Latino USA

Latest Episodes:

Mimy and Tony Succar: Music Is Better With Family Apr 02, 2024

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Mimy Succar arrived with her family in Miami over three decades ago, she had three kids and a dream. A talented singer and performer from a young age, she was born in Peru to a Japanese family and maintained the traditions of her grandparents. Together with her husband Antonio, they had a band who played throughout Lima. But in the late 80s, they didn’t see a future for their family and moved to Miami with their children, Claudia, Tony and Kenji. The children began showing interest in the band at a young age, and Tony won Producer of the Year in 2019 at the Latin Grammys. Their collaboration, Mimy and Tony, was nominated for a Grammy in 2024. The critically acclaimed album includes collaborations with heavy hitters like La India, Orquesta de la Luz, and Jose Alberto “El Canario.”

In this episode of Latino USA, Mimy and Tony show us how, with the right timing and your family, nothing can get in the way.

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Will Abortion Rights Energize the Latino Vote? Mar 29, 2024

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Two years ago, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, creating a cascade of harmful abortion bans and restrictions. But from Colorado to Florida, Latinas are fighting back for their bodily autonomy and a chance to reframe abortion as a human rights issue.

In this episode, we speak with three Latinas on the front lines of reproductive justice: Lourdes Rivera, President of Pregnancy Justice, Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, Executive Director at the Florida Access Network, and América Ramírez, Program Manager at the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights. Together, they help us understand the increasing criminalization of pregnant people—especially women of color— and how all of these restrictions are impacting how we vote.

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Sandy's Pandemic Diaries Mar 26, 2024

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Sandy Fleurimond, a first generation Haitian-American student at Temple University in Philadelphia, was looking forward to her senior year of college. She dreamed of studying abroad and graduating in a field full of friends and family. But being a college student in 2020, meant that many of these long-awaited milestones didn't go according to plan. In collaboration with Philly Audio Diaries, Sandy shares her story of loss and growth after the pandemic flipped her senior year of college upside down.

This episode originally aired in September of 2021.

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She Migrates Mar 22, 2024

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In a new migration reality, women and children are requesting asylum in Mexico at higher rates than men. But even as more women are crossing borders in long and dangerous journeys, many hoping to ultimately reach the United States, we rarely hear about their stories and what it’s like to migrate undocumented when you’re a woman. For women, their body takes a central role when they’re in transit, regardless of their age. Some are forced to disguise their gender for protection, others end up using it for survival, and many are victimized because of it. Many are also mothers and carry their children with them.

In this episode of Latino USA, we travel to Mexico’s southern border and meet several migrant women in different stages of their journey north – from a teenage Honduran traveling alone to a Cuban woman who was sexually abused and a Guatemalan single mother who survived domestic violence.

This story originally aired in September of 2021.

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Latinos Persevering Mar 19, 2024

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On today’s episode of Latino USA, we meet some of the Latinos and Latinas involved with the recent and historic mission to Mars. The Perseverance rover traveled almost 300 million miles to Mars and landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, in hopes of finding traces of previous life on the planet.

This episode originally aired in May of 2021.

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Alex Padilla, From California to Capitol Hill Mar 15, 2024

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It was an anti-immigrant initiative in his home state of California that pushed Alex Padilla into politics, now he is making history as the first Latino to represent California in the U.S. Senate. In an extended interview with Padilla, Maria Hinojosa asks the senator about Prop 187, the controversial 1994 ballot measure that politicized Padilla, and many other Latinos of his generation. They also discuss the senator’s career-long focus on voting rights, and the threats they face today.

This episode originally aired in May of 2021.

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Samanta Schweblin’s Unsettling Normality Mar 12, 2024

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In her work, Argentine author Samanta Schweblin explores the feeling of eeriness that accompanied her childhood. Samanta was born in Buenos Aires in 1978, just after the start of a violent dictatorship. But, while violence surrounded her growing up, there was also art: her grandfather was a famous artist who began to train her as a writer when she was six years old. Together they took trips, stole books, rode the train without tickets and went to plays and museums—all in the name of artistic training. It worked. Samanta’s work has been translated into 25 languages and long-listed for the International Booker Prize.

In this episode, Samanta shares the origins of her fascination with the blurry lines between our perceptions of what’s normal and what’s strange.

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Toñita's Club Fights Erasure Mar 08, 2024

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When you enter the Caribbean Social Club, or Toñita’s, it feels like you could be in your grandmother’s living room. And that’s exactly what its owner, Maria Antonia Cay —better known as Toñita— was aiming for when she opened the club in the 1970s as a gathering place for the local baseball team. 50 years later, Toñita’s is still standing in Los Sures, the south side of Williamsburg—the most gentrified neighborhood in New York City. Yet over the years, Toñita has faced ever greater challenges to keep her club open. In this episode of Latino USA, we follow Toñita through her latest hurdle, a court battle, and we learn about how the Puerto Rican community in Los Sures has kept culture alive.

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The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island Mar 05, 2024

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This week, Latino USA shares an episode of The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island podcast.

When Annette Vega was in elementary school, she found out the man she called “dad” wasn’t her biological father. But all she knew was that her mom had had a teenage romance with a guy named Angel Garcia. Annette has searched for Angel for more than 30 years, a search that is finally coming to the end.

“The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island" is a new series from Radio Diaries that tells the stories of seven people buried on Hart Island through a range of circumstances. Hart Island, an uninhabited strip of land off the Bronx is America's largest public cemetery, sometimes known as a "potter's field." Since 1869, more than a million people have been buried on Hart Island, including early AIDS patients, unidentified and unclaimed New Yorkers, immigrants, incarcerated people, artists, and about ten percent of New Yorkers who died of COVID-19.

You can hear the entire series on the Radio Diaries podcast here.

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Latino Hustle: Oscars 2024 Mar 01, 2024

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The 96th Oscars ceremony is a new opportunity for Latinos and Latin Americans in the moviemaking business to be recognized for excellence in cinema. America Ferrera has earned her first Oscar nomination and Colman Domingo has become the first Afro-Latino nominated for best actor.

And yet, representation of Latinos on the big screen has remained stagnant.

But there are several Latinos and Latin Americans nominated who you may not have heard anything about yet. We spoke to Andes survivor Roberto Canessa and actor Matias Recalt from “The Society of the Snow;” director Maite Alberdi from “The Eternal Memory;” and producer Phil Lord from “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

Editorial note: This interview was recorded in early February.

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