Cuban blogger Orlando Luis Pardo reported earlier this week on citizen journalism portal All Voices that award-winning writers Manuel García Verdecia and Rafael Vilches Proenza were fired from their jobs and expelled from the local writers union for improper use of the Internet. (more...)

Mediaite's "Meet The Prensa" columnist Jose Simian is not only a producer at NY1 Noticias, but a huge music fan — obvious on this site in English and at NY1 in Spanish in his ongoing series of interviews with Latin luminaries of literature and music. In this installment, he speaks with Latin-Canadian singer Amanda Martinez about her new album, "Amor," which debuted to a strong reception (#6 on World Music on the Canadian charts, #1 on iTunes in the same category. Here she talks about, how she found her musical identity, and why she prefers to attack the Latin American classics with the sheer charm of her voice" (according to José; I have to trust him on the Spanish). (more...)

the aughts

I’ll take any decade over one in which the mention of being Latino prompted immediate “Livin’ la Vida Loca” (1999) jokes or (worse) someone trying to dance the “Macarena” (circa 1996). As far as artificial time measurements go, the Aughts had an easy chance of beating the Nineties in terms of Latino cultural penetration into the United States. (more...)

How often are Hispanics portrayed in major media outlets? Not remotely close to their 15% of the U.S. population, a new study from the Pew Hispanic Center argues. (more...)

When he answered Mediaite’s phone call last Friday, Latino activist Roberto Lovato was smiling somewhere in Greenville, North Carolina, listening to his favorite song, “Viva la Música” by Ray Barretto, while getting ready to go to a party – one of the many parties he would attend in the next days celebrating the resignation of Lou Dobbs. Lovato is the co-founder of Presente.org, a grassroots-meets-online organization for the advancement of Latinos, responsible for Basta Dobbs, the most notorious of the Latino grassroots organizations that demanded the firing of the anchor. The activists accused Dobbs of fueling anti-immigrant extremism, and CNN of double standard for profiting from hatred against Latinos while courting them with Latino talent and Latino-oriented programming. (more...)

Following the news of the assault on Yoani Sánchez and other bloggers by security forces last Friday in Havana, the United States has decided to intervene. Late on Monday, the Department of State issued the following statement, openly denouncing the Cuban government and promising “inquiries” on the status of the bloggers: (more...)

Exclusive In the two years since she started writing her blog Generation Y, Yoani Sánchez has become one of the most notorious voices of Cuban dissidence. Using different methods to overcome the restrictions for Internet access on the island, this former philologist has turned posts on her daily struggles into metaphors for the Cuban drama. Her blogging has also produced two books and received awards such as Spain’s Ortega y Gasset and Columbia Journalism School’s Maria Moors Cabot. But the Cuban government has denied her permission to travel to receive them. What makes Sánchez’s story more compelling is that she emigrated to Europe in 2002, but decided to return to the island two years later “for family reasons and against the advice of friends and acquaintances.” Last Friday, while she was on her way to a demonstration for nonviolence in Havana with friends, Yoani says she was kidnapped and beaten by men in plain clothes — presumably state agents — in what seems to be the first documented physical attack on members of the growing network of Cuban bloggers. She described her injuries as "No blood, but black and blues, punches, pulled hairs, blows to the head, kidneys, knee and chest.'' (Update: The U.S. Department of State has written a letter to the Cuban authorities saying it “strongly deplores the assault on bloggers.”) We spoke to Yoani on Sunday night. (more...)

I see high chances that the next great report on Latinos in the United States will be entitled “What is it that Latinos want?” CNN’s documentary “Latino in America” (no official online video as of this writing) debuted last week to great expectations, but so far the response from Latinos has been mostly negative, toward the special and its host Soledad O’Brien. (more...)

So what did President Obama say to Univisión? It was hard to tell.

As I began to watch the interview he gave to Jorge Ramos, I found myself moving closer and closer to the TV, as if I were deciphering a strange language. The premier Spanish network had made the awful choice of dubbing instead of subtitling the interview. (more...)

After four hours of electrifying tennis, 20-year old Juan Martín Del Potro defeated Roger Federer in the US Open final. It was an unexpected feat by the 20-year old Argentinean, who was playing his first Grand Slam final. Once the players finished the round of gentlemanly statements that define a tennis trophy ceremony, presenter Dick Enberg rushed to explain in morbid detail the prizes for the champion. But Del Potro seemed to have other things on his mind—who knows, perhaps glory may not be a Lexus convertible, after all. “Can I speak in Spanish?” Del Potro said when the presenter finally paused for a second. (more...)

"It was not a campaign of El Diario to get her to the Supreme Court," she says firmly. "Clearly, no amount of campaigning can get you that job. She filled all the criteria." Rossana Rosado, publisher and CEO of one of the fastest growing newspapers in the country chooses her words carefully but not without passion. She is of course, talking about Sonia Sotomayor, whom her newspaper chose as one of its Remarkable Women for 2009 in May, right around the time her name was being mentioned as one of the most likely Supreme Court nominees. New York legislators Charles Schumer and Nydia Velázquez — the two politicians who championed Sotomayor's candidacy — were at the banquet for the awards. Sotomayor was the main speaker at the event. El Diario published op-eds and editorials, rallied politicians and community leaders behind the Bronx-raised judge. Yet Rosado won't call it a campaign. (more...)

It started as a quiet radio talk show—a dialogue between two journalists from competing Hispanic television networks. Both were praising the way their stations had been covering the ongoing hearings of Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the usual display of Hispanic pride, respect for the accomplished judge and her mother, and the reshaping of the American Dream. (more...)

Where is the Hispanic New Yorker? What would a Latino-oriented equivalent look like? Questions like these have haunted me ever since I started working for a local Spanish TV station four years ago. And while I am aware that "a Hispanic New Yorker" could be an oxymoron —it can be seen as a product of a white-dominated world— the idea may be useful to try to explain the lack of sophisticated national outlets for the largest minority in the country. (more...)