Welcome to Axios Latino, a newsletter to tell you every Tuesday and Thursday the stories that have a special impact on Latino communities in the United States and Latin America. If you are interested in subscribing and receiving the newsletter in your email (
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ANNOUNCEMENT
: This week Axios Latino premieres Jueves de Pachanga, to give voice to their achievements.
Did you just get promoted at work?
Has a new baby or pet entered your family?
Let us know by sending an email here (even better if there's a photo) to include the stories in the Thursday edition.
1 theme to highlight: A less white canvas
Latina art curators are making their mark in the American art sphere with positions in major museums.
Why It Matters
: They're highlighting voices that have been excluded or marginalized in the art scene and cultivating Latino art in spaces that traditionally don't focus on it.
Art curators Margaret Salazar-Porzio, Elizabeth Ferrer, and E. Carmen RamosIllustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios.
Photos: Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
News Momentum:
An exhibition co-curated by Terezita Romo has just opened at the Denver Art Museum, Colorado.
It is the first of its kind centered on La Malinche, or Malintzin, a multilingual indigenous woman who left a controversial legacy on both sides of the border since she was an interpreter for Hernán Cortés and gave birth to her son, considered by some to be the first figure of the miscegenation.
Latino and Latina curators and art historians
have founded and directed important Hispanic institutions in the past, such as El Museo del Barrio or the Mexican Museum of San Francisco.
But the most recent appointments and jobs have been in more conventional spheres and with a more general public.
E. Carmen Ramos was appointed chief curator and curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC last year, the first woman and non-white person to hold that position.
Marcela Guerrero was promoted to associate curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in July.
She has already organized two upcoming exhibitions, of Puerto Rican artists exploring post-Hurricane María life and another focused on artist Martine Gutiérrez.
Elizabeth Ferrer, curator of contemporary art at the BRIC organization in Brooklyn, published
Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History
last year.
It is the first major compendium of her kind, telling the stories of more than 80 Latino photographers and exploring aesthetic similarities over the centuries.
The list of featured curators also includes Mari Carmen Ramírez, a Puerto Rican who is curator of Latino and Latin American art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Margaret Salazar-Porzio, curator of Latino history and arts at the National Museum of American History in Houston. Smithsonian.
The cover of the book on photography of American Latinos, by Elizabeth Ferrer. Courtesy of UW Press
In an interview, Ramos says
that he is optimistic to see more people of Latin descent in important roles in cultural institutions "to promote changes from within" by "being at the table where the present and future of museums are visualized."
But he adds: “We are nowhere near parity.”
80% of the leadership in American art museums (management, curatorial, or educational program positions) was non-Hispanic white in 2019, a survey shows.
The Intrigue
: New York University professor Arlene Dávila exposes how Latino creators and artists have been marginalized for so long in the book
Latinx Art: Artists/Markets/Politics
.
Works by established Latin American artists break records at auction or are centerpieces at fairs, creating the impression that most Latin art receives recognition.
That, writes Dávila, masks the reality that pieces by younger and lesser-known Latinos, especially US Latinos, are institutionally ignored.
Works by Latino artists are rarely appraised or valued due to little exposure and access to big buyers.
Looking to the Future
: The soon-to-open National Museum of the American Latino could bridge the gap.
Cuban-American Jorge Zamanillo was named permanent director of the museum on Friday.
In his own words
: “Latino art is for everyone,” says Ramos, because “artists' work and ideas help us understand our world and society, past and present.”
Cultural institutions “need to realize that our sense of reality or what is important is incomplete without
Latinx
representation .”
2. The underground railway of freedom… bound for Mexico
When slavery was still legal in the United States, there was a system dubbed the '
Underground Railroad
' that helped enslaved people in southern states to flee.
Not all fled to the American North: It is likely that more enslaved black people escaped to Mexico than originally thought.
Why It Matters
: The story of the Underground Railroad to Mexico is an almost forgotten part of the experience of black communities in America.
Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios
Details
: Historians have known for decades -- from written testimony and archives -- that some black people who were enslaved in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama escaped by going farther south.
New research shows that between 4,000 and 10,000 black people who were enslaved likely began their journey to freedom by going to Mexico, historian Alice Baumgartner, author of
South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil , told Axios Latino.
War
.
Baumgartner says that number is small compared to the people who "boarded" the Underground Railroad to the north.
Details:
In Mexico the abolition of slavery was declared since at least 1813, during its War of Independence, although it was consolidated in laws until the 1820s since Mexico was an independent country.
In the United States the Thirteenth Amendment, to abolish slavery, was proclaimed in 1865.
Mexican-Americans, German immigrants, and abolitionist figures from the American South helped people fleeing slavery along the "railroad" path.
To Watch For:
The US National Park Service is considering expanding its historic Underground Railroad route from Louisiana and through Texas to Monclova, Mexico.
It is believed that this was the general path of the Underground Railroad.
The agency has summoned academics such as Roseann Bacha-Garza, from the University of Texas, Rio Grande campus, to present new research on the underground railway and that road to Mexican territory.
“This is a very important part of American history, and we are constantly discovering new information,” Bacha-Garza told Axios.
3. Projects to counter falsehoods
Disinformation in Spanish on social media platforms continues to spread, even as tech companies have begun taking more steps to combat it.
Why It Matters
: Latinos are increasingly turning to social media for news, election or even health issues.
The problem when they come across disinformation there is that on these platforms the wrong information in Spanish is rarely refuted or contrasted (as it happens more frequently in English, with warning labels on Twitter, for example).
Shoshana Gordon/Axios
News Momentum
: The US Congress has been taking notice and wants social media to act on it.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus wrote to the leaders of Meta (the company behind Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram), TikTok, YouTube and Twitter in January to attend meetings to discuss what steps the platforms are taking.
"Every week that goes by without these companies taking the proper action, our communities are at greater risk of being exposed to misinformation," Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told Axios in an interview.
In his own words
:
“Platforms have not been transparent about the resources they are allocating to address the challenge of disinformation in Spanish”
Stephanie Valencia, from the X research group.
Valencia added that social media platforms continue to post misinformation in Spanish about COVID-19, and false claims that US President Joe Biden promotes socialism.
The researcher said that some of the erroneous information that spreads through networks in the United States seems to come from foreign countries, such as Colombia.
What's Next
: Noticias Telemundo has just launched MediaWise en Español, an initiative with Poynter and MediaWise that includes a crash course on WhatsApp on how to identify misleading information sent through social networks.
4. Milestones in labor battles, in pictures
Latinos who work as delivery people in New York City, who call themselves "deliveristas," celebrated in January that their activism resulted in new protections and benefits.
New York granted employment rights to all food deliverers
Jan. 24, 202200:59
Why it matters
: Overall, Hispanics make up 18% of workers in the United States, but they have a much higher share in sectors where low wages and difficult working conditions have fueled protests and strikes for decades.
For example, they make up 27% of workers in the food industry;
so are many in cleaning and maintenance (37%) and agriculture (43%), occupations in which workers have been protesting and striking since the start of the pandemic—and for decades.
The achievement in New York was a new step in a long history of Latino participation in movements for workers' rights.
Among them, a protest in mid-January in Colorado against the King Soopers supermarket chain, in which Kim Cordova, one of the few Latinas in union leadership positions, participated.
Cordova chairs the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
See more images here.
They risk their lives to deliver food: a day in the life of a Latino food delivery man in New York
Dec. 28, 202105:53
5. Summary of key news in Latin America and the Caribbean
Peru's newly appointed prime minister
lasted just four days in office, resigning on Saturday amid a scandal after allegations of domestic violence against him resurfaced.
After the resignation of Héctor Valer, who denies the accusations of violence against his daughter and late wife, President Pedro Castillo announced that there will be a reorganization of almost his entire cabinet: the fourth in just six months of his government.
Peru has one of the worst rates of gender-based violence in Latin America, a region where 11 women are killed every day just because of their gender, according to UN statistics.
A former president and an economist will compete for the presidency of Costa Rica in the second round
Feb. 7, 202200:30
Costa Ricans will decide
their next president in a second round, after none of the 25 candidates – a record – obtained the minimum 40% of votes to win directly this weekend.
Former President José María Figueres and former Minister of Finance Rodrigo Chaves were the most voted and will compete for the position in a ballot in April.
6. 🐕🦺 As fast as a 'Perrari'
Puppies with severe mobility problems can now access advanced custom-made prosthetics in Colombia.
They create a device to give speed and autonomy to dogs without mobility
Jan. 17, 202201:40
Details
: One of the best prosthetics created by a Colombian company is red, with off-road wheels and pedals.
Although there are several similar prostheses throughout the continent, the difference in this one is in the pedals, which few models have.
By moving the legs automatically even when dogs can't do it on their own, the pedals help to continuously strengthen muscles that the dog doesn't use like physical therapy.
Biomedical engineer Laura Muñoz and mechanical engineer Freddy Leonardo Luna called their invention 'Perrari', alluding to the Italian team with a similar name.
They use 3D printing, which allows for easy customization and reduced cost, offering an alternative to euthanasia for those dogs that would otherwise be unable to move.
Thanks for reading, we'll be back on Thursday.
Do you want to see some of the most recent previous editions?
Tropical athletes at the Winter Olympics
Cleaning clothes in the Chilean desert
The Latin pulse after a year with Biden
The impact of economic pessimism among Latinos
Fighting the climate emergency
The risk of 'eternal chemicals'