Latino USA

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 an Afrolatina influenced the racist and sexist characterizations of her as “possessed,” “crazy” and “on drugs.” But by singing and moving in the ways she was known for, she was resisting her erasure and claiming her space –– whether audiences understood it or not.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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