Latino USA

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When she was nine years-old, Xiomara Torres fled the civil war in her home country of El Salvador and came to the U.S. As a child she adjusted to her new life in East Los Angeles before she was removed from her family and put into foster care—where she spent six years of her life moving from home to home. Now, she's the subject of a local play in Oregon titled, "Judge Torres." In this edition of “How I Made It,” Judge Torres shares how she overcame the hurdles of the foster system and made her way to the Oregon Circuit Court. This story originally aired in March of 2019.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A major lesson from the 2020 election is one that Latinos already know: The idea of a single “Latino vote” is a myth. Latinos and Latinas throughout the United States draw from different histories that have shaped their different policy interests, ideologies, and personal experiences—and that all inform how they ultimately cast their ballots. President Trump won Florida, including nearly half of all Latinx-identifying voters in the state. But across the country in Arizona, grassroots groups led a wave of younger Latinx voters to flip the state blue for President-elect Joe Biden. In this episode of Latino USA, we take a closer look at the Latino and Latina voters that made it out to the polls in these states and how they decided who to cast their critical votes for.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Las Cafeteras are a band out of East LA that met while doing community organizing. They began playing at the Eastside Cafe, where they discovered Son Jarocho, traditional Afro-Mexican music from Veracruz. They quickly began to adapt the music to their realities fusing it with hip hop, rock, ska, and spoken word. They are known for their politically charged lyrics, speaking out against injustices within the immigrant community and their experiences as chicanos in East LA. On today’s “How I Made It”, we sat down with members of the group to discuss how they got started, and their work to tell and preserve brown stories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On March 14th of 2020, Martha Escudero and her two daughters became the first of a dozen unhoused families to occupy one of over a hundred vacant houses in El Sereno, Los Angeles. Some call them squatters, but they call themselves the Reclaimers. The houses the Reclaimers are occupying actually belong to a state agency that purchased the houses in the 1960’s in order to demolish them and build a freeway through this largely Latinx and immigrant neighborhood. This is the story of one of these houses, and its residents, past and present, who have fought to make it their home.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On paper, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the poster child for the American Dream. She’s a Harvard graduate, a Yale Ph.D. candidate, and, now, a 2020 National Book Award finalist for her debut book, “The Undocumented Americans.” As a child, Villavicencio’s parents left her in their native Ecuador while they worked in the U.S., a period that continues to shape her and her work today. From parent-child separation to the stigma of mental health among the Latinx community, Villavicencio sits down to talk about the painful, tragicomic, and warm moments that come with being a child of immigrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why do Latinos support Trump? Many people have asked this question since 2016, when, after launching his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists, Trump still won almost a third of the Latino vote. Polls indicate that Trump could do it again—or even increase his support among Latino voters in 2020. In this episode, we talk to historian Geraldo Cadava and to longtime Latino Republicans to understand why roughly a third of Latino voters have supported Republican presidential candidates ever since the 1970s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The United States runs on migrant labor. That’s been the case for most of this country’s history, and the demand for cheap workers over the past two centuries led to waves of immigration from China, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, especially Mexico. This trend also led to the creation of the deportation machine. That’s how Adam Goodman, a professor of Latin American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes the U.S.’s systemic efforts to expel noncitizens. In his recent book, "The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants", Goodman explores how today’s “country of immigrants” is built on a long history of deportation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thirty two million Latinos are eligible to vote this election – a record. But research suggests that, in battleground states, 57% of them are not going to cast ballots. Historically, Latino turnout has been lower than that of whites, Blacks and Asians. Many hoped things would be different this time around. Instead, traditional political strategies plus the challenges presented by COVID-19 made Latino voters a low priority again. Reporter Gisele Regatāo reports on how that is playing out in two key swing states, Florida and Pennsylvania.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa sits down with actor and entrepreneur Danny Trejo. Trejo has starred in over 300 films, often playing villains and tough guys of all sorts. He now runs Trejo's Tacos, Trejo's Cantina, and Trejo's Donuts in Los Angeles. He shares how he went from regular stints in prison to being one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces. This story originally aired in April of 2019.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.