Latinidad

One evening, while I was combing my daughter’s before bed, she started singing a song in Tagalog. I was like, “What!” First, I should explain that my daughter is half Puerto Rican courtesy of her dad (me) and half Filipino courtesy of my wife. Now my original thought was that her grandparents, my in-laws, sang this to her to obviously piss […]

Envisioning dialogues help us understand the fallacy of our thinking. We often believe that our morals or judgements are based in logic or reasoning. The U.S. media, whether it is Fox or MSNBC, only help reinforce these notions of the fallacies in our collective thinking. Preaching to the choir is their bread and butter. Ratings drive their […]

The word chicano has existed in the English lexicon since 1911. During the ’60s and ’70s, that term became a symbol of pride for the Mexican Americans who were confronting the struggles of prejudice and self-identification, an answer to the always confounding question: “Who am I?” In the decades that have passed, chicanismo has been used […]

This morning Ezra Klein, explainer-in-chief at the conspicuously lacking in diversity Vox, tweeted his site’s latest attempt to draw in Latino readers: The difference between "Latino" and "Hispanic," in one comic: http://t.co/qyoLh8UzaC — Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 19, 2015 One thing to note: Klein is of Brazilian descent (he also shouted the piece out on his […]

Puerto Rican neo-fiction seeks to address the social and psychological problems that afflict modern Puerto Rico, whether in regard to ‘self-racism,’ neo-colonialism, foreign influence, identity crisis and the effects of issues that have afflicted the island for the last two hundred years. The genre would not be bound by single traditional genres such as horror […]

If you’re a true New Yorker, you’ve heard the phrase: “Fulano-De-Tal is from THAT block.”  Furthermore, if you’re from South Bronx growing up in the 80’s, more than likely, legendary photographer Ricky Flores has the images to prove it. Now, what if I told you a handful of those images are being turned into large-scale […]

Here’s the history lesson you should have been given before filling out the census with Hispanic or Latino. During the 1830s, a French intellectual named Michel Chevalier imagined that the romance language-speaking people living in this part of the world constituted a Latin race that could align itself with European countries that also spoke a […]

—Pues primo, titi’s behavior is what happens in colonial societies. You don’t learn to value yourself let alone other people. Your mom is an empty shell full of rah-rah American bullshit fed to young Puerto Ricans that tells them they can never be satisfied unless they chase the American dream and leave the island behind. […]

Latinos are receiving increasing attention in American politics. Candidates and their campaigns must decide how best to reach out to this growing community. Trump has chosen to double-down on anti-Mexican rhetoric, but other candidates have chosen another language altogether. Democrats and Republicans alike have chosen to address Latinos in Spanish. Hillary Clinton tweeted how to say “Go […]

In Latino literature and film, a common narrative is assimilation, where the protagonist wrestles with preserving the “traditional value” of the old world while embracing the “progress and enlightenment” of the new. By the end, even as the protagonist learns to appreciate and respect the values of their elders, what they really embrace and love are […]

What do Sonia Sotomayor, Jennifer López, Anthony Romero, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mario Vázquez and Jon Oliva have in common? These Latinos called Bronx their home. So did Tito Puente, Prince Royce, Willie Colón and many others. I’ll throw in a couple of honorary Latinos such as Edgar Allan Poe, Marian Zazeela, Woody Allen, Neil Simon […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this piece was published on the author’s blog. Maira has given us permission to republish her essay on our site. Time is money and money is time. I know, I’m a first generation art student who has to constantly shoot down any sporadic spurts of adventure to get to […]

Two years ago, the Pew Research Center stated that Salvadorans were to become the third-largest U.S. Latino group in the United States behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. And last summer, Ivan Villanueva wrote an excellent piece about the marginalization first-generation Salvadorans experience despite our growing presence. However, what many people do not know is that geography […]

I just got off the phone with my mother. She just wrapped up a short account about how much work they have had at their business in the past couple of weeks—most of it centered around the sheer amount of clients and calls they have received, all good things, but also about how tired she […]

Tonight, I received an email from my friend Katherinne Balboa Oviedo, a Chilean educator currently living in Colorado. She wrote me asking to contribute to a project to show solidarity with Chilean teachers currently on strike. The conditions facing Chilean professors is horrendous, yet frighteningly comparable to those faced by adjunct professors in the United […]

Latino Rebels contributor Jonathan Marcantoni filed the following post about the YouNiversity Project he co-founded with Chris Campanioni: Since the inception of the YouNiversity Project in June 2014, authors Chris Campanioni and Jonathan Marcantoni have built a program that has attracted attention from people in 33 countries in six continents, has connected aspiring writers to […]

When La Galería magazine launched this past February, I personally didn’t expect that it would grow so quickly. But it did. A collective effort that started with a vision to become one of the platforms for the Dominican Diaspora is growing into a multimedia venue with an entity of its own. Our site has already garnered over 10,000 […]

CHICAGO—It’s May 2015, which means the start of the 2016 presidential campaign season is only a blink away. Already hopefuls are throwing their hats into the ring. So far only one person has mounted a challenge to Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee—though why Bernie Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist and the independent junior senator […]

“Latino writer” is a label whose purpose is to make you feel like you are a part of something big, important and ultimately has nothing to do with you as an individual. “Latino writer” does not denote quality or innovation, it is not a movement nor does it embody a single worldview, but what it […]

This month at Intelatin, I am featuring two entrepreneurs working their food businesses. Sabrina Valle of The Jam Stand and Abigail Wald of The YES Bar. I feature these ladies for the inspiration and benefit of my DACAmented homegirls. Music for the podcast is performed by Chancha vía Circuito, Willie Colón & Héctor Lavoe, Héctor Guerra, Mr […]

I think we’ve all agreed that racism and ethnic slurs are not OK in 2015, haven’t we? Maybe we haven’t. In today’s world, a lot of bigoted/racist/xenophobic sentiment creeps up not overtly, but in the subtle ways that are less perceptible. For example, we all constantly hear racist jokes, see stereotypical costumes and read publications […]