Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration policy have been front and center in public conversation. However, a humanitarian crisis at the border is nothing new. Jeh Johnson was the Secretary of Homeland Security during President Obama’s second term, from late 2013 to 2017. He ran the agency during a tense period—when tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and families were arriving at the border to claim asylum. Latino USA’s Maria Hinojo...
Jan 26, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Growing up in Puerto Rico, Pepón Osorio never thought that decorating the wedding cakes his mother made would spark his passion for art and his signature big installations full of tiny objects, sounds and memories. In 2023, the New Museum in New York City hosted Osorio’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. In this episode of Latino USA, we tour the exhibition with Pepón, and we learn about how he found a home in the Bronx, switched careers from social worker to full-time artist, and developed...
Jan 23, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eugenio Derbez is a Mexican actor, writer, director and producer who got his start at the forefront of many comedy series in his home country. After decades of making families laugh across Latin America, Eugenio reinvented himself in Hollywood. In recent years he played the role of a music teacher in the movie “CODA,” which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2022. In 2023, Eugenio returned to Mexico to star in “Radical,” his first leading dramatic role. In this episode of Latino USA, E...
Jan 19, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Latino USA shares an episode of the Monumental podcast, from PRX. For generations, Christopher Columbus has been glorified in monument after monument across the United States. And while Columbus statues have recently started coming down, including in cities like Columbus, Ohio, the largest one in the world is standing tall —very, very tall… in a U.S. territory— the beach town of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. In this episode, reporter and journalism professor Gisele Regatão travels to Puerto Ri...
Jan 16, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast A special episode remembering Latino USA founder and pioneer public radio journalist Maria Emilia Martin, who passed away on December 2nd, 2023. After a career in public media of almost 50 years, Maria left a mark as a journalist, educator, and tireless advocate for Latinos, Latinas, and Indigenous voices in journalism in the United States and Latin America. In this hour, we hear from journalists who knew and were mentored by Maria Martin and we present some of the extraordinary and award-winnin...
Jan 12, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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.
Jan 09, 2024•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's a common sight in Puerto Rico—men in bright yellow T-shirts going door-to-door- selling cakes. They're residents at Hogar CREA, Puerto Rico's biggest drug treatment program. Since CREA’s founding 1968, they've grown to a sprawling network of about 150 centers in Puerto Rico, the U.S. mainland, and elsewhere in Latin America. But since the 1990s, the organization has been under fire for its methods. Latino USA takes a look at how this rehab empire built by a former heroin addict continues to...
Jan 05, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast By day, Héctor Rodríguez III is a school teacher; by night, he’s creating the world of “El Peso Hero”, a comic book superhero based on the border that is celebrating its 10th anniversary. In this episode of our "How I Made It" series, Héctor talks about growing up loving superheroes, but not feeling represented by them. Something he’d eventually deal with by building his own comic world centered on the border. This episode originally aired in July of 2021....
Jan 02, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast We continue our investigation into the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). While looking into what happened the night Joseph Chacón died, reporter Deepa Fernandes finds out that another baby, Draco Ford, had passed away in the same foster home two months earlier. Why weren’t the foster children, including Joseph, immediately removed after Draco died? We also delve into the difficult decisions social workers have to make and the systemic problems of the foster care syst...
Dec 29, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chilean-American singer-songwriter Francisca Valenzuela has always forged her own path in music. Born and raised in California, Francisca began her career after moving to Chile with her family. Even when major labels and venues wouldn’t open their doors for her, Francisca recorded and performed on her own terms until she became one of Chile’s biggest stars. Francisca went on to release four studio albums, start her own music label, and create Ruidosa, a Latinx feminist collective for women and n...
Dec 26, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast After a domestic violence incident, Leah Garcia called the police looking for safety for her and her two children. But her calls triggered the involvement of LA’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the largest child welfare agency in the country. Leah’s 5-month-old baby, Joseph, the son she had with her abusive partner, was placed with a foster care family. What happened after became a mother’s worst nightmare: the same system that was supposed to keep her child safe proved to be...
Dec 22, 2023•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Latino USA shares an episode of the podcast, Imperfect Paradise: Nury & The Secret Tapes , from LAist Studios. Imperfect Paradise: Nury & The Secret Tapes tells the story of the biggest political scandal in recent Los Angeles history. A secret recording leaked online in 2022 exposed then-LA City Council President Nury Martinez making racist and derogatory remarks. A year after the scandal, host Antonia Cereijido challenges Nury on her racist comments and the deeper systemic iss...
Dec 19, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Latino USA continues to mark its 30th anniversary and look back at its reporting throughout the last three decades. On today’s show we look at immigration, then and now. Maria Hinojosa is joined by Camilo Montoya-Galvez, immigration and politics reporter for CBS; Natalia Aristizabal, Deputy Director of Make the Road New York; and Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. Together, they discuss immigration policies from the last 30 years....
Dec 15, 2023•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Gun Machine is a new podcast from WBUR in partnership with The Trace, exploring the 250-year history of one of the most tragic and confounding forms of addiction in America: guns. Listen to all eight episodes wherever you get your podcasts. You can subscribe to The Gun Machine here .
Dec 12, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today on Latino USA, we want to pay tribute to María Emilia Martin, public radio pioneer, and our founder, by replaying the first special episode marking our show’s 30 years on the air. The episode, first aired in May 2023, is an oral history of Latino USA and features a conversation between Martin and our current co-executive producer Maria Hinojosa, whom Martin chose to be the host of Latino USA back in 1993. “María knew that by launching Latino USA, she would be impacting history in this coun...
Dec 08, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast As part of our 30th anniversary celebrations, we bring you a taste of a very special evening with the Colombian band Monsieur Periné—hosted at the Greene Space at WNYC and WQXR. Catalina García and Santiago Prieto play songs from their latest award-winning album, “Bolero Apocalíptico”, and chat with Latino USA ’s senior producer Marta Martinez about how they mix classic and modern influences, their love for their Colombian roots and how they found inspiration in the pandemic....
Dec 05, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast After months of working closely with the archivists and librarians of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas in Austin, the Latino USA team wanted to dig deeper into the history and treasures in the library. The Benson has been around for more than a hundred years, and it’s one of the most important institutions in the world collecting the history and stories of Latin America and U.S Latinas and Latinos. But, that history comes with some baggage. In this episo...
Dec 01, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the United Stateless Podcast . United Stateless Podcast documents the stories of "returnees", people who immigrated to the US, largely as children, and have since returned to their home country. In the first season, we focus on Mexico. It's a story of life, love, Spanglish, culture shock, missing bagels, and figuring out where home really is. In this episode, what, exactly, is Mexico? And what's it like to actually grow up there? And why is Alexandra...
Nov 28, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Thanksgiving Day, hundreds of people gather on Alcatraz Island, the famous former prison and one of the largest tourist attractions in San Francisco, for a sunrise ceremony to honor Indigenous culture and history. Fifty years ago, an intertribal group of students and activists took over the island for over 16 months in an act of political resistance. Richard Oakes, a young Mohawk from New York, was one of the leaders in this movement dubbed the "Red Power Movement." Latino USA tells the story...
Nov 24, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast At the turn of the 20th century, revolution was starting to brew in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. A group of Mexican revolutionaries had fled to the United States and were working to overthrow a dictator in their home country. They were called Los Magonistas , and both the U.S. and Mexican governments put all of their efforts to spy on them and suppress their revolution. In this episode, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells the story of this cross-border insurgency that has been left out of most...
Nov 21, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Latino USA continues to celebrate 30 years of being on the air, as well as bringing you important conversations as part of our ongoing political coverage. For this episode, Maria Hinojosa sits down with legendary labor leader and civil rights activist, Dolores Huerta. They speak about politics, the current state of organizing, sex and passion, and much more. Editorial note: This interview was recorded in September of 2023 before the current crisis in Gaza began....
Nov 17, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast What will the music of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley sound like 100 years from now? That’s the premise at the heart of Futuro Conjunto, a multimedia sci-fi project by artists Charlie Vela and Jonathan Leal. Futuro Conjunto is an expansive work of speculative fiction, but it also revolves around urgent issues of our present, such as climate change, technology, war, and class disparity. The multimedia project also draws from the Rio Grande Valley’s history and musical traditions, and Vela and Leal coll...
Nov 14, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gustavo Dudamel is one of the most famous and acclaimed conductors in the world. He’s been the Music and Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, when he was just 27 years old. El maestro is the best-known graduate of El Sistema, Venezuela’s national youth music education program. In the years since, Dudamel made a name for himself conducting world-famous orchestras, running his own arts charity — The Gustavo Dudamel Foundation — and founding the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles....
Nov 10, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Latino USA brings you an episode of the podcast, Classy with Jonathan Menjivar . In this episode, we can’t talk about class without talking about race. Through eye-opening conversations with two people of color in the fashion industry, Jonathan realizes some hard truths about the ways he’s adapted in order to blend in. And he reveals how one small, but bold act is helping him to reclaim his cultural identity. You can subscribe to Classy with Jonathan Menjivar here ....
Nov 07, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Maria Hinojosa and Latino USA producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. join Vice President Kamala Harris aboard Air Force Two as the vice president makes her way to Miami, Florida, as part of her “Fight For Our Freedoms” college tour. Later, Maria sits down with Vice President Harris for a one-on-one interview where they discuss young Latino voters’ participation, reproductive rights, immigration, and more. Editorial note: This interview was recorded in September of 2023 before the current crisis in Gaza be...
Nov 03, 2023•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Gabby Rivera wrote her coming-of-age novel “Juliet Takes a Breath” in 2016, she didn't know that it would get her attention from an unusual place: Marvel Comics. They asked her to write for America Chavez, their first queer Latina superhero. Gabby said yes. But as she was writing for their superhero, she found herself swept up in #comicsgate, an online harassment campaign against the comic book industry’s efforts to include more women, people of color, and LGBTQ characters. In this "Portrai...
Oct 31, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Los Angeles, you might be surprised to learn, sits on top of the largest urban oil field in the country and has been the site of oil extraction for almost 150 years. Today, nearly 5,000 oil wells remain active in Los Angeles County alone, many operating in communities of color, often very close to homes, schools, and hospitals. Latino USA visits a neighborhood in South Los Angeles, the epicenter of an anti-oil-drilling movement that is gaining momentum. We meet Nalleli Cobo, the 18-year-old who’...
Oct 27, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos is a Chicanx artist and musician who has been playing under the name Y La Bamba for nearly 20 years. As the child of immigrant parents, Luz Elena struggled to feel seen in the music industry, but as they’ve continued making music, they have grown into their identity as an artist. Last year, Luz Elena moved back to Mexico City to explore where they come from. That search also led to the publication of their seventh studio album — “Lucha” — and to Y La Bamba playing their f...
Oct 24, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Latino USA , historian Mireya Loza and her uncle and former bracero Juan Loza meet at his home in Chicago to reflect on the legacy of the long-running and controversial labor Bracero Program and its impact on their family.
Oct 20, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Austin's cumbia-funk institution Grupo Fantasma went to record their seventh album at a studio in Tornillo, Texas, they had no idea that right next door was a tent city for detained immigrant youth operated by ICE. When they found out, they decided they had to do something. So they teamed up with fellow legends Ozomatli and Locos Por Juana to create a sinister funk tune with a message about the walls that divide us. On this edition of How I Made It, members of Grupo Fantasma break down the ...
Oct 17, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
