episode of Latino USA we partner up with Documented, a nonprofit news site that covers immigrants in New York City, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the experience of trying to navigate the immigration courts as an asylum-seeker ...
08.29.2023 How I Made It: Rodrigo y Gabriela In the late 90's, Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero embarked on a one-way trip to Dublin, Ireland. While they were originally heavy metal musicians back home in Mexico, they traded their electric guitars for acoustic ones and became street performers ...
08.25.2023 The Breakdown: Heavy Metal Edition The stereotype goes that Latinos only listen to salsa or reggaeton. But one of the biggest genres of music across Latin America is actually heavy metal, with bands like Iron Maiden selling out stadiums across the region when they tour ...
08.22.2023 How I Made It: Joe Kay of Soulection Soulection is a music startup, which has quickly grown to be a powerhouse with a record label, a popular radio show, and worldwide tours—bringing together an international group of music lovers. It all began as an online podcast created in ...
08.18.2023 ‘I Want to Outlive AIDS’ Producer Patricia Sulbarán embarks on a journey to learn how Latino USA covered the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as part of the show’s 30th anniversary special coverage. After reviewing hundreds of archival clips, Patricia finds a woman leading the ...
08.15.2023 Judith Baca’s Great Wall Muralist Judith F. Baca is mostly known for creating one of the largest communal murals in the world: the Great Wall of Los Angeles. It extends for half a mile along the Tujunga Wash river channel in the San Fernando ...
08.11.2023 Meg Medina: Let Kids Read Freely Earlier this year, award-winning author Meg Medina was named National Ambassador for Young People's Literature—she’s the first Latina to occupy this position. In her role, Meg’s responsible for raising awareness of the importance of young people’s literature, something that is ...
08.08.2023 How I Made It: Yasser Tejeda & Palotré The musical genres most people associate with the Dominican Republic are merengue and bachata. Yet, there's another set of rhythms that are essential to the spirit of the country, and that's Afro-Dominican roots music. That's where the band Yasser Tejeda ...
08.04.2023 Alzheimer’s In Color Latino USA and Black Public Media bring you Alzheimer’s In Color. It’s the story of Ramona Latty, a Dominican immigrant, told by her daughter Yvonne, and it mirrors countless other families of color navigating a disease that is ravaging the ...
08.01.2023 Maxwell Alejandro Frost: Leading Through Politics—and Music Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida made history last year when he became the first Gen-Z elected to Congress. Latino USA producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. went to Congressman Frost’s district in Orlando to interview him and attended one of his community ...
07.28.2023 Bilingual Is My Superpower In 2018, producer Jeanne Montalvo reported on the choices her parents made when raising her in a bilingual household. Five years later, Jeanne’s two children both command the Spanish language. But the oldest, Martin, was 2.5 years old at the ...
07.25.2023 Hungry for History This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the Hungry for History podcast. Here’s a little-known fact you might not have known... The beer industry might be dominated by men today but women were the original brewers and played ...
07.21.2023 Immensely Invisible How is ICE handling complaints of sexual abuse from detainees? Maria Hinojosa teams up with Zeba Warsi, two immigrant women and journalists from different generations, to look at sexual abuse in ICE detention more than a decade after Maria’s documentary ...
07.18.2023 Willie Perdomo Comes Home In the early 1990s, Willie Perdomo was a teenager growing up in East Harlem. He saw and experienced firsthand a tumultuous moment in New York City, including the crack epidemic and the consequences of the war on drugs. In his ...
07.14.2023 Love & Walkouts Today we're bringing you an episode from our vault — a love story of student activism. We're taking you back to 1968, when thousands of students participated in a series of protests that helped spark the Chicano Movement, historically known ...
07.11.2023 Steven Melendez on Opening Doors to Ballet Steven Melendez thinks a lot about accessibility in the world of classical dance. Steven got his start in ballet at just seven years old, as part of an outreach program run by New York Theater Ballet. Although Steven went on ...
07.07.2023 Hector Galán: A Life Documenting Marginalized Stories Latino USA continues to celebrate its 30th anniversary, bringing you conversations with some of the most influential Latinos and Latinas of the last three decades. In this episode, Maria Hinojosa catches up with pioneering filmmaker Hector Galán, who for over ...
07.04.2023 Resistance And Loss In The Age Of COVID-19 With Edwidge Danticat According to Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, stories are a way of finding inspiration and comfort during the times we’re living through. Her award-winning writing portrays the immigrant experience, Haitian-American identity and loss. In conversation with Maria Hinojosa, Danticat dives into ...
06.30.2023 The Lone Legislator In 1919, an intrepid Texas state representative, José Tomás Canales, decided to lead an investigation into the abuse of power by the Texas Rangers. For several years, residents of South Texas had been reporting that members of the law enforcement ...
06.27.2023 Creating the Sound of Latino USA Latino USA has cycled through quite a few theme songs in its 30 years. There was the original theme, with acoustic guitar and soft woodwinds, followed by a brassier, more Latin Jazz influenced sound. There were even a few years ...
06.23.2023 En Español For years, Anita Flores carried shame: She was a second-generation half-Peruvian who barely spoke Spanish. She pretended she didn’t care; she subtly avoided her paternal family in Lima. Then, her father was diagnosed with dementia. As her dad’s memory started ...
06.20.2023 You Want to Talk About Hot Cheetos? We tackle the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos controversy and dive into why this story is so much more than just about a processed snack food but a story about race, culture, identity, and the stories that we choose to believe. This ...
06.16.2023 No Strings Attached What happens when people living in poverty get a stable income from the government? More than 100 guaranteed income pilot programs have launched across the U.S. and most are found in California. How is a regular income — with no ...
06.13.2023 How I Made It: No Te Va Gustar For over 25 years, Uruguayan band No Te Va Gustar has been filling concert venues across Latin America. With their mix of pop, rock, reggae, ska, and other styles, the band has evolved over the years from its original three-member ...

Older episodes

Latino USA

What's Latino USA about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Latino USA episodes:

The Archivists: The Unseen Fight to Preserve Our Stories

United Stateless Podcast

By Right of Discovery

Bad Mexicans: Borderland History that Resonates Today

Dolores Huerta: Don’t Let the Haters Divide Us

How I Made It: Futuro Conjunto

Gustavo Dudamel’s Harmony in Times of Crisis

Classy with Jonathan Menjivar

Kamala and the Latino Youth Vote

Portrait Of: Gabby Rivera

City of Oil

The Art of Growing Into Yourself With Y La Bamba

My Uncle Juan, the Bracero

How I Made It: Grupo Fantasma Takes On The Wall

Puerto Crypto

How I Made It: Omar Apollo

When Alaska's Snow Crab Went Missing

Caliber 60

Mary’s Journey

Portrait Of: Miguel

The Growing Call to Abolish Student Debt

It’s My Podcast and I’ll Cry If I Want To

Belonging, Recruitment, and Remembrance

Ballet Brothers

The Revolutions of Gioconda Belli

9/11’s Immigration Legacy

At the Mercy of the Courts

How I Made It: Rodrigo y Gabriela

The Breakdown: Heavy Metal Edition

How I Made It: Joe Kay of Soulection

‘I Want to Outlive AIDS’

Judith Baca’s Great Wall

Meg Medina: Let Kids Read Freely

How I Made It: Yasser Tejeda & Palotré

Alzheimer’s In Color

Maxwell Alejandro Frost: Leading Through Politics—and Music

Bilingual Is My Superpower

Hungry for History

Immensely Invisible

Willie Perdomo Comes Home

Love & Walkouts

Steven Melendez on Opening Doors to Ballet

Hector Galán: A Life Documenting Marginalized Stories

Resistance And Loss In The Age Of COVID-19 With Edwidge Danticat

The Lone Legislator

Creating the Sound of Latino USA

En Español

You Want to Talk About Hot Cheetos?

No Strings Attached

How I Made It: No Te Va Gustar

Other shows like Latino USA: