♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
Downloaded from YTS.MX
I did not speak English when I got to the States.
We did some pretty audacious things.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
(LAUGHING) Oh, my God, diosito, help me.
What is this world that we live in?
You can get paid for just being yourself. What?
I had no idea of the magnitude of what was happening.
Habla, nena, habla.
-Habla. -Habla.
Loud.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Nicolás Entel.
Where I was born, it doesn't matter.
I am a Latino who lives in the U.S.,
has an American passport and American kids.
The first things that you discover
when you move to the U.S.,
is that the second that you arrive to the U.S.,
you are no longer Argentine,
you're no longer Venezuelan, Mexican, or Cuban.
You become a Latino in the U.S.,
which I think is the greatest thing
that ever happened to me.
I don't know if I arrived
with any preconception of Latinos in the U.S....
but it took me nothing,
five seconds to adopt that identity.
Like to understand that
I have a lot in common with Colombians, with Mexicans.
You also have the ability of understanding them
in a way that is not always available
for those of us in Latin America.
And this means that you have the possibility
of exploring and open yourself, lots of different experiences.
Stories, histories, food, traditions, art.
You are exposed to a bunch of different influences,
and it's absolutely fascinating.
Many of our countries are not really connected.
It's much easier to fly from New York or Miami or L.A.
to any Latin American capital than it is to go from
one Latin American capital to the other.
It's not even possible to fly directly.
If you want to fly from Asunción to Mexico City,
you might have to stop in Fort Worth, Dallas.
As a filmmaker,
what I want to challenge is the perception
that Latino movies and Latino TV shows
are not part of the mainstream.
I believe that we are the new mainstream.
My complaint is the following.
It feels like everything that's being commissioned
by the studios in the Latino space,
a musical, big animation movie, a sitcom,
it still is a soap opera.
It feels like studios only wanna produce
Latino content that is inoffensive,
that is uplifting and a little sentimental.
And there is so much more that we can do.
I mean, we come from a very rich tradition.
We are the continent
of Borges and Cortazar and Fuentes and Vargas Llosa.
Latinos in the U.S. gave the world Ritchie Valens,
who transformed rock and roll by the time he was 17,
he even influenced The Beatles.
Fania doesn't get the respect and the credit it deserves,
but it represents New York as much as The Ramones
or Talking Heads, New York in the '70s.
Chicano literature, it's amazing,
from Jovita to Sandra Cisneros.
And yet it feels like they only want us to do soap operas.
I don't think there is only one way of being universal.
But we represent
such a bigger portion of the planet
that we should be a way of being universal,
that the themes and the topics that we want to touch
can be universal.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
CAMERA ASSISTANT: Take one...
I'm Leonardo Nam, I'm an actor.
Yeah, most people when they meet me,
they don't realize that I'm Latino.
You know, I was born in Buenos Aires, so soy porteño,
but I look Korean, so soy coreano,
but I sound Australian, so soy australiano.
And I'm in America, so soy americano too.
I only have really great memories of Argentina.
You know, in Argentina, I was there until I was about seven,
and I never really felt like I didn't belong
or wasn't part of the Argentinian culture and stuff.
It's only actually after I left Argentina
and then everyone else reflected back to me like,
"Oh, you're not from Argentina," or "You're not..."
And I'd be like, "But, I mean, I am."
And that's the only answer I can give them.
Yeah, I never really felt separate while I was there.
Only, like I said, when I moved to Australia or America
would everyone kind of reflect back to me
what they thought being Argentinian was,
and I'd have to correct them.
(LAUGHS)
I remember when I first moved to Australia from Argentina,
and I only really spoke Spanish.
And I was in Australia,
and it was my first grade teacher,
and she only spoke English.
And she brought in a kid who was from Korea,
who only spoke Korean.
He's speaking Korean and crying,
she's speaking in English trying to connect it,
and I'm crying, speaking in Spanish.
And I remember thinking, "Wow, okay, I'm different."
You know, I speak Spanish, but people assume
that I speak another language or that I need to be
something other than literally how I am.
But I remember it was really difficult, man.
It was so hard.
I mean, I love food and I love Argentinean food.
I remember one of my earliest memories
of feeling so sad when I recognized
that I was not in my home in Argentina
was when in Australia
no one understood what dulce de leche was.
I was like, "That's my jam, man,"
like, that's what I lived on, you know?
And there was definitely more Italian culture kind of,
you know, immigrants in Australia,
so they'd give me the Italian equivalent.
I'd be like, "No it's not the same, it's not the same."
I would say something that's very Argentinian about me
is that like I'm loud and I'm like hugging.
Because people are always surprised by that with me.
They're like, oh, they expect me to be a little more standoff,
I'm like no, man, I want in.
I want in on the hug, I want in on the beso.
I wanna, I want, I want. I love to hug people,
I love to kiss people, I love to be in their space.
I think that's part of being Argentinian for me.
Being American is part of who I am now too.
I can't just deny that, you know,
I also have Australian cultural aspects
and Argentinian cultural aspects and Korean cultural aspects.
I am all those things at the same time.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
I am Isabella Gomez.
I am from Medellín, Colombia, and I am an actress.
I immigrated to Orlando, Florida,
when I was around ten.
I moved with my parents, who are my best friends,
and I moved to Orlando
which has such a huge Latinx community.
A bunch of Colombians and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans
and everybody and there was so much culture
and so many of us that I never really felt othered,
or like being Latina was different
until later on in my life.
I did not speak English when I got to the States.
I mean, I did in that I took English classes
in Colombia, but just like how people take Spanish classes here
and then don't really end up learning the language.
And I also, again, was in Orlando,
so a lot of my classmates spoke Spanish,
so it wasn't like I wasn't able to communicate,
it was more of, like, a challenge.
And I remember I got paired up
with this girl, Marisol, who was the coolest,
and she helped me through. And she was Mexican,
so she spoke Spanish and we were buddies,
but it really wasn't traumatic for me at all.
Fun fact, on One Day at a Time,
there was always at least one word per episode
that they would have to write out of my lines
because I just couldn't say it. So...
(CHUCKLES)
My skin color and my features
sometimes leads people to believe
that I am a White woman instead of a Latina.
And I am treated very differently
when people think that I am a White woman
than I am when people know I am a Latina.
And thus, I have White privilege,
which does not mean necessarily
that you have had a privileged life,
but what it means is that my life has not been made harder
because of the color of my skin.
But then I also see a lot of people saying
that maybe I shouldn't count as Latinx representation.
And I did see a few tweets once, of people being like,
"She doesn't count as Latinx representation
because of the color of her skin."
And I was born in Colombia and I was raised there
and to an age where I remember living there.
It's not like I came when I was tiny,
like, I was there until I was ten.
And so for people to say that
I do not count is, frankly, really hurtful
and I don't think that that is most people's opinion.
But it's a very nuanced conversation right now
that I don't really know where to stand on it.
But what I do know is that, although I am very aware
that I do not represent all of our community
and that I cannot speak to all of our experiences
and one single person never could,
I am wildly proud of being a Latina
and I will represent and wave my flag
and show up for my community any chance I get.
I've heard a lot of people, and I'm sure others have too,
talk about the crabs in a bucket mentality.
And basically, the story goes that there was a fisherman
and he brought in crabs,
and somebody was like, "Put a lid on it,"
and he said, "Oh no, these are Mexican crabs.
They'll drag each other down before letting themselves out."
And it goes for--
They use it for all of us, for all Latinos.
And I think that's a really interesting concept.
Because although I do think that it's no secret that
there is a lot of colorism and racism and homophobia
and all of these things within our community,
I also think that a crab's environment is not a bucket.
We were put in a bucket.
And I think we were made to believe
that we have to fight against each other
and that there's only one seat at the table
and that we have to fight for the one seat.
But I also think that we don't get enough credit.
I think that although, as a community,
we have a lot of growing and learning to do,
and I think that
we are better than the ways that we behave sometimes,
I also think that we don't get enough credit
for how lovely we are
and how much love and support we do give.
And we have been put in really unfair situations
that we are trying to figure out a way out of
and that is not easy.
And so I think we as a community are pretty badass
and I think we're on our way.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
I am Ritchie Torres from the Bronx.
I'm the United States Congressman for the South Bronx,
and I do not fit into the typical profile
of a member of Congress.
I was raised by a single mother who had to raise three children
on minimum wage, which in the 1990s
was a mere $4.25 an hour.
I often ask people, "Imagine being a single mother
in the most expensive city in America,
raising three children on $4.25 an hour."
So I grew up in a public housing development
right across the street from Trump Golf Course,
living in conditions of mold and mildew,
leaks and lead,
without reliable heat and hot water in the winter.
And as I saw the conditions in my home get worse
every single day,
the government had invested more than 100 million dollars
in a golf course named after Donald Trump.
And I remember asking myself at the time,
what does it say about our society?
That we're willing to invest more money in a golf course
than in the homes of poor people of color in public housing.
And so that experience of housing inequality
is what inspired me to become politically active.
I got my start in politics as a housing organizer
and then at age 24, I took the leap of faith
and ran for public office.
I had no deep pockets.
I had no ties to the party machine,
but I spent a whole year knocking on doors.
And I won my first campaign on the strength of door-to-door,
face-to-face campaigning.
I became the first openly gay elected official from the Bronx.
What makes my story distinctive
is that seven years before then,
I was at the lowest point in my life.
I had dropped out of college because I was struggling
with depression.
I found myself abusing substances,
and there were moments when I thought of taking my own life
because I felt as if the world around me had collapsed,
that nothing seemed to be going right.
And then seven years later,
I became the youngest elected official
in the largest city in America.
And today I'm a United States congressman.
You know, a wise person once said,
"If you don't have a seat at the table,
then you're probably on the menu."
And every community should have a seat at the table.
The insurrection against the United States Capitol
during the electoral college vote
was not simply an assault on a physical structure.
It was an assault on the very idea
of America as a multiracial democracy.
And so, those from communities of color,
those from the Latino community have to be politically active.
We have to demonstrate
that the future of America does not belong to White supremacy.
It belongs to multiracial democracy, belongs to all of us.
In general,
people see politics as something to be avoided.
And we should learn to embrace politics.
Meet with your elected officials,
lobby them on the issues that matter to you.
Be part of the civic life of your community
because if you do not care enough about your neighborhood
to be politically and civically engaged,
then no one else will.
There's a quote I love from Margaret Mead.
She once said, "Never doubt that a small group of committed,
thoughtful citizens can change the world.
In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
CAMERA ASSISTANT: One.
Well, most people ask me,
"How did you get to be so outspoken?"
My mother would always say,
"Habla, nena, habla."
You know, "Speak, nena, speak."
And my grandmother would add,
"Habla fuerte, habla duro."
You know, "Speak up."
I was very little, I'm not tall, you know,
maybe four feet, 11 inches and a half.
And I would get bullied in the playground a lot.
So one time, my grandmother came to pick me up at school,
and I must have been, I think first grade,
and I had a bloody nose and a little bit of a cut lip,
and she said, "¿Que pasó?" What happened?
So I told her this kid is bullying me.
She-- I didn't use the word "bully,"
you know, he's picking on me.
My grandmother was a pacifist, but she also thought
that you had every right to defend yourself.
She said, "Well, let me tell you something.
You have to hit as hard as you can,
you have to run as fast as you can,
and you have to scream as loud as you can."
And that stuck with me.
It's September 20th, 2017.
I was the mayor of San Juan, and Hurricane Maria,
a category four hurricane with gusts of category five,
hit Puerto Rico.
And the San Juan and the Puerto Rico that I knew
were never gonna be the same.
I knew that from the get-go.
The minute you see that vision
of that fierce, you know... (BLOWS AIR) ...hurricane
just engulfing the island nation of Puerto Rico,
you say, "Oh, my God."
We went out in the street September 20th.
I have never... felt the eerie silence.
It speaks volumes.
It is so desolate
that it just runs through your core.
And the only thing that broke the silence was the sorrow,
and the screams, and the tears of people
going back to their homes
while there still were tropical storm winds
and saying, "I have nothing."
And no aid and respect from those
that were supposed to be there to help us.
And they're telling us to do things that we can't do.
"Fill out this form on the internet."
We have no internet.
And on September 29th, I got fed up.
I told the truth in a very loud way,
and the truth was that we were dying.
That we were dying and that--
My exact words said, "We are dying here,
and you are killing us
with your bureaucracy and your inefficiency."
And I pleaded, I said, I mean,
you know, people that know me must have said,
"What the heck is that woman saying?"
You know, "She's begging."
I said, "I'm begging the president
of the United States to help us."
Well, he threw paper towels at us.
That was-- that was his response.
And the fact that four years later,
only about six percent of the homes have been fixed,
it's criminal.
We don't, we don't know--
we don't deserve that, but no one deserves that.
I was very criticized by people in Puerto Rico
who thought that by speaking up, I was endangering the help.
And I'm thinking, "What help? He's not sending anything.
How does being submissive y arrodillaos
has worked out for you up to now?"
If they say you need to be quiet,
you speak up even louder
because that means you're saying something
that is worth being listened to.
And the amazing thing is,
where the federal government turned their back on us,
the American people took care of us,
brought food and water and took care of our wounds.
People from New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago,
people from the diaspora.
Everybody came together
and people were really dying of hunger,
they were dying of thirst.
Three thousand is the amount of people thought to have died.
I just hope they know we couldn't get to them,
not that we didn't want to get to them.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Olga Merediz.
(IN AMERICAN ACCENT) Or Olga Merediz, depending.
I'm Cuban American, I am an actress, I am a singer.
I have done theater, television, and film.
I went to a high school in Puerto Rico.
And I had these incredible teachers,
Joan Delvecchio and Lara Rifkold at--
And they-- I was doing musicals at that time
and I was playing Annie Get Your Gun,
I was playing Annie.
And I was doing, you know, Hello, Dolly!,
and I was playing Dolly.
And I was doing all these, you know, "American" musicals
and I was playing the lead.
I didn't even think twice,
"Oh, I'm Latina and I'm playing Dolly.
I'm Latina and playing Annie in Annie Get Your Gun."
It's just, that's the way I grew up.
And then you get to New York and L.A.,
and all of a sudden, you're La-- you're "Latina."
And you're like, okay, you're gonna play the maid.
(LAUGHS)
And I would sometimes turn the maid down three times,
and they would come back, "We'll give you more money,
we'll pick you up in a car, we'll give you--
you'll be recurring, you'll be the recurring maid."
And basically they would-- I would shoot the episode
and then they would never call me back.
They just needed that one episode or whatever,
but things have changed and I'm glad.
But occasionally, you know,
they still want to offer you the maid.
I'm like, really?
I feel like I've given everything up for this business.
On the one hand, I feel like I did what I wanted to do.
But yes, when I was doing Broadway,
I missed my brother's wedding because the show must go on.
It's also extremely challenging physically.
You have to take care of yourself.
You can't drink, you gotta eat well,
you gotta do your Epsom salt baths,
you got to go to the chiropractor, the massage,
the physical therapy.
And you spend a lot of time just preparing your--
propping your body up to do the show.
Vocally, if you're singing eight shows a week,
for example, on Broadway, and you have a challenging song,
you might have to spend the whole day,
you know, quiet, and I would bring a little notebook,
you know, to the grocery store.
Because I had to rest my voice
in order to sing a very challenging song
because it's okay to sing a challenging song once, twice,
three times, five times, ten times,
but when you have to sing a song a thousand times,
you have to, sometimes, you can't speak for the whole day
in order to give the audience that performance
that they deserve and that you want to give.
These are the challenges that people don't know about.
You know, they go see a show on Broadway
and they go, "Oh, my God, I loved it.
It was so good.
I laughed, I cried," but they don't see the work behind.
I've left the business I don't know how many times.
I've always wanted to go back to school
and do something else,
but it's like something that you just have to
express and you can't not do it.
I think when people, especially the young people
that stop me on the street right now, they see themselves.
They see themselves and I remind them
of their tías, their abuelas, the people in their family,
the people that maybe didn't have the spotlight
or never had the spotlight.
And it's very emotional, it's very touching
when you see somebody
that reminds you of somebody in your family.
I think what makes it all worth it for me is when
I get stopped on the street by a young person
and they say, "You are an inspiration to me.
You don't know how you inspire me,
you're an example."
And I go, "Oh, my God, what did I do
to make this person think this way?"
But hey, I'll take it. It's very fulfilling.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Bianca Marroquín. I'm a dancer, singer, actress,
and I am very privileged to do what I love for a living
and very privileged to be on Broadway.
I was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, in Mexico.
When I was a year and a half old,
my parents moved to the border.
Matamoros, Tamaulipas border with Brownsville, Texas.
So my mother used to always tell us
that we were very privileged kids
because we got to grow up between two worlds,
two traditions, two cultures, two languages.
I, from a very early age, knew exactly what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be a dancer,
I wanted to be a professional dancer.
And I was very lucky that I had parents who supported me
and took me to ballet class since I was three,
and my journey began there.
I actually wanted to become a flamenco dancer,
but my life took a slightly different path
and I wound up doing musical theater in Mexico City.
My first show was Beauty and the Beast,
then Rent, Phantom of the Opera. Chicago comes to Mexico.
They wanted women between 35 and 47 years of age
and preferably famous.
I was 25 and no one knew who I was,
but they trusted me with Roxie then.
And so that's where my journey as Roxie began.
That was 2001 in Mexico, in Mexico City.
Six months later,
our producer Morris Gilbert calls me to his office and says,
"I just got off the phone with Broadway,
and they're inviting you to come over to Broadway
and do a three week stint of Roxie.
So we gotta learn it in English,
so here's the script in English."
So I would study the script in English during the day,
and I would do the show in Spanish at night.
It took me about three weeks and then the day came,
and I took my flight and I arrived to New York City.
I had four days of rehearsal, forgot about my Spanish,
just focused on my English.
And when my Broadway debut came, which was June 18th, 2002,
I had no idea of the magnitude of what was happening.
I've been doing the show Chicago the Musical on Broadway
for the past 20 years.
It's true.
When I got my opportunity to come to Broadway,
a lot of people in Mexico City told me, "Be careful, beware.
People are not going to treat you nice,
and you're not going to be accepted.
And take protection, and here's a crystal,
and here's this necklace."
And to tell you the truth, I never felt any of that.
The only time that I then understood
what they were talking about was...
There was this reporter that did an interview
with me over the phone.
And we did the interview in English.
And then at the very end of the interview, he says,
"I'm gonna tell you the truth.
When they told me I needed to interview you,
I said I'll call her and I'll do the interview,
but if she speaks with an accent,
I'm going to discontinue the interview."
I didn't know what to tell him.
I was so young and I was so, like, afraid
and I... I didn't know, like, thank you? What are you saying?
That's mean. Why?
And then I remembered what they had told me
before I left Mexico City. I'm like, I see.
My mom used to tell us we were so privileged
because we were raised on the border,
and so I got to learn English when I was a baby, a kid.
And so, because of that now, cut to when I'm 25, 26 years old
and I get this opportunity to come to Broadway,
I don't have that thick of an accent.
I don't have... and so they accept me more.
And I understood my friends' journey,
people who spoke with an accent back then
didn't receive those opportunities
and they were rejected a lot.
After the show,
I come out to sign autographs and maybe there was somebody
from Mexico there too, like...
(IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) And then the English-speaking people
around at the stage door were like, "You speak Spanish?"
I said, "Read your playbill, yeah, read my bio.
I come from Mexico."
But it was sort of like a compliment too
because I didn't want to be, you know, typed or put in a box
or labeled or anything.
So I wanted them to just love me because of my talent.
Because I was funny, because I made them feel,
because they believed me when I was telling
the story of Roxie Hart in Chicago,
that took place in Chicago, Illinois.
And yeah.
(IN SPANISH)
(CHUCKLES)
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
(IN ENGLISH) My name is Curly Velasquez.
I am born and raised here in Hollywood.
I'm a Salvadorian actor, personality, influencer, writer.
(IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) When I first started
working on the internet, I guess,
I was hired at this company and when I got there,
they said, "We're going to hire you as the receptionist."
But when I walked in, there were no phones.
So I actually started in the canteen.
I would stock the food, stock the snacks.
It was kind of like being at the right place at the right time.
I remember I was walking back to the kitchen,
my station if you will,
and I was holding stuff and I could hear
the actual influencers of where I worked,
the big personalities, the big internet YouTubers.
And I remember walking by them and they were like,
"I think we're being called,
something called, like, influencers now."
And I was with my stuff, I'm like, "What? Influencers,
what does that mean?"
And they were like, "We can influence people.
We can talk about the things that we use,
the places that we stay at."
People were getting things for free
and I was like, ahí limpiando, like what? Like la chismosa.
Like, listening. What? Free stuff?
What is this world that we live in?
You can get paid for just being yourself.
What?
And they started to put me in videos,
and I'm talking about things
that people necessarily weren't talking about.
I was like, "Yo soy centroamericano.
I was born and raised in L.A.
I have a pussy nipple ring right now."
It was revolutionary for a lot of people
to see a queer Central American person
on a mainstream digital network like that.
I'm either amongst the first
or the first queer Central American on the internet.
(LAUGHS)
And I'll fight somebody over that.
I'm kidding, I can't fight.
My best friend does that. I don't want to copy him.
Anyways, so it kind of blew up.
People would stop me on the street,
people would be like, "Oh, my God, I love you."
And I'm like, how do you even know who I am?
And it literally changed my entire life.
I am growing and thriving,
but suddenly, I'm about to lose it all.
I grew up in a time when Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie,
Lindsay Lohan, all those people were like,
the people that we looked up to.
And it was like opulence, drugs, sex,
and it was like, of course, I want to grow up to be that.
So that's what I tried to do, that's what I tried to be.
By the time I was 14, 15, I was doing drugs
and I was getting drunk by the time I was 17.
And you have to understand, during the daytime,
I was like the sweetie pie. Like, hello, how are you?
Like, I would cuddle up with my abuela.
I would take, you know, drive my mom wherever she wanted to go.
But by night, I was a ho, a big one.
If you gave me something that I could snort, I would snort it.
I was waking up to busted lips and black eyes,
on random bridges in the heart of L.A.,
not remembering how I got there.
I almost lost my job and family and friends
that had loved me for so long.
I had what a lot of addicts call a rock bottom.
It was that moment where it was like,
either you get your sh... together,
or you're about to lose it all.
I decided to go sober and the minute I do,
my life just went... (WHOOSHES) It just blew up.
Suddenly, I had more money in my bank account.
Suddenly, I was having real conversations,
making real connections.
Suddenly I was on TV, playing myself.
Suddenly, I was hosting and talking about celebrity fashion,
being myself, getting paid for literally being the person
that would get made fun of their entire life.
Back in the day, it was like,
"You're a boy, why are you wearing makeup?"
Now, it was like, "Hey, what eyeliner are you using?"
Yeah, it's not easy to be sober
and it's interesting because being Latino,
like, alcohol, people think it's a personality trait.
(IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) Like, what do you mean?
I went to a wedding in Mexico and they were like,
"He doesn't drink?" I'm like, "No, I don't drink."
It was like, I might as well have said that, I don't know,
I'm the worst person in the world.
People just, you know,
people think that it is a personality trait.
It doesn't have to be.
I think for me, in an ideal world,
people who were amazing and have a great message
would be the ones that would be celebrated.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where if you're hot,
you'll probably get followers and stuff.
But I think that my main focus is not so much to be
another voice on the internet
telling you to learn this new dance, learn this new trend.
The only thing that I ever want to influence people to do
is call your grandma, call your family,
tell the people that you love in your life, "I love you."
I hope to be somebody that can share humanity,
both the ugly and the good
and tell you that you're doing great, sweetie.
Keep going.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Carla Morrison, and I am a singer-songwriter.
And yeah, been in the business for 15 years, I think.
I thought just making-- having my dream job,
which was songwriting and making songs
was just going to be a happy place all the time.
But then I realized that to do that, I had to be famous
and with fame comes a lot of sacrifices.
Fame just makes you very self-conscious.
It just makes you want to be perfect all the time.
It also changes the people around you.
They perceive you different.
They think you're special, but we're all special.
As Mexicans, we are taught that we just need to work hard.
We don't have to pay attention
to our feelings or to our struggles sometimes,
we just have to work and work.
(IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) Literally and so, when I was working
and doing all these tours and albums,
I was always, always working.
And so I got burned out. I got burned out
and I had to just face the fact that I was depressed.
And I was anxious 'cause I had no time for myself,
no self-love, no time for me to reflect or have friends
or be with my family.
So I just had to take a hiatus, take a pause and move to Paris.
Why Paris? Because I suddenly was invited by my now husband.
That one time he told me,
"Oh, I would love to live in Paris
and study a master's degree."
And so I said, "You know what?
I'm so burned out, it doesn't matter."
(LAUGHS) "Let's just go."
And we moved to Paris, France,
to study music and to study French.
Paris just stopped me in my tracks.
It told me to have my coffee
and not bring the laptop to the coffee.
It told me to, "Get some wine, girl,
and get some cheese, sit at a park, and chill."
It taught me that I could learn a new language when I was 33.
I never thought I could.
It taught me that I could go to music school at 33
and learn jazz.
It taught me that I could just start over.
And I don't think it was necessarily Paris.
I just think it was the fact that I was in a foreign country
with a foreign language.
So spending the first couple of months, almost a year,
learning the language.
It taught me a lot about silence
and how all these voices within me came out
and were like, "Hey." (LAUGHS) "We've been here for years.
Wanna talk?"
And I cried a lot.
I had to really just learn how to say no too.
French taught me to say no and that it was fine,
and that nothing was going to happen.
Nobody was going to die if I said no.
I remember a manager that was working with me said,
"But you can't take too much time off.
They're going to forget about you."
And I said, "Well, let them forget about me.
I gotta go. I have no songs, girl."
I said, "I have no songs and I need to live."
I was scared, obviously, when I left.
(LAUGHING) I was like, "Oh my God, diosito, help me.
I hope I'm not like, effing up."
But when I left and then a lot of things started to happen.
Like, one of my songs called "Disfruto"
became viral in Colombia.
Nicky Jam did a remix because the song meant to him
a lot during quarantine.
Ricky Martin sent me a WhatsApp
and wanted me to write a song with him.
And all these things, as if music was saying,
"We got you girl, don't worry, take your time."
For the longest time,
I told myself I couldn't sing in R&B style
because I'm Mexican.
I'm not supposed to do that.
And then I went to jazz school and they were like,
"You have a good voice, girl. Like, you should try it.
You know, you have a different range,"
and I was like, "You think so?" "Yeah, you can."
You're told a story. You're this, you're a woman,
you're a Latina, you're a Mexican.
Your dreams go to a certain level.
But, no, my dreams can reach any level.
It doesn't matter where I'm from.
I had to learn that.
That I had to make time for myself,
I had to enjoy the simple things in life,
and I had to believe in myself again
and make my job my hobby again.
Enjoying making music, not having expectations,
not letting the business get into my life.
Just, you know,
let it be the dream that it was always.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Wilson Cruz. I am an actor, an activist,
I am Puerto Rican, and I am a gay man.
How about that?
I came out in 1994. 1994, yes.
You know, I came out because I knew I was going to do
this little show called My So-Called Life.
I was actually in the process of making it.
This character not only was going to be
the first gay teenager on network television
in the States, but I knew that he--
that a lot of people were going to relate to him.
And...
it was important for me to...
infuse him with as much of myself
and my experience growing up as I could.
And I needed to tell my parents before I said that
on The Phil Donahue Show.
Phil Donahue was a talk show back in the day, kids.
So I wanted them to hear it from me first obviously.
And, you know, my father especially
had some very, um, concrete ideas about gender
and about what those gender roles were
and about masculinity and femininity.
It was a tough conversation and he did not take it well,
and he threw me out of the house.
And, um...
And I survived, right? I made it through.
And it was a difficult year in which I didn't speak to him.
You know, my family is everything to me.
We were very close.
And the best part of that story for me is that
once the show started airing on ABC,
we did an episode where my character, Rickie,
gets kicked out of his home
and when that episode aired,
the credits at the end were rolling and my phone rang
and it was my father asking if we could finally have a talk.
And through the process of being vulnerable in front of him
and allowing him to be as transparent
as he could possibly be,
we have created this relationship
in the last 30 years that I'm so proud to say
is based on truth and real love for each other,
that's based in a real knowledge of who we actually are.
So when people come up to me and they say,
"Rickie Vasquez changed my life."
I can honestly and authentically say to them,
"Oh, I know, he changed mine too."
I think there's a lot that the Latino community
can learn from the LGBTQ community
about how to advance our political and social needs.
You know, you look at the LGBTQ community,
we have the lesbians, we have the gays,
the bisexuals, the transgenders,
those are all different communities who come together
and latch onto each other
because there's strength in numbers.
We are an enormous umbrella community,
very much like the Latino community really is.
You're not gonna find a prouder Puerto Rican than me,
but I also know that in order for my people to rise up
and to live up to their potential in this country,
I have to also see myself in my Mexican brothers and sisters,
in my Colombian siblings, right? That their plight is mine.
I think there is power in that enormous number of people
coming together to fight for each other.
I think we can learn that from the LGBTQ community.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
My name is Mickey Melendez.
I'm one of the cofounders of the Young Lords in New York City.
The Young Lords was the most significant
cultural, political, and social movement of my generation.
I consider myself an activist
and had been an activist since 1969.
The Young Lords was a primarily Puerto Rican organization,
although 30% of the organization was not Puerto Rican,
it was African American and other Latinx.
We were part of the civil rights movement
that was going on in this country.
People reclaiming their culture,
people reclaiming their history and learning about the history.
I was born in East Harlem.
A Puerto Rican father who was a merchant marine
and a Cuban mother.
My mother had a third-grade education,
but she was an economist because she was able to,
you know, with my father's pay,
you know, make everything happen for us.
Very Catholic, very religious.
You know, I think I became an altar boy because of her.
The family always came to her for advice,
although she wasn't the oldest,
she was kind of somewhere in the middle of 12 children.
I learned of service very early on in life,
watching my mother translate for patients in a hospital.
They would hear her speak English
and the doctor would say, "Would you mind translating?"
So it was for me, very simply, very early on in life, you know,
was understanding the value of service
and the fulfillment that it gives you as well.
The Young Lords in New York were active
from 1969 to about 1973, '74.
We were between 18 and 22 years old during that time.
We were rooted in service to our people and direct action.
We were able to identify problems and issues
in our community and also offer solutions to them,
and try to negotiate with government.
If they did not acquiesce to, they didn't grant to
whatever the things that we were asking for,
we would get involved in direct action.
The first one was the Garbage Offensive.
We would pick up the garbage,
we went to the sanitation department
to see if we can get brooms and bags, they denied it.
So we then went back to the neighborhood,
swept up the garbage, put it on Third Avenue,
and mysteriously, lighter fluid and a match
appeared and burned the garbage.
Immediately, the fire department came.
Immediately, the sanitation department came.
And then after that, the mayor sends
a representative to talk to us about,
what is it? Why did this happen?
We tell him, very clearly,
the garbage isn't being picked up in East Harlem.
In our community, it's a health issue
and that was one of the first health issues
that we dealt with.
We did TB testing, we did lead poison testing.
We took over hospitals, free breakfast program,
clothing drives, legal assistance.
We never spent a day in jail for anything that we did,
and we did some pretty audacious things.
When we took over Lincoln Hospital,
we got away with it.
When we took over Lincoln Hospital the second time
for the development of a drug program.
In a lot of ways,
the Black Panthers were our model.
So we had a free breakfast program.
You know, today, every school in the United States
has a breakfast program.
Again, things that are rooted
in the legacy of that period of time.
I think one of the things that people can look at today,
nationally, is the Patient Bill of Rights, which everyone has,
which is rooted in the health programs
of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords.
Activism now, really I believe should be focused
on local politics and getting people
that are going to come back and be responsive
and responsible to an organization
that helped elect them.
I also believe that, you know,
the activism that needs to take place,
it's an activism that includes an intergenerational formation,
to be able to be there to provide
the lessons that we learned.
There's a whole body of mistakes that the Young Lords made
that we can learn from that don't have to be repeated.
Activism is not a hobby or an event,
activism is a lifestyle.
It's a long-term commitment rooted in love and commitment,
and that's what I've done for the past 55 years of my life.
I am a little older than 55.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
I always introduce myself in one of my languages,
which is the Mojave language, Aha Makav,
so I would say Natalie...
(SPEAKING MOJAVE)
(IN ENGLISH) Which is me saying my name
and also saying, "It's very lucky for me
to be here with you."
And for me, that feels really important
because my language is so rooted in my land.
And one of the ways I think about Indigeneity is that
it also includes, you know, being Latina and being Latinx
because the languages, we have a lot of borrowed words
in Mojave from Spanish, but also,
I grew up in the lands that were Indigenous
meaning Mojave, Aka Makav,
and very much related to what was once Mexico.
So that's often how I lead.
And then I think the other things I like people to know is,
you know, one I'm a poet, I'm a sister,
I'm one of nine siblings.
I'm a former professional basketball player,
which again, has very much shaped the ways
I imagine the world.
And those are kind of the things.
I'm a professor, you know.
Pretty normal, pretty normal things I guess.
(INSTRUMENT JANGLING)
Often to succeed, we have to go so far from our families.
Like, to succeed in the communities we come from,
we have to leave our families.
And so I decided to come back
and work with my elders on that language.
It's one of the most difficult things I've ever done.
It's almost a practice of loss.
You know, every time we gained a word or remembered a word
or remembered a story,
I also had to realize that
we were constantly losing those things.
One of the ways that I approach poetry
is the way I approach language
and it was something, again, given to me by my grandparents,
you know, on one side, a Mojave language
that has been taken away in a lot of respects.
You have to fight to get that language.
And then on the other side, I have my grandparents
who were from Spain and Mexico, who had really rough lives,
and part of why they didn't insist
on my father speaking Spanish--
I speak Spanish, my father does not,
but they insisted on that
so that he would do better in school, you know.
And so I think just having that condition of language
in which I grew up,
it just makes me really appreciate,
like every single word matters.
And I think one of the things I've learned from my elders,
whether it's my grandmother and my grandfather
who are from Mexico and Spain or whether it was my elders
in Fort Mojave is that the saddest thing probably
in my entire life is to see their loss.
And I don't yet know if I understand
what that loss means, but to ask them something
and for them to say,
"I don't know the answer
and there's nobody left for me to ask."
And there's something very just, I don't--
the word is not humbling,
but it's just a reality that makes you realize that
yes, all of-- yes loss, yes pain,
and this incredible living.
This incredible wonder and curiosity
for who we've yet to be and yet to become.
And I think one of the most important things
I've learned is that
we're not the stories that people have told about us,
but we're the stories that I might tell
or that my children might tell
or that my nieces and nephews might tell.
You know, we're very much in the future.
And that's something it took me looking deeply
into the past to arrive at.
How do we move from being descendants of our people
to becoming the next group of ancestors?
And the only way we can do that is to connect with them.
If I can offer anything to anyone,
I think it would be just the invitation
to talk to our elders, to spend the time with them.
One of my elders told me,
"The reason why I opened up to you
is because you kept coming back.
I could have told you anything fast,
and then you would have taken off,
but you kept coming back.
And what it made me realize is not only that
you wanted to hear, but that I had a lot to tell."
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
I'm a big believer in creating my own path
when that path doesn't exist.
And definitely, the role of
talking about Latin music in this country,
of chronicling Latin music in this country,
of talking about the artists and the business,
that didn't exist.
When I started writing about music, that just wasn't a thing.
No one was really covering Latin music first of all.
And if they were,
it was being done in a very superficial manner.
The vast majority of my colleagues,
they didn't know this music at all.
So it was a permanent education
and from this, it became kind of a mission.
And the mission was you have to learn about this music.
You have to learn about these artists.
You have to hear them. They're so amazing.
How can you not know them?
It's happening right under your noses.
Why isn't anyone talking about it?
Why is no one saying that Vicente Fernández
is selling out Madison Square Garden
or that Shakira is selling out all over the country?
Ricky Martin. Ricky Martin was playing stadiums,
he had been part of Menudo, he had been in General Hospital,
and yet when he played the Grammys in 1999,
Rosie O'Donnell very famously said,
"I had never heard of him before tonight."
We knew Ricky Martin. No one else did.
I remember when Celia Cruz died,
and I raised my hand, I said, "Celia Cruz died.
We have to cover this in a big way."
And somebody said, "Who is Celia Cruz?"
Which is quite frankly, a very legitimate question.
I explained who Celia Cruz was and then they were still like,
"Oh, I don't know if this is for us."
And then of course, there was a big parade
down Fifth Avenue in New York
and they shut down the entire city.
And at that point, I got the phone call saying,
"Oh, we should be doing this."
You needed New York City shut down to recognize this?
That's fine, we did it.
But the fact that you didn't believe me when I said it
because maybe I wasn't the right person
to be making the call.
Maybe you needed someone who wasn't Latin
telling you that it was important.
That is the kind of thing that has to change.
I think the fact that there are so few Latins
in newsrooms across the country,
the fact that big newspapers like the New York Times
and the Washington Post and even the L.A. Times,
until very recently, didn't have Latinos
in the newsroom or had very little
just shows that there is a big bias.
And I think a lot of the bias comes because of the language,
because a lot of Latinos speak Spanish.
Spanish is their first language.
And there's this belief, I think,
maybe it's not articulated, but I've certainly found it,
that if you speak another language
as your first language, especially if it's Spanish,
and if you speak with an accent, you are less than.
Latin was covered during Hispanic Heritage Month,
or it was covered because okay, we got to do one Latin thing.
It was never covered
because people realized that it was valuable.
That was very frustrating to me.
It's not supposed to be a quota.
It's supposed to be your reality.
Why are you ignoring this piece of reality?
That's what was aggravating.
Bad Bunny is the most listened to artist on Spotify,
and you better figure out how to talk about this guy
because if half the world is listening to him,
and you're not because he's in a language you don't like,
then you have a problem.
It's not the problem of the other billion people
who are on to it, it's your problem.
I'm not saying you have to accept it
because it's Latin,
I'm saying you shouldn't reject it because it's Latin.
And so kind of "translating," if you will,
became very much a mission.
And I think we've seen the results of that mission
because now Latin music is very normalized.
It's thanks to, of course, many people and many elements,
not just me, obviously,
but it's a beautiful thing to see,
and I think we're all richer because of it.
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
(IN SPANISH)
(INSTRUMENT RATTLING)
♪ ("LA CUCARACHA" BY ANDREA ROCHA PLAYS) ♪
♪ (SONG CONTINUES) ♪
♪ (SINGING IN SPANISH) ♪
♪ (CONTINUES SINGING IN SPANISH) ♪
♪ (SONG FADES) ♪