Full disclosure: I’m the type of dude who likes to go out into the street, smell the fragrant odor drifting from a nearby waste transfer station, watch as the wind blows fragments of dust and paper refuse into my face, and scan the streets for a cab. That is, when I can afford a cab, […]
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Last week I interviewed Li Samuet, lead vocalist of Bomba Estereo, and we got to talking about the band’s song “To’ My Love,” from their new album Amanecer. First she schooled me on the fact that the song title meant “To’” as in “Todo My Love,” since I’d pronounced it “To.” Then she explained that the song […]
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Last Sunday, backstage at the Afro-Latino Festival at Restoration Plaza in Bed Stuy, I spoke with Cultura Profética bassist Eliut González and drummer Boris Bilbraut about the Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Cultura has long espoused out of the box ways to deal with US colonialism, including, in songs like “No Me Interesa,” critiquing overconsumption and […]
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The Roots of Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis and Why Austerity Won’t Work The US government is at least partially responsible for the emergency, which is affecting millions of what are effectively second-class citizens By Ed Morales Riding through the hills of Canóvanas with Prima, a vacationing 65-year-old Brooklynite who was born and raised in the […]
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It’s a bittersweet moment in San Juan this summer as the pressure mounts on the island to pay a debt that was near impossible to avoid, on the backs of the poor and working class, since the middle-class mirage of the ’60s and ’70s has all but ended. There is a depopulation and disinvestment syndrome […]
Read moreIt’s a beautiful day. Supreme Court decisions that grant humanity to the LGBT, affirming the idea of a “living Constitution” ; the taking down of Confederate flags around the South. Obama singing “Amazing Grace“; and earlier this week, Obamacare also upheld by the Supremes. But let’s keep it in perspective. It was Justice Kennedy, who […]
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Puerto Rico, a de facto colony of the US, is usually not in the news outside of the travel and style sections. But as it stumbles towards a September default deadline that threatens to shut down government operations, the island territory has been a fixture in the business press, with headlines like: “Puerto Rico Faces […]
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Tato Torres, Monxo López and the charter members of the Loisaida Center’s Plenatorium Project came to the WBAI studios in swingin’ Boerum Hill Brooklyn to play us a few songs about life and the labors of love. Using a new configuration that included accordion and guitar, the pleneros filled the studio with a wall of […]
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Chilean singer Francisca Valenzuela was a live guest on Thursday’s “Living in Spanglish” show on WBAI. She talked about her new single “Insulto” from her album Tajo Abierto. She explained the song was a response to a tendency in many Latin American societies to respond negatively to difference. At times the way a person performs […]
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This morning on WBAI’s Morning Show I interviewed Jessica Torres, a researcher who has been posting on the Media Matters site. We discussed the controversy over the reaction to the cover of the new issue of The Economist, which grossly stereotypes all Latin@s by using the image of chili peppers standing in for the stripes in […]
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ED MORALES 