Latino USA

Latinos could play a decisive role in the swing state of Pennsylvania in November's presidential election. In 2016 Trump won the state by about 44,000 votes, and the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had been courting Latino voters there for months. Now that Sanders has dropped out of the presidential race, many wonder if former Vice-President Joe Biden will be able to win them over. In this episode of Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa speaks with reporter Gisele Regatao, who has been on the ground in Pennsylvania following Latino voters.

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Light your candles and schedule your limpia because today's episode is all about the power of intuition. Reporter Cindy Rodriguez talks to scientist Galang Lufityanto about his research into intuitive decision-making. Then, we head to the Brooklyn Brujeria festival, and learn about how intuition has been part of a growing Latinx feminist movement. Finally we hear about Cindy's journey to accept her own sense of intuition, through her relationship to her mother.

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There are currently over 35,000 immigrants in detention in the United States, and most of them are in centers under the control of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. As the spread of COVID-19 overwhelms some areas of the country, the situation that many immigrants in detention are facing has become an urgent concern. ICE has already started to report that some immigrants and employees have tested positive for the virus. In this episode of Latino USA, we speak with Noah Lanard, a journalist who has reported on the conditions in these detention centers for Mother Jones magazine, and Joaquin Castro, Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

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Medellín, Colombia, is lauded as one of the most innovative and tourist-friendly cities in the world. But 30 years ago, the city was the world's cocaine capital—ravaged by the cartel war led by Pablo Escobar. Latino USA travels to Medellín to hear how the city's violent and narcotic history changed the lives of one family and how Medellín went from being one of the most dangerous places in the world to the "model city" it is today.

This story originally aired in June of 2018.

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A few months ago, we aired a story in which we spent 72 hours at CommunityHealth, a free health clinic in Chicago that only serves people without health insurance, and that's run primarily by volunteers. As the number of cases of COVID-19 rises rapidly, free health clinics are an important line of defense against the disease. The communities they serve, like older patients, patients with chronic conditions, and undocumented immigrants, are particularly vulnerable to the disease. For this episode, we check back-in with CommunityHealth and one of their patients, about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Public health experts are urging people to stay at home during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — but not everyone can afford to. Here in the United States, low-income immigrant communities are facing high risks during the outbreak. Many migrants are still working in essential retail, labor, and service industry jobs. Getting access to healthcare is also a challenge, especially after the Trump administration enacted a new policy measure limiting certain immigrants' access to federal benefits like Medicare. In this week's Latino USA, we explore the obstacles migrants face as the coronavirus threat grows.

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In February, Netflix premiered a comedy-drama series that features a Mexican-American family from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. The show is called 'Gentefied' and it's a blend of two words: "gente", the Spanish word for people, and "gentrified." In Latino USA, we wanted to get the community's perspective on the show, so we reached out to the Boyle Heights Beat—a bilingual community newspaper produced by youth reporters—and handed them the mic. The result is a conversation that takes on gentrification, stereotypes and what it's like when a new show is set in your backyard.

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Over the last few years, as immigration has become a heated topic of discussion, there are more and more stories about racist comments and instances of violence against Latinos. And that's reflected in FBI data on hate crimes—a 2018 report showed that personal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice had reached a 16-year high and that hate crimes specifically against Latinos and Latinas were rising. To better understand these trends, on this episode of Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa goes with reporter Angelina Mosher Salazar to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where they dive into one violent attack on a Peruvian immigrant and U.S. citizen.

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In January 2019, the Trump administration began enforcing the Migrant Protection Protocols, more widely known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy. It forced an estimated 60,000 people, many of them Central American, to remain in Mexico while U.S. courts decide their fate. While the door has essentially been shut on newly arrived migrants, a few who are deemed "vulnerable" are still being allowed to enter. Mother Jones reporters Fernanda Echavarri and Julia Lurie went to Santa Fe, New Mexico to talk to some of the few people allowed into the U.S. And, in this episode of Latino USA, Fernanda takes us on a ride-along to meet two newly arrived families trying to make a life, while stuck in limbo.

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The Latino electorate has long been considered a sleeping giant in U.S. politics, but in the 2020 election, that giant is waking up. About 32 million Latinas and Latinos will be eligible to vote this year, the second largest voting bloc in the country. On this episode, Latino USA speaks with Sonja Diaz, Founding Executive Director of the UCLA Latino Policy Initiative, and Julio Ricardo Varela, co-host of the In The Thick podcast, about what we've learned about the Latino vote from the Democratic primaries so far. We talk about Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign strategy in Latino communities, Former Vice President Joe Biden's challenges reaching these voters, and what it all means as his campaign takes the lead in the race for his party's nomination.

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