Over the past 20 years, Raoul Peck has emerged as one of his generation’s leading filmmakers and intellectuals. Beginning with Lumumba and Sometimes in April, his unflinching examinations of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 and the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Peck has shown us the horrors of late-stage decolonization and postcolonialism. With his last two feature […]
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From its opening sequence, Lin Manuel Miranda’s new film “In the Heights” (adapted from the stage musical of the same name) spells out its Disney-ish conceit for the audience. “Once upon a time in a far-away land called Nueva York,” his lead character Usnavi, played by Anthony Ramos, assures a group of small children seated […]
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Last month, an email obtained by Axios revealed that Joe Biden’s administration is encouraging the elimination of the use of the term “alien” or “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented individual” or “undocumented noncitizen” in all official documents, outreach efforts and other communications, to describe those in the US who are not citizens. It’s a significant development that […]
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FRANKIE REYESX ED MORALES On February 25, 2021, Frankie Reyes and Ed Morales had a dialogue, discussing Reyes’ new Album Originalitos, their sound practice, and influences. Below are some excerpts from their conversation. Ed Morales: I did a little research on what you’re about and stuff like that and of course I listened to the album ‘Originalitos’ and it […]
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In many crucial ways, Johnny Pacheco’s life told a typical New York Latino story: He was a Dominican immigrant playing Cuban music for a mostly Puerto Rican audience. Like many self-styled New York entrepreneurs, he knew he had to hit the pavement with his product and get to know his customers face-to-face, driving around Harlem […]
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The installation of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States was a welcome relief from four years of Donald Trump’s constant demonization of Latinos, from separating immigrant children from their families to building his border wall to tossing paper towels at hurricane-ravaged Puerto Ricans. Inauguration Day featured the New York-bred Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, […]
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Back in 1973, often remembered as the bad old days of the Lower East Side, Miguel Algarín, focusing on the light he saw shining from an emerging New York Puerto Rican community, began hosting a series of informal poetry readings in his apartment on East Sixth Street that brought together poets, theater types andmusicians. The […]
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On July 26, Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, the head of UTIÉR (Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego), Puerto Rico’s electrical and irrigation workers’ union, tweeted from one of the island’s power generation stations. From Costa Sur Unit 5, near the southern coast, he posted a video of an open porthole that allowed people […]
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By now, it seems almost everyone has had an encounter with “Latinx,” the newish label that many people of Latin American descent in the United States have been using to describe themselves. Objections to it have been rampant, from those who see only its unpronounceable non-Spanishness (Latinks?) and those who say it erases Black and […]
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I’m surprised (or maybe I shouldn’t be) by the contentious posturing around how many Latinx voted for Trump and the term Latinx itself. Bottom line: overall Republican totals didn’t vary much in 2020, and “x” is a letter that makes people nervous. In this post a Newsy reporter asks if I’m too woke to see […]
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