Latino USA

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 mem...

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-coun...

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 . See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 w...

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 wh...

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 v...

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 h...

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...

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 saf...

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...

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 L...

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...

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...

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 h...

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 s...

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 culmin...

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 a...

In the late 1800s, Teresa Urrea was a superstar. She was a ‘curandera,’ or healer, a revolutionary, and a feminist. At only 19 years old she was exiled from Mexico by dictator Porfirio Diaz, who called her the most dangerous girl in the country, and moved to El Paso, Texas. She also had a miraculous power: she could heal people through touch. Her vision of love and equality for all people regardle...

Daniel Suárez made history in 2022 when he became the first Mexican-born driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race, but the road to this feat has been anything but smooth. On this episode of Latino USA, Daniel Suárez talks about breaking barriers, the role his family played along the way, and how he’s trying to bring more Latinos to NASCAR. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 . Created by Nuyorican street kids in the mid-80s, freestyle music became the sound and story of second-generation Boricuas. Hip-hop and pop, Latin Caribbean rhythms and instruments, all came together in freesty...

The food of Mexico is diverse, complex, and beloved across the world. Don’t just take it from us—in 2010, traditional Mexican cuisine was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Mexican chef and cookbook author Margarita Carrillo Arronte was a big advocate of this move. Throughout her career, she’s been committed to exploring Mexican cuisine and showcasing it on the world stage. He...

Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler knows what it's like to live different lives within one. An ENT doctor until his early 30s, he then decided to leave medicine behind, as well as his life in Uruguay, to pursue a music career in Spain. He became the first Uruguayan to win an Oscar with his song “Al otro lado del río.”  In this episode of Latino USA, the multiple award-winning musician walks...

This week Latino USA shares the first episode from the Valle de Sueños podcast. We launch Valle de Sueños on Our Lady of Guadalupe feast day to honor those who have journeyed and kept their resiliency, faith, and love despite the treacherous path to citizenship. Our Lady represents strength, hope, and access to a kind, loving world, which represents the dreams of those who sacrifice their lives as...

More than 25 years ago, two teachers in New Mexico were fired for refusing to stop teaching Chicano History in their classrooms; today, that history repeats itself in Denver, Colorado. What are students missing out on when they don’t learn about their history in school? In this episode of Latino USA, we present a conversation between teachers Tim Hernández and Nadine Córdova. They talk about their...

Esta semana en Latino USA , te compartimos un episodio del nuevo podcast “La Brega: La experiencia boricua en 8 canciones”, producida por WNYC Studios y Futuro Studios. Inicialmente, "El gran varón" fue prohibida por algunas estaciones de radio, pero a pesar de esto, se convirtió en un éxito; muchos la consideran una de las salsas más conocidas de todos los tiempos. Omar Alfanno explica que la can...