Our Work Related to Arts & Culture

Last year, two of the country’s highest artistic honors – the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony award – went to Latinos. Author Junot Diaz took a Pulitzer for his “The Long and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” and playwright Lin Manuel-Miranda won a Tony for his musical “In the Heights.”

This year, we are seeing an unprecedented amount of in-depth and thoughtful coverage of Latinos not only in print and on stage but on television.

CNN’s “Latino in America”: Soledad O’Brien Reports

On October 21st and 22nd, CNN aired the two-part television documentary “Latino in America.” It is the longest, and most in-depth, piece of non-fiction programming the network has ever produced about Latinos.

“Latino in America” is anchored by Soledad O’Brien. Born of an Afro-Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father, this mixed-race media maverick has teamed up with producer Rose Arce to document Latino-American life from Pico Rivera, California to Park Place in New York City.

The airing of “Latino in America” has given occasion to activist groups to shine a light on the way the network portrays Latinos in their everyday programming. Some groups say that the only time Latinos are mentioned in CNN’s weekly line-up is on Lou Dobbs’s controversial talk show.

However, with the airing of “Latino in America”, viewers now have the option of hearing something other than Dobb’s often anti-immigrant voice. Night one of the documentary is titled “Meet the Garcias,” and chronicles the very different lives of eight different families with the surname Garcia. Night two is entitled “Chasing the Dream.”

The White House throws a Latino Party: “Fiesta Latina”

Just nine months after coming to D.C. to throw their Latino Inaugural Gala, cultural politicos Marc Anthony, George Lopez, and Eva Longoria Parker were back in the District last week for the “Fiesta Latina” concert the White House held to close out Hispanic Heritage Month. Hosted by President Obama and aired on both PBS and Telemundo, the sixty-minute musical program featured the music of Anthony, Gloria Estefan, Aventura, Thalía, Tito “El Bambino”, and Chicano rock stars Los Lobos.

In an interview with the New York Times, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos stated that, “It’s a political event in that we’re here,” gesturing toward the White House. “But I think it’s more just to celebrate the culture.”

In his opening remarks, President Obama stated that “…though it’s constantly evolving, Latin music speaks to us all in a language we can understand about hope and joy, sorrow and pain, friendship and love. It moves us, and it attempts to make us move a little bit ourselves.”

And at the end of the night, he did. The evening closed with President Obama dancing a little cumbia sway, on camera and on the record.

The Dancer Judge: Justice Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor is not only the first Latina to sit on the Supreme Court, but also the first Justice who loves to dance. Besides dancing mambo with Esai Morales at the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts gala, rumor has it that Sotomayor has been out and about in Washington, D.C.’s salsa circuit, rubbing shoulders with the young politicos that she has set such a stellar example for.

To help inform and further empower the Latino population in the United States, SRF’s Acceso Hispano initiative recently launched an interactive, multi-dimensional online presence with several innovative features.

The main platform, housed at the website www.accesohispano.org includes four different interfaces directed at four different target audiences:

• English (designed to inform stakeholders about issues facing the Latino community)
• Spanish (designed to reach Spanish-language dominant Hispanics with relevant articles about issues that affect them, in addition to links to helpful websites or organizations)
• Service Providers (developed to help community-based service providers across the country better serve the Latino community by providing tailored information and resources)
• Promotores (to help Acceso Hispano’s network of community-based promoters better serve the community)

The different sections of the Acceso Hispano website include features to help facilitate communication with the public including newsletters; discussion forums; calls for articles from the public; SMS texting capacity; events calendars; comments; email forms; visual search features and more.

The website is designed to complement Acceso Hispano’s toll-free bilingual telephone hotline which provides free information and referrals to callers around the country related to job training, ESL classes, scholarship opportunities, health care options, voter registration sites, domestic violence shelters, and a vast array of other services requested by the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community.  To ensure that the community has access to the culturally-sensitive community based services that they need at any time of day, Acceso Hispano is developing a searchable web-based database of providers.  Service providers can easily update their information online, search the database to help make referrals for their clients, and the general public can conduct instantaneous searches for the specialized services available in their own communities.

Click here to download a brochure about Acceso Hispano.