When I was seven-years-old, I lived in a Mexican family from Mexico City, stationed in Orange County. For my father’s work as the managing editor of La Opinión, it was decided that we needed to make a pilgrimage to Santa Barbara to meet with the intellectual leaders of the Chicano Movement and to San Juan Bautista to meet Luis Valdez. My greatest memory of this trip was that we took a photograph in front of Aldous Huxley’s cabin. (Huxley was in Santa Barbara in 1959 delivering a lecture series titled "The Human Situation.")

From this trip until I left for college in 1991, we were always in the presence of the Chicano movement as it relates to media and entertainment. Most of the time, we would meet at the Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles and the highlight was always when Lalo Guerrero would sing, “There’s No Tortillas” - I saw Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia dueling guitars in these rooms. Eddie Olmos was always there. An early in her career Salma Hayek sighting once. And, I made a friendship that always inspired me with Nativo López of Hermandad Mexicana, a disciple of Bert Corona.

We knew this niche as “La Cucaracha Circuit.” I knew this was a negative way of self-identifying but we also saw it as playful somehow. Behind the curtain, it meant that the mainstream (strictly Anglo) was/were not interested in our niche and never would be. We would be allowed to exist on the fringes but we would never cross over and I believe that if you talk to Luis Valdez, or Eddie Olmos, or Cheech Marin, or Jimmy Smits, or Esai Morales, or Lou Diamond Phillips, or Benjamin Bratt, or any of our heroes from this niche, they would tell you that they longed to be accepted and contracted in the mainstream.

I purposely do not connect women from our niche because they do happen to cross over, Rita Moreno, Jennifer Lopez, Sofia Vergara, Salma Hayek, Selena, Jessica Alba, Becky G … and that might be a different story. And in general broadstrokes, you typically wouldn’t find (Colombian) Sofia Vergara at a Chicano awards assembly in Los Angeles addressing our wounds and complaints about enemies like Pete Wilson and Daryl Gates.

All that said, there was a moment in 1987 when Luis Valdez, Taylor Hackford and Columbia Pictures/SONY released La Bamba. Using Ritchie Valens as the vehicle and featuring exceptional performances by Rosana DeSoto, Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales and Elizabeth Peña, something changed a bit. (The Criterion Collection released a special edition of the movie on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 26, 2023.)

After La Bamba, we had Stand and Deliver, American Me, Mi Familia, Selena, Real Women Have Curves, Mi Vida Loca but at some point, in my opinion, Latino-focused films fell off a cliff.

In 2026, we come back to Luis Valdez with the release of American Pachuco, directed by David Alvarado. With funding from California Humanities and no studio or marketing budgets, the documentary about Luis Valdez released at Sundance, then at select Film Festivals, then screenings in New York and Los Angeles until a path was created for cinemas in 35 cities in the USA.

I attended the screening hosted by Amanda Salazar at Vidiots in Los Angeles. Here is an excerpt of my interview with her about the state of Latin American Films including the distribution of US Hispanic Films like American Pachuco:

“American Pachucho is playing in our micro cinema, as a programmer, working with the community, staff and the audience to put films up on screen. In one word, I think the state is hopeful. My access point is watching the audience come in, when we played Zoot Suit the next night after the premiere, we saw a young audience. Some of them brought their grandparents and their parents. If we encourage movie going, then the cinematic language will be a part of it and it becomes a very hopeful. There will be a whole new audience that perhaps doesn’t know Luis Valdez, or La Bamba, or Zoot Suit and his incredible history as a filmmaker and the documentary will be the starting point and then they will search it out. It is remarkable that David made a film like this. It’s exciting that there is an engagement with this work.”

“I was asked to write a play about the history of Los Angeles by the Mark Taper Forum, and it seemed to me that this was a piece of the puzzle that had been there for so long, and not been dealt with. I had already created a character of El Pachuco in one of my plays called Bernabe. Cesar Chavez had been the running partner of one of my cousins, who was a Pachuco, and was knifed to death in Phoenix in 1955. So, this stuff has been around through my life, you know, for many, many years. For the character of El Pachuco, the coolness was very important, it was part of the street survival sense, which I recognize that Pachucos had. They were dangerous, but never-the-less, they were cool. And so, when we got back to the history of doing something about Los Angeles, I knew that L.A. had been the mecca of Pachuquismo. This was the big time man and it was a story that had been untold.” - Luis Valdez

“It’s about identity, it’s about belonging in America. We felt like it would just became a challenge and a good challenge for us to try to get that word into the American lexicon because a Pachuco really is an American phenomenon. There was a lot of interplay between the border from America to Mexico with the idea of the Pachuco. But it’s a very American story in that, this is how people came to the country. They had to identify as not Mexicans anymore, but as Americans and what is that identity like? So that struggle was something we wanted to highlight.” - David Alvarado

Sergio: You’ve screened at Sundance, Film Festivals, New York, Los Angeles … at the screening that I saw, it was very elderly, niche industry, pachucas and pachucos, do you have a sense for what general audience Gen Alpha might think of this Chicano universe that is somewhere between Bertolt Brecht and Cantinflas?

David: It certainly is a discovery for a lot of people. I made the film for two audiences, the first row was for the Chicanos that know the story of Luis Valdez and I didn’t have to explain a thing to them but I wanted to give them a cinematic tribute to his life. The second row behind them was for the people who had never heard of Luis Valdez. Some of those people may have heard of La Bamba and they may start singing it but they don’t know much behind the scenes. We have Edward James Olmos reprising his role as El Pachuco and the first line in the movie, a line I wrote is: Ladies & gentlemen, it has come to my attention that some of you don’t know the story…. that’s one of a thousand things that was our effort to help folks along. I gotta tell you, there’s not a lot of Chicanos in Park City, Utah so I was curious how it was going to play and we were blown away by the reception and we got the audience award. I think it registers because we are at a moment in our time when the question of: Who belongs in America? Luis always addresses that question so now is the perfect time.

Sergio: What did your Mexican father expect of you at the age of 16 in Texas?

David: I was a troubled kid and I didn’t fit in to the culture in suburban Dallas, Texas. He was always trying to get me work with his buddies but I was interested in the arts and I didn’t see the path from school to the arts. I wanted to be with the skate kids and the punks. I remember telling him that I wanted to go to film school and he responded with, I think you should go to business school. He, rightly, thought that I had a good business acumen and I was so rebellious. When I did end up going to college, I met Luis Valdez and he showed me a path.

Sergio: It seems to me that you became an experienced documentarian shooting challenging edge scientific concepts. Aubrey de Grey, Bill Nye, Stewart Brand and then, you come back to a meeting you had with Luis Valdez. After watching the Immortalists, I can’t help but think that through Luis Valdez and through Eddie Olmos and through your audio narration, El Pachuco actually has the ability to become immortal. What say you?

David: I think he was immortal before I was born. A bomb dropped on that stage in 1978. I just tapped into it in 2022. I never saw the play production, just the film version. It was Shakespearean. El Pachuco was a Puck figure that could freeze time and space and interact with the audience. I ended up thinking: Wouldn’t it be great if that same character had the same power and find his way into the documentary about his creator’s life story. It is a continuation of the power of that character.

Sergio: In the evolution of your career as a filmmaker living in Brooklyn making thoughtful documentaries, what do you think Prosperity means to you?

David: As an artist, I wake up every morning and I brew a giant cup of coffee and I have an office in my house and it takes a lot of discipline and I’m exhausted at the end of the day and I just feel privileged. I wasn’t born in privilege, I paid my way through college, I ate ramen noodles for the first half of my career. When I made The Immortalists, I was living on people’s couches. But now I am midway through my career and I know what I am doing and I’ve given up on pitching the streamers. They didn’t pick up on American Pachuco. Luis did it this way and I am too. Nobody is opening up the gate for me, you just have to jump the wall. I’ve been doing that all my career and I am going to continue to do that. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sergio: Taylor Hackford has been speaking in several different spaces about the business success of La Bamba. If you ask me, after the era of La Bamba, I think Latino forward theater fell off a cliff. Why if it was such a business success did that happen? I think given what I’ve seen, you could be the Latino Taylor Sheridan making Latino stories in the Fort Worth area.

David: Luis talks about that a lot. Tyler Perry, Oprah, it makes good business, I may be able to build a little empire. Let’s see how that goes. I’d love to do more with the Luis Valdez story because we only touched on half his career. We are making the recordings available to UC Santa Barbara. We are doing the theatrical distribution ourselves out of pocket. We are launching a Kickstarter. We did a successful one with the Bill Nye documentary, so let’s see if the younger generations are interested in crowdfunding.

I sat down with René Millán to go deeper. Here are excerpts from that interview:

Sergio: How do you self-identify?

René: I grew up in San Diego and the hotspot of Chicano Park made me a Chicano. My Mexican father from Guaymas, Sonora, didn’t want to be a part of the Chicano movement. My mom was from Guadalajara.

Sergio: At the age of 16, where did you find yourself socio-economically?

René: We definitely were not wealthy. We were lower class. My father was a janitor and he worked for the county of San Diego cleaning offices. My mother cleaned houses. There were seven of us in 700 square feet in Barrio Logan. I was expected to go to school, study, don’t get into trouble or gangs. My father tried to control everything in the house as a strict Catholic man. I used to think: Don’t get caught getting into trouble. I wa sthe youngest of all the children in our family so….

Sergio: Did acting come first or did theater come first?

René: My father plays a big role in me becoming an actor but not because he wanted that for me. Quite the opposite, he did not want me going into the arts. But he got involved as a Choruster in the San Diego Opera in the 60s and when I was eight years old, he took me to see Puccini’s Turandot and that was it for me. He took all my older brothers as well, it was a rite of passage in our family. He prepped me before we went. I read the libretto. I knew what was going on when I got to the San Diego Civic Theater. It was packed and it was the nosebleeds, the lights, the music, it was one of the most incredible moments of my life. My dad took me backstage and the folks took me out on stage and it planted a seed that I took with me for the rest of my life.

Sergio: You got an MFA in Theater from the University of Washington, is that when you began to get aquainted with Luis Valdez?

René: I fought for Chicano Park when they wanted to paint over the murals. I understood the movement. It always interested me but I wasn’t allowed to be a part of it while living under my father’s roof. In 1987, my introduction to Luis Valdez was through La Bamba. These were our first depictions on film. Especially at the beginning of the film during the farmworker scenes. Before that, I didn’t see any of the El Teatro Campesino plays, I didn’t see Chicano theater, that came much later in my life. But I did study Chicano theater in grad school. I went way deep and I started performing in plays by Octavio Solis and Luis Rivera. Then, I performed in I Don’t Have To Show You No Stinking Badges in Minneapolis. I did a reading of El Pachuco in Zoot Suit as well. I was offered the role twice but scheduling never allowed.

Sergio: Do you have an Eddie Olmos story?

René: Yes, I grew up watching Miami Vice and then I saw the Zoot Suit movie in the 80s. I loved it. In 2006, I did Shakespeare in Oregon and Eddie Olmos came to see a show where I was performing called King John. He took me out to dinner afterwards. He was such a good human being to me. He made such an impression on me because he came out to Ashland from his schedule shooting Battlestar Galactica to see a young Chicano performing Shakespeare. It meant a lot to me.

Sergio: I might vote that his best work was as Castillo in Miami Vice.

René: He has done a lot of great work.

Sergio: The doc says that Luis and Eddie got pummeled when they took Zoot Suit to Winter Garden. Were you ever on Broadway?

René: Yes, I was in The Wild Party. Was playing somebody ambiguous. Written by George C. Wolf. I was a swing, an understudy that would have to be at the theater every night to cover for somebody. I would replace actors that have to leave for whatever reason. So, I did get my Broadway debut but I didn’t get covered for my role. Broadway has it’s own issues and Zoot Suit on Broadway, at that time, Chicanismo, Mexican Americans on the East Coast, we didn’t exist out there. West Side Story did better because it’s depicting Puerto Ricans but Zoot Suit is a Chicano show written by a Chicano artist in a completely different language and rhythm. It must have been a culture shock.

Sergio: What are your thoughts on La Bamba?

René: That story hit me hard. That montage when they die in the plane crash. It hits so many notes. Coming from playwriting and poetry and using language, but in this montage, we are allowed this energy without hardly any words. You see Bob under the car, you hear Rick Dees, he comes out and all you see is reaction, running to his mom’s house and you see the mom with the laundry and there is no language and it just takes your heart and it takes it right out of you. The funeral procession and then Bob’s final yell … Ritchie! Seeing it now in my own head, Luis Valdez who weaves language so beautifully in his career but in this montage, there isn’t that much language and it’s still so special.

I know that Luis and his kids focused on Theater of the Sphere. It’s like performance training. The teaching of storytelling through a psycho-physical lens. His legacy is not just Zoot Suit and La Bamba. He created this whole non-Stanislavsky way to prepare performers for their craft. It’s really powerful.

Rasquachismo is also very powerful. I was never a writer but I have had to write a full length play. I can’t wait for anybody to cast me in anything. I’m just making things work. We mcgyver everything with duct tape and swiss army knives. We are resourceful. You can’t keep us down. We do it our way. You can’t stop a storyteller from telling his story. We can make a stage out of anything.

I sat down with Tlaloc Rivas to go deeper. Here are excerpts from that interview:

Sergio: When did you connect with El Teatro Campesino?

Tlaloc: I saw La Bamba at a screening in Watsonville where the Valenzuela family was from. I sat behind Rosana DeSoto. When I started college, I realized that El Teatro Campesino is 30 minutes from Watsonville. I drove there and met with Phil Esparza and he said I could clean the toilets and sweep the floors. That was my interview. I was assigned to Milt Commons, the Stage Manager for Zoot Suit at the Taper. He did all the Christmas shows at ETC. Then, I became the Assistant Director for the Virgen de Tepeyac. Then, I became a Director. I maintained my connection to Luis Valdez and his brothers. My directing thesis was for The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa. I received a presidental award at UC Santa Cruz for that production.

Sergio: Did you connect to El Pachucho through Zoot Suit?

Tlaloc: I was seven years old, my parents went to LA to see the play. My dad was in the Chicano movement. I remember looking at the figure of El Pachuco, the artwork of Eddie Olmos, I became fascinated. My godfather was Corky González so through him, I was close to the Chicano movement. I talked to my dad about where it all came from. Some folks think El Pachuco originated in El Paso. I then saw the movie in college and I went down the rabbit hole to investigate the history of the riots. I also kept reading more about it all during my time at El Teatro Campesino. Ten years ago, I saw a production by Kinan Valdez where there was a woman playing El Pachuco. It’s such a mythic role of the archetype of the Chicano. Black and red in his costume, it symbolized the shapeshifters of Africa. He’s a trickster, a shapeshifter. When I screen it for my students present-day, I find something new and essential and I hope that my students meet the work on their own terms.

Sergio: How did you experience La Bamba?

Tlaloc: I was a big fan of Los Lobos and I heard that David Hidalgo was going to sing the Ritchie Valens songs and so that became my entryway to La Bamba. At one point in my career, I was asked to change my name a’la Ritchie Valens but I didn’t do it. I re-watched the Criterion Collection La Bamba a few nights ago. As Latinos, we finally got to see somebody make it and our first Chicano rock star and just nine months into his career, he was gone. It’s a story that still matters to a lot of people.

(Editor’s Note: The ultimate irony in this hype from Wyclef is that neither Ritchie Valens nor Luis Valdez are/were immigrants in America.)

Sergio: After La Bamba, did Latino-focused films fall off a cliff?

Tlaloc: The 90s were pretty contentious for me. We could only play prostitutes, gangbangers, the help, there were some really key movies like The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, El Norte, Tortilla Soup, Mi Vida Loca, American Me, there were just more independent films being made. The year of the Latino, the rise of neoliberalism, NAFTA, Ricky Martin, Gloria Estefan, it seems like there was a time when we had finally made it and then nothing really happened.

But we did start to see a whole new generation of playwrights that were inspired by Luis Valdez in the west and María Irene Fornés, a Cuban playwright, in the east. Up until you get to Lin Manuel Miranda, who is a gamechanger. There came a point when we took over Star Wars with Diego Luna, Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac …. La buena onda group, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, these guys went truly global. Guillermo is puro mexicano. He is funny, crazy, dark sense of humor, we hold on to that because of the absurdity of this country right now, we have to either laugh at it or rage against it.

Sergio: American Pachuco wasn’t picked up for distribution at Sundance. I don’t think David Alvarado wants to be doing it rasquachi if he could get it to be supported. It can’t be well-received in the greater scheme of things because they don’t have enough muscle to market the film.

Tlaloc: Luis Valdez is so important for the next generations. We may not see the immediate impact now. Perhaps if it can get distributed by PBS, the trailer seems very exciting. I plan on seeing it in Atlanta if it gets there and I hope to screen it at UNCA. I’d also like to get Zoot Suit to North Carolina.

Regardless, kids are going to start making their own digital movies and circumventing the studio system. I really admire their rasquachi spirit. We’ve been upcycling and recycling since those were even words.

Here is a bootleg video of Jsu García riding on the coattails of El Pachuco in his role as Manolo. This was one of my favorite films during that era. It wasn’t necessarily Latino-forward but it did feature Jsu García, a Cuban, born in New York City. In the film Gotcha!, he plays a Mexican American student at UCLA. He is the best friend of the protagonist. Although the film ties him to terrorist cosplay and to gangbanging, his character Manolo, steals all the scenes he is in because of his good looks, charm and confidence. For me, Manolo was the inspiration & offspring of the American Pachuco in the context of youth in American society.

Here is the Kickstarter to support the release of the documentary: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/byeverett/american-pachuco-the-legend-of-luis-valdez

#Intelatin #Media #Film #Documentary #AmericanPachuco #LuisValdez #DavidAlvarado #ZootSuit #LaBamba

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Eddie Arenas

Sergio: How do you identify?

Eddie: Chicano. Chicanismo has a strife. A way that you fought for your identity with a machete. I have a 6YO that is part me, part Michoacán, part Panamanian from his mother. We were just watching the World Cup. He was going hardcore for Mexico and Panama and he was distraught that England got both of them. England colonized his broken heart. I don’t know how my son is going to identify. Maybe a skater, maybe an Aries … he has it nice.

Sergio: Tell me about the house you lived in when you were 16YO?

Eddie: The house is off-green, suburban tract, post WW2, every fourth house is the same. Pico Rivera. I did the upward mobility route for Chicanos: moved from Pico-Aliso Projects in Boyle Heights to the suburbs. There is ample street parking and a driveway for two cars. There is a garage. There is a lawn, a ficus tree, a sidewalk, it’s a quiet street. The roof is pitched, one story, it has an interesting design where when you enter, all you see is the living room and all the demons are hidden from you. I lived there with my step-dad, my mom and my brother. Prior to this house, I grew up with a single mom and I was the man of the house and so when I moved in with my step-dad, there is a tension. It was struggle of authority. He grew up in East LA, went to Vietnam, came back on a GI Bill and went to UCLA. He was intimidating and I was scared shitless of him and he can out-do me with words because he studied philosophy. My mom had gone to Roosevelt Adult high school, ELAC, and was then trying to finishing up Cal State LA to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher.

Sergio: What was expected of you at 16?

Eddie: That I get straight As, that I go to college. I was a good student. I ended up going to USC, I studied Urban Planning. At first, I wanted to be an architect, then a Civil Engineer. But too many dudes, too much science, too much math. I was a roquero. I was a heavy metal thrasher, the best guitar player in my high school. I had dreams of being a rock star but I was in East LA so I didn’t think it was possible to be a rock star. We were expected to get your shit together and get a degree and get a career. We had to silence our dreams.

Sergio: Were you MEChA?

Eddie: Absolutely. USC was 7% Latino. I felt super outcast. Growing up without a nuclear family, I was always resentful of the utopic suburban home. Everybody sitting around the table playing board games. The white students around me didn’t really work all that hard and they were getting As. I was the first in my family to do this and I was getting Cs. It was really something else. Being in MEChA was a savior. We could talk our language, eat our food, strut our strut, tell our jokes. I ended up also being a part of the Mexican American Alumni Association. They put me up as a bright star of my generation. They asked me to a gala dinner in Beverly Hills. I was not prepared for that dinner in the banquet room. I was in dockers without a belt. Everyone was in suits and tuxedos. I was lent a saco. I got recognition for my work in gentrification and the future of Boyle Heights. I got scholarships for that. I was studying mixed used urban environments. That became my thing in college.

Sergio: Were you a founder of Chicano Batman?

Eddie: Yes, we started Chicano Batman in 2008. The music business is rough. There is no certain path. I have had a lot of time to think about what it is, what it was and what it will be. Someone once asked me what the difference was between my band É Arenas and Chicano Batman: É Arenas is what I thought Chicano Batman was going to be. Chicano Batman was way bigger than I ever imagined. I was a City Planner at the time, I had health insurance, I had deferred comp and a match. A counselor told me to put in more, so much that you can feel the pinch. I remember him saying that.

Bardo approached me to play some songs during that time and I just thought that it would be whatever. I was the dude in the back with a beer. I was laid back. I was in a vulnerable space with people I don’t know and I’m a vulnerable person and I had a lot of barreras, I’m closed off to trust. I was very judgmental of environments. It continues to this day. That’s reality, that’s family, why these people were put into my life if life’s lesson itself. It was as random as a Craig’s List ad. We all were from different planets. It was destiny. It was hard to stay together because the needs of a relationship need to change, to fall apart, but we are raised to stay together. We sometimes have to do things that we don’t want to do. Pulling, leaving, other relationships, the fall back of dopamine.

Sergio: Tell me about the home where you currently live…

Eddie: There is a fig tree, a plum tree, artichokes, a grey wood fence. We have a hill in the back of Happy Valley / Lincoln Heights, coyotes sing in the evening, gallos in the morning. A beautiful sunset hits the rolling hills every afternoon. There is sage, bougainvillea covering the porch for shade and privacy. It is a white one-story duplex, of the century.

Sergio: Tell me your thoughts on prosperity….

Eddie: Prosperity is clear to me as: Peace of mind. Money doesn’t give you peace of mind. Income lets you buy cool things and services but peace of mind is the silence in the brain that doesnt feed off chaos. It was all chaos in my brain when I was younger. Through years in therapy, self-love has helped me work towards really loving myself in silence. Hope is tricky. As a musician, you need hope, financial management, accountability, good diet, good sleeping, if you don’t have those things, you might drag yesterday into tomorrow with no sense of progress. But hope doesn’t give you peace of mind. The natural vibration of your heart is important. If you find that, what you really love and value, you can get away from fear and envy. I think that is where I am right now. Our traumas perpetuate cycles of behavior in our lives and money can buy services for those traumas. Being mindful of my own needs and desires helped me wake up and stop living others peoples expectations of my future.

Sergio: Are you familiar with integration?

Eddie: I know that feeling, especially when I use to come back from tour. One night I can be playing for 7,000 adoring fans who treat us like kings and then I come home and I haven’t mopped in three months, I have ants now, I have to clean the dishes, I have to change dirty diapers? I would end up having nobody to talk to about this hard contrasting reality except my bandmates. The dopamine crashes and we try to keep it from doing that. I would turn to weed, to coffee, to burgers, lose sleep… The dopamine has to crash to below the baseline and it’s a scary feeling. It feels like depression, anxiety, loneliness, like a fish out of water. But you have to trust that it will go back up eventually. We aren’t used to letting feelings suck without trying to problem solve, to avoid, to distract….

Sergio: When did you start É Arenas?

Eddie: When my demos weren’t being picked up in Chicano Batman. I have a little gangster Eddie voice inside of me that i trusted for many years that would say, you dont need them, you dont need nobody. Growing up in Boyle Heights in the 80/90s the street really became part of our identity. My gangster Eddie voice kept framing things in a black/white drill sergeant way.

In between that all I had to coach myself into believing in my ideas making them a reality. All these songs were valuable to me so I just started doing it all myself. I realized that Chicano Batman wasn’t forever and I needed to have something to land on one day. Since 2017 i have been able to build a community that believes in my brand of music, develope a performance style, a narrative, and make use of my intense energy in a creative way. Ive done of ton of shows since, including a headlining show Noche de Cumbia at the Ford Ampitheater last year and just headlined Culture Clash’s 40th Anniversary show at Grand Performances in Downtown LA. Both shows were absolutely incredible. We energy that my band and the audience creates together is so electric and surreal. We are playing Mucho Gusto in Riverside next.

Sergio: How did you get hooked up with American Pachuco?

Eddie: The producer saw É Arenas. I had already helped on a documentary for PBS and so I was familiar with scoring. I’m a Chicano. I fit into the movie. Luis Valdez created a path for me. It wasn’t going to be cumbias and corridos, it was more about the emotional expression of Chicanos. I wanted to humanize the Chicano experience. I want people to feel what it’s like be in the campos, in the streets…. there is a scene where Connie Valenzuela is looking at Lou Diamond Phillips performing as her son and she’s weeping and I was weeping and I want people to understand what that was like through sound. My approach was to make the sound a generational bridge for the youth.

#Intelatin #Media #Music #EArenas #ChicanoBatman

When I started on the radio in 2011, I was able to create whatever I wanted from scratch. But the audience was young Latina/os at Cal State Long Beach. As I was conceptualizing what I wanted it to be, I knew I wanted four pillars to this radio program: Music / Film / Food / Money

But something incredible happened at that time. Verso Books first published Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields on October 9, 2012. They sent me a copy and I devoured that book up. It changed my life. My (Mexican) life became: A) The time I lived before reading Racecraft and B) The time I am living after reading Racecraft.

As I got deeper and deeper into it, I started inviting leading thinkers into this dialogue. I wanted young Latina/os at Cal State Long Beach to hear this wisdom for themselves. I knew that they wouldn’t hear it any place else. So, I made it the fifth pillar. I archived it all here:

https://intelatin.substack.com/p/racecraft-the-soul-of-inequality

Among my favorite thinkers on the show was Dr Craig Wilder. He is a professor of history at MIT and upon being so influenced and impressed by him over a period of three years, I asked him to the the educational godfather of my only child.

Occasionally, I get tripped up by the depth of something that happens in the public domain and so I call Brother Craig to have him help me understand. He always seems to have the right words to explain things to me.

This season, it was thanks to Becky G. She is having a moment of sorts and within that moment she released a documentary on Netflix called, Rebecca. In a poignant mid-section, she shows footage of her deceased Mexican grandfather at one of her concerts and in the audio, the grandfather tells the audience via Becky G:

“No dejes de decir que eres de gente humilde.”

I called Brother Craig to have him help me explain this phenomenon:

Sergio: First, let’s define what it means to be humble in your opinion.

Craig: For me, being from a humble background is really about remembering and respecting the journey that you took and the people who traveled with you. We were taught as kids to remember the neighborhood, the neighbors, the family, and all the people who contributed to your journey across time. How you actually practice that is complicated.

Sergio: You’ve acknowledge to me that you had a sketchy humble childhood but you’ve also acknowledged that you became the outlier that got past it. It’s complicated to hold yourself up as an example of someone who made it out of those humble beginnings….

Craig: It is complicated and risky because one runs the possibility of diminishing the barriers to mobility. Once you’ve jumped a hurdle, it doesn’t seem that high, and it’s easy to pretend everyone is running the same race. The people who clear the hurdles often aren’t the best athletes, just may well be the most advantaged. The Spanish translation of the quote from Becky G’s grandfather resonates with me because you find a version of that in every community.

Sergio: Regarding your roots, especially the culture of Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s, making such a monumental moment for Brooklyn. Hip Hop from that era came to dominate global culture in a variety of ways. Up until the era of Puff Daddy, you had to adhere to that humility. You had to be humble to be “real.” Would you agree?

Craig: I would agree cautiously. My relationship to hip-hop is odd; I feel awkward being a commentator because I was there, but I wasn’t a close follower. A lot of people read themselves into the moment fairly aggressively. I did the opposite. It was happening all around me and I was completely uninterested. I was far more interested in the Yankees than the world of rap, for much of my teenage years. It rarely touched my imagination even when people close to me were fully engaged.

Sergio: What about as a historian?

Craig: Absolutely. It is a pivotal, transformative moment, but I prefer to depersonalize it. No doubt. I was literally in Brooklyn for that and I was in college in the Bronx, those epicenters, and I completely disconnected from the threads. I look back now and how all of that excitement was happening all around me.

Sergio: But that authenticity part. Your relationship with your mother, your relationship to Brooklyn, you have traveled with that, right?

Craig: Yes, absolutely. The early world of rap in the late 70s. That part stays with me. The attempt to capture reality through this creative youth culture at all these different levels from graffiti, to dance, to perform music, to document the realities of the urban world. I did take notice of that.

Sergio: I see a great correlation between that and what might be considered Mexican culture but I think is more Chicano culture. Folks from Mexico like Becky G’s grandfather but they are living in Los Angeles and raising English dominant grandchildren in their garage. Here is the hard question not as a judgment or as a criticism: What is to be gained from a highly commercialized and merchandized pop star revealing her “authenticity”?

Craig: There is no need to be critical. She has every right to do it. It is probably the moment when she feels stable and secure enough to address that part of her life, it is a deeply personal thing. It is her obligation. Artists often struggle with how to place their background in their professional presentation. Linda Ronstadt’s Spanish language album is a great example of that. The timing of it is a stage of life thing and a very intimate thing. The relationship of that journey. Her intent, her nostalgia, perhaps just a relationship she wanted to recognize at that moment. The easiest part is the boast; the hardest is the complex, confessional description of what those roots mean to them now.

Sergio: You used the word “obligation,” which is complex. The grandfather giving her direction telling her that she must do this for the rest of her life. To tell humble fans that there is an obligation to that humility. It’s like being told to hold onto that humility even when you are no longer living that life.

Craig: It requires a certain maturity to do that with confidence. You can anticipate criticism or negative reactions. The timing reflects maturity. When you move beyond a casual slogan and start talking about what those roots actually mean to your life today, that is where vulnerability and maturity come in. That is the next level of analysis.

Sergio: Do you lead with that BedStuy humility in your personal life?

Craig: No. I remind people that I come from humble origins, but I don’t live a humble life today.

Sergio: But you don’t lead with Boston even after having spent the last 20+ years of your life in Boston and New Hampshire. If somebody asks, you do say you’re from Brooklyn, yes?

Craig: Never do I claim Boston. The question of my background is often asked but not because it has any interest or importance. Rather, it presents me as someone who can speak about that background. I am uncomfortable speaking for poor people because I believe they can speak for themselves. We often take established people and position them to ventriloquize the poor because society doesn’t actually want to hear from the poor themselves. We want to hear from middle-class intellectuals who translate the words of the poor into terms that are comfortable for themselves.

Sergio: Is “ventriloquizing the poor” a concept you coined?

Craig: I’m stealing that from political scientist Dr Adolph Reed. I remember reading about how he used it to describe how scholars and journalists responded to Hurricane Katrina by speaking on behalf of poor people, effectively rendering them silent and invisible in the process.

Sergio: Dr Reed is deep. I remember talking to him for my radio broadcasts.

Craig: Yes, he is scary profound.

What I’ve come to understand through my ongoing dialogue with Brother Craig is that the performance of humility by those who have achieved material success is a precarious, high-stakes endeavor, one that demands an exponential level of intellectual and emotional maturity. True integrity, as Craig points out, requires us to acknowledge that while somebody’s origins may be humble, their present reality might not; thus, the real work isn't in performing a past we’ve moved beyond, but in resisting the urge to speak over those who are perfectly capable of defining their own conditions, needs, and aspirations.

Apropos of the word, obligation, here are more words to live by that were produced in this series, courtesy of Dr Vicente Diaz:

“As Indigenous people, we have obligations that define what it means to be human. To live in kinship, to have reciprocity and with mutual care-giving. Our "Prosperity" is our authenticity to those obligations.”

I have interviewed Ana Valdez, CEO of The Latino Donor Collaborative, twice at Intelatin. The more I interview her, the more I am impressed with her perspective. I called Sister Ana to have her help me explain this phenomenon, the obligation of Becky G to humility.

Sergio: Ana, what does it mean to you to be humble?

Ana: Yes, I am Mexican, born in Mexico, now I am Mexican American so I consider myself a US Latina. Gente humilde, originally was based on money, people that are poor in general. The term has evolved. Now, gente humilde are people with values, hard working, dignified, honest, loyal, optimistic, unpretentious, proud, authentic. A set of characteristics that make us who we are. We have an ethic that makes us welcomed everywhere in the world. When people know us, they love us.

Sergio: We are both from Las Lomas de Tecamachalco and we have similar backgrounds but when I left Mexico City, I lost all of my social capital. Let’s talk about the generational levels to this and the evolution to get to Ana in 2026.

Ana: Losing our social capital is an important topic. Usually, in the common immigration story from Mexico to the USA, the immigrant has nothing to lose. They adopt the American dream and start from zero. The story of the Latino is such a blended story. Our humildad is so important for us to keep because we keep that blend. Honoring the family, don’t let success erase your identity, carry your origins with pride, represent your people. That is important for all of us because we all eat the same food, we were born with the same values and we listen to the same music.

Sergio: Speaking of music, I love trios. That is my Mexican music. The soundtrack of my Mexican story. Tell me what is your Mexican music.

Ana: I am very mariachi. They are amazing. They signify weddings, baptisms, graduations … when I hear a mariachi, I can’t stop myself from dancing. They represent everything we are. Yesterday, I was in Washington DC and I heard Juan Gabriel in a restaurant and I hadn’t listened to him since like twenty five years ago. When I heard it, it got to me. Maná, I keep listening to. They are a part of me. They stay with me forever. Flans, Timbiriche, they were cute but they didn’t go into my soul.

Sergio: So when does Becky G’s music enter your world?

Ana: During the pandemic, I saw her and really loved her. I followed her right away. She is so talented and so smart. I realized that she was an activist and that she was putting her capital behind pro-immigration issues. She is so amazing.

Sergio: She has a new album coming out, she has a documentary, she is at the World Cup in Mexico and the United States, she is making a purposeful effort to identify as a Latina. In the doc, her grandparents come across as the type of people who will do anything and everything for their children and their grandchildren. A crowd of young Latinas cheer for the grandfather and his words at the concert when he gives Becky her obligation to humildad. What do you think it means?

Ana: I’m guessing that the reason why the crowd gets energized when they hear that is because it is our heritage. Being proud but not arrogant. Owning your successes without oppressing others. Knowing your story but when it comes down to it, you never lose your empathy. You don’t work to abuse anybody and become insensitive. He must have meant that. Less about socio-economic reasons, but to give back because you have power. To leave this world a better world. The grandfather did his job with Becky G spectacularly. The audience feels this and we take it home with us.

Sergio: Let’s drill down on women, young Latinas in the USA, LDC data, do we focus on Becky G, Becky G’s future daughter or Becky G’s future grandchild?

Ana: Becky G! The most successful report we have ever done was about Latinas. We did it with Kantar. The largest consumer research company in the world. Once they say something to corporations, it becomes the truth. Once they tell the brands about our youth, it is the truth. We got 600+ brands signed up after releasing the report. Why is Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl? Why is Karol G headlining Coachella? Why is the Mexican jersey the best selling? Why is Modelo the top selling beer? I think Latina youth will save the world! They are unapologetically bi-cultural and they want to be respected.

Sergio: It must happen in waves. We rise and then someone tries to bring us down but we rise again.

Ana: Yes, but the trend is always up. Pan backward and look at the data and even if there are peaks and valleys, the overall trend is dramatically going up. Becky G’s generation is so powerful. She is an extraordinary example but even for folks that haven’t achieved that success, you can see it in the data. One of the values in our community is empathy. Statistically different in comparison to non-Latinos. 15-20 points different. These young Latinos are including friends from all communities. They are getting power and they aren’t abusing. They’ve seen their parents get sidelined and they won’t do it. Young Latino candidates are emerging all over the country. These are leaders that are leading with decency. Things are happening. The growth is slow but it is happening. Twenty years from now, you will better understand it. They are voting, working, studying, watching content.

Sergio: I love your bullish perspective.

Ana Valdez redefines humildad as a powerful, value-driven framework where integrity and roots remain central despite professional success. This cultural evolution, embodied by figures like Becky G, signals a rising generation leveraging their bicultural identity to drive empathetic, transformative leadership across the American landscape.

As my co-founder in the On Prosperity series, I oftentimes want to get Wil Dog’s perspective. He has a troubled history of trauma, illiteracy, poverty and addiction but similar to Dr Wilder, he was able to hurdle over those very real and difficult issues.

The one hurdle that has always intrigued me the most was the breakup of his nuclear family. It is my opinion as an outsider that this occurred, in part at least, because his father had an obligation to the Communist party and at age 8, his mother no longer felt that obligation in the same way. When all transpired, Wil Dog and his mother lost the community that they knew with the party and in a series of unfortunate events, they became homeless and struggled for the next decade until Wil Dog joined Macy Gray as a bassist.

Sergio: Dr. Vicente Diaz at UCLA told me that indigenous peoples have an obligation to kinship. He used that specific word, “obligation.” When I told Brother Craig about Becky G’s concert—where she plays a video of her deceased grandfather saying, “No dejes de decir que eres de gente humilde,” Craig also saw that as an obligation. Did your father feel an obligation to the Communist party? How did you understand it?

Wil Dog: I would say it’s an obligation to the people, and the party was the vehicle. My dad’s obligation to history was envisioning a more equal world—one where currency wasn’t just money, but what you could give back to society as a whole.

Sergio: What did you think of that obligation? Did you want to have the same one, or did you turn that into what Ozomatli became, or did you ignore it altogether?

Wil Dog: It’s just in me. I learned that obligation: Is what I’m doing only serving me, or is it serving others as well? Even if I don’t follow the specific ideology he studied, the sentiment is there—needing to better something outside of myself. If you look at my musical career, I put all my energy into things that weren’t just about me, like Macy Gray or starting Ozomatli, where I dedicated years of my life with zero money.

Sergio: Why were you so dedicated? What was your obligation then?

Wil Dog: I don’t know that I thought about it, other than it’s part of who I am. I saw the band as a vehicle that was in line with that obligation.

Sergio: So, instead of the Communist party as the vehicle, yours was Ozomatli.

Wil Dog: Yes, it served the same purpose. It was doing good for the world, representing that spirit of humanity, the poor, or the anti-colonial side of things. We were always searching for the roots of the music, which usually led us back to Africa.

Sergio: Is that still alive in 2026 for you?

Wil Dog: For me, absolutely.

Sergio: Do you think you understand the fan base in 2026?

Wil Dog: It’s mostly English-speaking Latina/os.

Sergio: When I saw the demographics for Ozomatli a few years back, it was:

• Most Active Markets: Mexico City, Los Angeles, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Denver, Houston

• Latina moms who like to dance

• 70% are the primary decision makers in the household

• 86% own smartphones

• $1T in annual consumer spending

• Over Indexing Spending Categories: Food & Beverage; Beauty & Health; Clothing

Your fan base is older, perhaps the moms of the typical Becky G fan. Do you have an opinion on what a young Latina fan of Becky G would understand from her grandfather telling her to forever remember she comes from humble people in Spanish? It struck me that the crowd cheers at the shows when they hear this….

Wil Dog: She has a lot of support, and she is that person—approachable in her own way. I think for someone like Becky G, that’s her family personality, too—doing things for the family first and not for herself. It’s not good or bad; it’s just how some things are.

Sergio: I was reflecting on that from my identity as a Mexican. We are always putting our Mexican self-identity first. We never stop doing it. I never stop. I still claim Mexico even though I left Mexico City in 1978!

Wil Dog: You can say that for your generation but the history is so long. What we’re living is such a small part of human history. When you zoom out, are these labels, Jewish, Mexican, white, just confinements we’re living in because of the human power structure?

Sergio: In terms of Ozomatli, it does feel like the Mexican side of the band is the one that comes through the hardest, even with a Japanese percussionist, a Black percussionist, a Jewish bassist, an Anglo drummer, it feels to me that the three Latinos make up the majority of the brand of the band and when you total them up, they read as Mexican.

Wil Dog: You’re probably right but I think it’s also because we are from Los Angeles. When we sing in Spanish, it comes from that identity. If you rewind the tape, this was Mexico, and those roots are still here.

In this dialogue, Wil Dog showed me that inherited obligation need not be tied to an ideology, as he transformed his father's communal spirit into the cultural force of Ozomatli. Our conversation hints that this same weight of duty might be driving Becky G, whose own public performance of "gente humilde" functions as a vessel for her family legacy. Just as Ozomatli uses music to anchor its identity in deep-rooted history, Becky G navigates the tension between commercial success and her enduring obligation to honor her origins, hinting that the duty to serve one’s community often supersedes the individual self.

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via ZZK Records

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC)

• Monthly via Voto Latino

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán

Sergio: don Arturo, how do you identify?

Arturo: I was born in Mexico, therefore I am very proud of being born there. Both my families are refugees in Mexico. So, I am Mexican but I do believe in this idea of a bi-cultural, bi-lingual, bi-national community of Mexicans and Americans joined at the hip for the common good. So, I’d say both Mexican and North American.

Sergio: Please describe your childhood home?

Arturo: My parents built the home with a lot of effort. Both are scientists, biologists. They arrived as refugees in Mexico with just the clothes on their backs. They had to to work hard and they were finally able to build a home from scratch. I lived there for most of my teenage life. The home was made of brick and had a tiled roof with a central patio with a fountain. It was a semi-urban area with lots of greenery and trees and a natural ravine in front of the house. It was the place where we learned to love Mexico and to cherish public service. To have the good fortune of living in a tight knit nuclear family. It was just my parents, me and my younger sister. Most of my paternal family was killed in the genocide of the Armenians in Constantinople. On the maternal side, we came from the republican refugees who lost the civil war against Spain and so when Franco finally died, a lot of them went back to Spain. We did not have all the primos, the typical big Mexican family, it was a relatively compact family environment. This was in La Herradura in Estado de México crossing just outside of Mexico City.

Sergio: What was expected of you at the age of sixteen?

Arturo: It wasn’t immediately clear to me what I wanted to do but I had a clear sense to do something like what I ended up doing. I didn’t know that I would be a career diplomat but I was interested in public service and international politics. My parents were disappointed because they were all scientists and I think they wanted me to go down that path. I was very restless. I left in the last year of high school from Mexico. I was very interested in the Sandinista movement and the alphabetization campaigns to recover territory from the Somoza dictatorship. I had long hair and I was a hugely interested in soccer. I played goalkeeper. I still play. At the time, I played in three different leagues and made a close group of friends that became my besties until present-day.

Sergio: Where did you find yourself socio-economically at the time?

Arturo: I was painfully aware of Mexico’s achilles heal which is the polarization of income and inequality. Mexico is so unequal. I lived in the UK during my youth and although there were differences of class, it wasn’t like it was and still is in Mexico. I remember that during my teenage years, I had a professor that was very socially aware and we worked in under-privileged areas of Mexico City. It was focused on healthcare or mental healthcare and clean water as well.

Sergio: Was the PRI influential in your life?

Arturo: Certainly, as they were in power for 70 years and it wasn’t until 2000 when they were kicked out of office. The jingoistic, nationalistic environment … I became of age when Mexico started to understand the critical role that the United States played in Mexico’s well-being, security and prosperity. I was fully aware as a young undergrad student of the enormous importance of the immigrants of Mexico in the US economy. I was one of the first waves of young Mexican professionals who came to the US to do graduate work in foreign policy in the United States during the Salinas administration. We knew our painful 19th century history and yes, we understood the asymmetry of power that existed between Mexico and the US, but we also believed in the unique advantages of deepening and really building a mutually respectful and synergistic relationship between the two countries. We also believed in changing the paternalistic approach to Mexicans in the exterior because they were seen by many, even in the political class, as traitors. It was my generation that began to communicate how valuable they really were and we changed the paradigm of the diaspora community in the United States.

Sergio: I met you in the 90s in Washington DC and since you live there still, do you consider that you have an immigration story?

Arturo: A year ago, I was in Mexico on business and I was flying to Chicago. I was in my seat and someone on the plane said hello to me and about an hour into the flight, he came me a little dog made of black pottery from Oaxaca. He thanked me for being such an important contributor in New York in the Consulate and for the speaking up for Mexicans as the Ambassador. It improved their daily lives in the US but also how they cherished their roots and how they carry Mexico in their souls. It was such a moving moment for me.

Sergio: Can you describe your home present-day?

Arturo: It is a semi-urban area, a green area in Bethesda. It is an old area. It’s a mixed zone with both old houses and new houses. A lot of the houses are related to the Washington political area. A very blue, pro-democratic area with academics, government, consultants, think-tanks, it’s a very typical Washingtonian area. It is made of nickel-gap. A white traditional house with a modern feel to it. Steel roof instead of slate roof. I live with my wife and my youngest daughter and my eldest daughter is with us while on holiday.

Sergio: In terms of digital diplomacy, I am going to channel into the issue of wealth inequality. The Federal Reserve says that Latinos have not purchased even 1% of the value of the stock market in comparison to to white Americans with 90%. How do we change that percentage after all this time?

Arturo: It is a critical component of the economic empowerment of the Latino community in the US. It’s not only a gap vis-a-vis white Americans, it’s also a gap between Latinos itself because purchasing power has risen significantly, the number of businesses owned by Latinos has grown very significantly, the contribution to the US GDP has risen dramatically every year but they haven’t translated that growing economic clout to his issue that you have underscored. It is my impression that it will grow slowly as you see more Latinos join corporate boards and as you see more and more Latino households dip their feet into the market. There needs to be more education for sure. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to empower our community economically.

#Intelatin #Media #DigitalDiplomacy #ArturoSarukhan #Ambassador #Mexico

I pulled this image from a Google search. Look at the rig and look at the words. I guess this means that Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is funded by oil in the arctic. Is that what it means? Is it really the oil in the arctic that creates lasting prosperity?

We seem trapped in an endless debate between unchecked predatory capitalism and authoritarian state control, but Norway quietly proves that a nation can achieve widespread, common-sense economic stability while fully preserving private property rights and individual freedom.

As Governor of California, Xavier Becerra could become the ultimate boss of a very complex economy—third in the hierarchy of the United States Order of Precedence and answerable only to the residents.

I’m considering how a competent leader can transcend traditional ideological warfare to deploy a model of governance that satisfies the established local professional, protects the capitalistic anxieties of Joe Sixpack, and secures an immediate, reliable foundation for the resident with the least resources.

Adopting Norway’s model would offer California a sovereign wealth fund to secure public infrastructure and permanently stabilize healthcare and housing for vulnerable residents. However, funding it through Norway’s traditional mechanics would likely trigger Joe Sixpack due to the crushing income tax brackets and a universal 25% consumer tax required to fund it. So, I propose that the solution lies in compelling the billionaires of California to subsidize Joe Sixpack.

Unlike the SEIU’s Billionaire Tax Act (BTA), which relies on a retroactive wealth tax to patch immediate healthcare budget deficits, this proposal builds a permanent financial machine. Instead of a one-time cash grab to fund state operations, it channels a portion of top-tier wealth into a state-owned sovereign fund. This shifts California away from reactionary tax-and-spend politics and creates a lasting endowment that uses investment dividends to permanently secure working-class housing and infrastructure.

Under this framework, Joe Sixpack finds himself in a definitive win situation with absolutely nothing to lose. Because his own hard-earned paycheck remains entirely untouched by new state taxes, his capitalistic anxieties are put to rest. Instead, he simply reaps the tangible benefits of upgraded infrastructure and economic stability financed entirely by runaway top-tier wealth.

To get the billionaire class to play along rather than flee the state, Becerra must understand how to frame this as a legacy-defining partnership rather than a punitive penalty. By offering long-term tax credits, naming rights to massive infrastructure projects, and priority seats at the table for future public-private ventures, he can position this endowment as an elite investment asset. If Becerra communicates this effectively, billionaires can trade volatile wealth for a permanent, celebrated role as the architects of California’s future.

Conveniently, Becerra’s background as a seasoned lawyer and former attorney general makes him uniquely qualified to outmaneuver the legal minefields that trip up standard politicians. He knows how to navigate California’s complex regulatory machinery and can structurally engineer this billionaire partnership to withstand inevitable court challenges. By treating governance like a sophisticated legal chess match rather than an ideological shouting match, he can transform daunting constitutional hurdles into an airtight, legally sound roadmap for systemic change.

The ultimate question is whether Becerra has the appetite for this level of disruption, or if his administration would simply yield to the status quo. Given the enormous risks of challenging both billionaires and party orthodoxy, a conventional leader might choose to play it safe and change nothing. If Becerra chooses to merely manage the state rather than transform it, this entire blueprint remains just a theoretical exercise.

Netflix begins a sports vertical. It makes sense that it would be hugely popular. In the Summer of 2026, they take a big risk in the USA; to invest on a tennis superstar speaking in Catalan for 70% of the film. And his thesis as an athlete:

“I am willing to suffer more than my opponent.”

“I never thought I’d do something like this, but I got a call from David Ellison and with his words together with an amazing project they put in front of my eyes, it really convinced me this was the right thing to do,” Nadal tells Variety magazine. “I am sure the final product, the docuseries, will be amazing and that it will be seen around the world.”

By launching a Catalan-heavy, subtitle-heavy limited series into a market where professional tennis already fights for niche broadcast ratings, Netflix isn’t just chasing a core fandom, they must be betting entirely on the cinematic prestige of Rafael Nadal himself. Except, honestly, he isn’t very charismatic off the court.

As a fan of tennis, as an intermediate player myself, as a Spanish speaker (but Mexican), as someone who has lightly followed Rafa’s career and typically watch Wimbledon, the US Open and Roland Garros on YouTubeTV, I’m curious about how to review this film. In tennis, Rafa had my respect but I didn’t think much of him. Being Spanish, being Catalan, being as dominant as he was, I didn’t think it was necessary for an intermediate Mexican player like myself to be his cheerleader. But, I am wildly curious about this thesis of how being an elite athlete affects your personal health and how much you are willingly suffer.

There are pivotal moments in the documentary when Rafa attributes his suffering to the thoughtful attention and coaching of his uncle. Seems the family lived in a multi-family complex in Mallorca, Spain … the grandparents on one floor, the immediate family on another, the extended family on another and the woman who would become his wife living nearby. The uncle, Toni Nadal, seems pleasant enough in the footage but verbally, the narrative attempts to explain that Toni taught Rafa this mentality despite protests from mom, sister, wife, etc… According to Toni and Rafa, this seems to be the way that champions understand themselves even as early as age 3.

Rafa features his toddler child throughout the limited series. I want to juxtapose this dynamic of the suffering champion, unable to let go and retire and stay home, with a bone protruding abnormally out of his foot, pain wracking his entire body, entourages wherever he goes, an insane level of global celebrity, millions upon millions of fans wanting to get close to him … because of … his extraordinary ability to play the game of Tennis. Does Rafa want this type of life for his child? Is the sacrifice worth it? Is the pain worth it?

There is a very interesting dilemma to be dialogued about this type of mindset. In Jungian terms, the attitude of submitting oneself to intense pain, decay, and breaking down is called Mortificatio (the death of the ego).

It is the psychological experience of being blackened, crushed, and defeated. A “yes” attitude to this pain means recognizing that the old ego must suffer and die so that a stronger, more integrated self can be born. In Nadal's case, a Jungian would likely look at his childhood laboratory in Mallorca and argue that Uncle Toni initiated him into a lifelong ritual of Mortificatio—teaching him to subordinate his physical ego to a higher, archetypal drive for excellence through legitimate, conscious suffering.

Chapeau, Rafa, chapeau, but I wouldn’t do it with my child.

#Intelatin #Media #Film #Netflix #Doc #RAFA #RafaelNadal #USHBC

Directed by Zach Heinzerling
STREAMING ON NETFLIX MAY 29

Featuring: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, John McEnroe

I thought the first Ibeyi album was excellent. Mi mero mole. The track that stayed on my mixtapes is Weatherman. The second album was appreciated and it is my opinion that Deathless is them at their most impressive and creative. When they performed Deathless on late night (03/01/18), I don’t want to write hyperbole but I was amazed at this incredible performance. Because so, I went to see them perform at the Belly Up in San Diego (04/16/18) and unfortunately, I thought the show was boring and distant. The venue has a total capacity of 600 people. It seemed to me to be an ideal place to see Ibeyi but upon actually seeing them, I didn’t think that performing as a duo established the intensity of the recordings. Because of this performance, I skipped the third album.

Now, this season I saw the video for Aset and I noticed that they seem dropped by their label and distributing for themselves independently.

Upon first viewing, I think what I felt was a sexuality that I didn’t know they possessed. Although I think that is fantastic, I might have been distracted because I did not really hear the song. I didn’t recognize which was the sister in the role of Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart vibes. I know it had rhythm and I know it had percussion but I didn’t follow the words and I didn’t register what it was about. Nor, do I know what an Aset is in the Spanish language in what appears to be Cuba, but def not sure of anything. So, I walked away confused but intrigued and I see it as a potential positive if I invest more time.

This writing exercise is my effort to analyze why I will be investing more time into Ibeyi. But also, what does my investment represent for a business like Ibeyi in 2026 on an independent release. And, here is what I want ultimately that doesn’t seem like a bad idea: How can Ibeyi become the next Sade?

So, let’s start there. What is the business of Sade as represented by a lax fan observation? One album every 10 years. Plenty of mainstream media coverage. Exceptional songs with exceptional lyrics and an exceptional front person. Hits. Like, even the hits from the most recent album are as great as the hits from the first album in the 80s. Sex appeal galore. Playfulness. Gratitude. Irie everything. Love. African Caribbean Diaspora vibes regardless of the Euro band. I mean, for me, Sade is the ideal business as it relates to the music business. In return, I have bought approximately six of her albums, possibly a total of $100 spent on this business over the course of 40 years. And I have spent countless hours listening to them/her. If ever she does any type of press, I watch and listen to it. Because she plays arenas, I do not purchase tickets for the concerts but if she were to play multiple nights at a smaller venue, I absolutely would. And, I’d likely pay for the VIP experience if it was under $500.

Is Aset in the same realm as a Sade hit? I don’t think so but that doesn’t make it necessarily bad. It’s just at a different level. Is Deathless, yes. Is Weatherman, yes. Is there something on the upcoming album that is at Sade level? Is it fair to judge Ibeyi by Sade? Going independent could act as a "reset" for Ibeyi, allowing them to trade short-term label pressure for the kind of lasting, cult-level brand power that defines Sade’s career. While the industry today pushes for constant online noise, Ibeyi is choosing a slower, more deliberate path that lets them focus on their own vision rather than chasing trends. My initial confusion with the Aset video might simply be their shift back to complete creative control although I couldn’t guess who might have been controlling them. XL seems historically to be a label that allows their artists to be themselves as long as they are selling units. (Radiohead/Adele come to mind) I imagine that the third Ibeyi album did not sell very well just from what happened to me after their tour for the second album.

To bridge this gap, they need to master the business of intimacy. Sade succeeded by making a cavernous arena feel like a private, candlelit room, while Ibeyi struggled to project that same magnetism even in a 600-capacity venue. By leveraging this independence to not chase trends and start curating a sense of scarcity, they could stop being an experimental duo and start becoming essential, timeless icons whose every release feels like a rare, must-watch event. Here’s where I throw in a gnarly twist…

Years ago, George Martin and his son did a fabulous vanity project called soundbreaking for PBS. I loved it. It was, again, mi mero mole. Now, being that it was made by white men, I was super hesitant about it being a history of popular music through the lens of the white man. But, it didn’t seem offensive to me at all if you accept that it was biased towards the Beatles as the pinnacle of popular music. Whatever. I mention it because there was a moment in the series when they paused on Linda Perry and she told the story of Beautiful as performed by Christina Aguilera and I swear to Jah … it stole the whole documentary. I walked away with that story being the most impactful story in this incredible story of modern music. (Linda Perry has gone on for some reason to tell that story a million times. Here is a later version.)

Anyway, here is my scandalous idea: What would happen if Linda Perry was contracted to produce Ibeyi to give them the hit that they need while not jeopardizing their credibility?

Whether a hit like Beautiful is truly their path forward or just a shortcut remains the central tension of their transition to independence. Perhaps their Sade moment won't come from a big-name producer like Linda Perry, but from finally bridging that distance I felt at the Belly Up by leaning into a song/voice so singular it commands the room on its own terms. Nina Simone, style. Ultimately, my investment in their work isn't about anything other than wanting to invest in two talented Cuban musicians performing beautiful music at their most profitable level.

#Intelatin #Media #Music #Ibeyi #LindaPerry #soundbreaking

According to the Pew Research Center, 31% of young Americans aged 18 to 29 have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency. When mapped against U.S. Census Bureau data, that percentage represents an economic footprint of roughly 16 million young adults navigating digital assets nationwide, with adoption breaking down as 43% among young men compared to 19% among young women.

MoonPay, often referred to as the “PayPal of crypto,” captures a major share of the global fiat-to-digital market. It functions as a bridge to legacy traditional banking and was co-founded by CEO Ivan Soto-Wright—a first-generation American born to a Canadian mother and a Venezuelan father.

Today, MoonPay and Sam Altman’s OpenAI announced a new integration allowing users to buy crypto directly through a ChatGPT chatbot.

While common law and the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 embedded strict mandates that make it functionally impossible for minors to independently open financial accounts, ChatGPT allows 13-year-olds to navigate the platform without parental permission. Of ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly active users, only 50 million are paying subscribers with fiat attached to their accounts. Assuming this 5% fiat-attachment rate holds, Intelatin, LLC hypothesizes that approximately 57,800 Latina/o individuals aged 18–29 in the U.S. possess active ChatGPT accounts tied to fiat. With industry benchmarks indicating that credit cards capture roughly 70% of transactions through platforms like Stripe, the potential for widespread credit-based digital asset purchasing is significant.

This weekend, I performed standard credit card transactions, a ritual I have practiced since my college years. Whether at a restaurant, market, or gas station, my process is consistent: I physically tap my card, a deliberate action verified by NFC technology. In 2026, however, I have yet to authorize my credit card for “Subscription as a Service” (SaaS) digital transactions, leaving me to wonder: what happens when I finally cross that chasm? The use case for the new MoonPay integration is simple: tell ChatGPT you want $100 of Bitcoin, click the generated checkout link, pay with a credit card, and the crypto lands in your wallet.

On May 26, 2026, with Bitcoin trading at approximately $76,500, a $100 investment would net roughly 0.0013 Bitcoin. For an 18-year-old, this is only economically sound if baseline necessities—which deliver guaranteed, 100% immediate utility—are already fully subsidized. This conversational checkout bypasses traditional paths favored by Latino self-directed traders, where only 23% maintain an online account with major banks. Using a chat interface makes buying assets as effortless as sending a text, shifting capital away from secure bank websites and into everyday apps.

This represents a 180-degree psychological flip. Financial routines anchored in physical contact via the NFC chip are transitioning into simple text messages, decoupling consumption from real wealth. This operates like the “house money” effect in casinos, where a credit card acts as an abstract buffer. Inside a chat interface, that friction barrier vanishes, transforming a high-risk speculative purchase into a game played with a 30-day, interest-free line of credit. In the gambling world, this is a “casino marker”—if you default, the debt migrates to the street, where the vig or juice weaponizes compound interest until the transaction spirals out of control.

From [https://milkeninstitute.org/]

The Milken Institute’s staff is comprised of experts with specialized knowledge and experience to provide valuable insights, objective perspectives, and innovative solutions. Ivan Soto-Wright is a leading financial technology entrepreneur and investor. Throughout his career, he has advocated for building systems and developing technologies that increase financial freedom.

At age 36 in 2026, Ivan identifies himself like this: “just a punk trying to make crypto mainstream. agent economy > human economy.”

From the Milken Institute, we know Ivan Soto-Wright advocates for systems that increase financial freedom, positioning himself as a disruptor in the "agent economy." At 36, he identifies as a "punk trying to make crypto mainstream." For the last few hours, I have been trying to understand this shift without bias. I have attempted to view Ivan Soto-Wright as a peer I could share a taco with in Miami, and to understand the perspective of leaders like Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador. Their messaging feels detached from my own experience, yet I share the fundamental desire for the "mailbox money" required to secure my family’s future. My goal remains personal prosperity, like the view from the hills above Balandra, La Paz. The future ain't easy, but I am working to understand it.

#Intelatin #Media #FinancialLiteracy

In the Arturito video, he says: Why do I do everything that I do? Then, he answers: (Paraphrasing and translating)

“Contrary to popular belief, I do not come from a family that grows money on trees. I am an entrepreneur for the last ten years and for nine of them, I have been a failure. This last year, I have started to succeed and this has allowed me to go to restaurants, pay the bill, leave the tip, say what I want to say and create content. This year I have been successful because I get to go to whatever restaurant I want, order what I want. This is success for me. I do what I do because I love food. I have loved food since I have memory. I love to eat. I work to eat. I go to the gym to eat. I spend all my money on food. For me, it is an investment in the greatest experiences of my life.”

Back to me. In my comic, there is a fatal flaw that I know how to talk my way out of but nobody else on Earth can manage to understand. Here is the truth: I interviewed Javier Palomarez half way through my career and this is what he told me:

When people ask me who I publish with, I tell them my version of Javier’s story. In a nutshell, it is this: For a decade, Javier was the person that people in power in the USA would go to when they needed to know the pulse of Latina/os. If you knew his backstory in south Texas, you would be amazed at this accomplishment. Additionally, he seems to have done it in a non-partisan way. He works with both sides of the aisle equally. When I was given the opportunity to build my relationship with him, I jumped at the chance. Incidentally, at the time, he was launching the US Hispanic Business Council while semi-retired in Texas. I became a Correspondent and I have been publishing on USHBC.com for over a year.

So, where is the fatal flaw? Its a combo of: Gen Alpha is not engaged at USHBC and my (boring) content is not engaging to Gen Alpha. Do I have a way of fixing this? Yes and no. Yes, if I have Bourdain-level-CNN resources. No, if I have Sergio-level-USHBC resources. But regardless, I’m not giving up and every week, I publish again and again and again until somebody somewhere notices me.

That said, even before Javier stepped into my life, in the 90s, I rode the train to DC and I asked Peter Hakim and Michael Shifter of the Inter American Dialogue if I could do the same: Attempt to take the (boring) content of what is happening in the Latin American Advisor and engage a younger audience into the present state of the Americas. I don’t know why this has always been my dream but it remains my dream.

Now, why do I do this? I have a child who is Gen Alpha. And, I know how to create financial privilege for him. There was a day when I introduced him to the team that was working behind the scenes in a skyrise so that by the time he was 20, he could check out of the rat race and live on the water in Mexico. I felt good about myself on that day. It felt different in comparison to the privilege of my story in Las Lomas de Tecamachalco, Mexico. It felt like something that I could show Latina/os in the USA on how to accomplish by just opening up four accounts at their local big bank.

Mind you, I am not even in the super-advanced category. Like, check out Tina Huang. She knows how to communicate with her audience in ways that I only dream of. Check out what she does with #ClaudeCowork:

Now, let’s continue digging deep. The second slide of What Do I Want? is a universe unto itself. I did myself the favor of closing in but then leaving myself open to scaling out. The audience has to suspend disbelief in certain ways because Gen Alpha is young and they are not the target generation right now. Folks are currently considering how Boomers are going to transfer to Gen X or Millennials or even older ages of Gen Z. For the most part, they are also focusing on those who have assets. Nobody, except for me, is focused on those who are starting at zero. In most cases, unbanked.

I gave myself the assignment of starting with the first one: City: Los Angeles. Nonprofit Partner: A Place Called Home, a 501C3 in South Central. CEO: Norayma Cabot. CFO: Ofelia Mancera. Division Manager: Bernyce Talley. Music Director: Joaquin Pacheco. This team created a casting call for all of the Gen Alpha musicians in the music program. When they completed the casting, they introduced me to their choice: Angel. I asked Wil Dog of Ozomatli if he would support me and he said, Yes. He also introduced me to Anthony Valadez, a wonderful tastemaker in Los Angeles. Together, we made a thoughtful attempt at introducing this musician named Angel as the first in our series that will extend to the entire Americas.

There is one slide that is missing from both of the comic strips: The Why? Every year, the Federal Reserve creates a report that is then published by the Motley Fool. For the year 2025, here are some of the ghastly stats:

• Baby boomers hold 56.3% of stocks

• Gen Xers own 25.5% of stocks

• Millennials own 2.3% of stocks

• White Americans own 89.1% of stocks

• Black Americans only own 1.1% of stocks

• Hispanic Americans own 0.5% of stocks

I made a cute reel for Calo News with Uli Bella of Ozomatli about this phenomenon when he said to me: “I know I am not rich but I feel rich.” I was astounded by that statement.

If you look at these stats and you don’t understand the why, like Harley Davidson says, I’m not sure I can help you understand. But one thing I do know for sure is that all the wealthy people that I know use the stock market to compound their wealth.

#Intelatin #Media #FinancialLiteracy #USHBC

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via the ZZK Records newsletter

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) newsletter

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

Sergio: What is your cultural background?

Tommy: Raised by a pack of feral chickens in golden gate park.. if i have any cultural relevance it’d be San Francisco... lower middle class at best.. raised by mom and with my brother constantly beating roof on me.. my mom’s side of the fam are all fair skinned..

Sergio: Do you speak/read/write in Spanish?

Tommy: i can’t speak/read nor write Spanish. my mother’s side wasn’t latin/hispanic etc..

Sergio: Did you tour through Mexico and the Americas? What was it like for you?

Tommy: never toured Mexico and have only been to tj.. would love to play there sometime.. we toured the states/Europe constantly.. all summer long and endless trips throughout the year. it was great to be able to experience other cultures/ways of existing.. widened my scope of possibilities..

Sergio: There were so many superstars like Mark Gonzalez, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerrero, Jesse Martinez, etc... did you guys notice that you were from a similar culture?

Tommy: i doubt any of us grew up in a Spanish speaking home.. stevie’s mom would speak to him in Spanish but i always heard him answer in english... we are all very different... but skating was the thread..

Sergio: During the Bones Brigade era, did you notice that you were influencing
young Latinos to skate?

Tommy: it never crossed my mind.. later people told me they identified w me because of my color.. they assumed i was Mexican but really i’m a total mutt. philipino chilean ohlone irish portuguese ...

Sergio: Any observations on the impact you had on all of us Latinos?

Tommy: maybe some broken bones...! my life didn’t revolve around any culture other than the 1 to survive.. we led a very simple life and lived hand to mouth. my culture is skating and music.. that’s how and who i identify myself with.. i would never feign a life i didn’t lead..

#Intelatin #Media #Skateboarding #BonesBrigade #TommyGuerrero

Author’s note: I had the idea for On Prosperity a long time ago when I was on the radio. It wasn’t fully formatted yet. My first interview was with Dave Lombardo when he released the Philm album. Then, Stacy Peralta when he released the Bones Brigade film. Then, Kat Von D. I thought: Wow! That is a great lineup of three extremely talented individuals that are little known Latina/os. My fourth interview was with Tommy Guerrero who I was sure was Latino. He and several others of the Bones Brigade had been enormous figures in my youth. And even then, it was interesting to me how I did not gravitate to Mike McGill or Tony Hawk but I was inspired by Steve Caballero and Mark Gonzalez and Tommy Guerrero. At the time of the interview, Tommy was touring in support of an album that he released. I left his answers just as he wrote them because this interview was unique in that I didn’t get to talk to him to begin to back-pedal on my questions. All my questions were sent ahead of his answers. You can tell in my questions that they are all Latino related and you can tell by his answers that he had nothing to do with the Latino universe.

When I performed my Prosperity interviews with Betelgeize and Beatfarmer, I was inspired by where they chose to set their life stories funded by music. Betelgeize, Russian born was set in Bali. Beatfarmer, born in England was set in British Columbia. In both cases, for as much as I had pleasurable thoughts about the locations, I would never choose to live out my prosperity there but frequently, I do think about where I might want to live if I were to win the lottery.

In 2003, I was forced into a transition because of 9/11. I was living in Montpelier, Vermont. I was swimming in the Mad River Valley. I was as happy as I could be. The two years that I had spent working in online banking in Vermont and at Dartmouth in New Hampshire were some of the happiest I have experienced in my very fortunate life. Business had been derailed by the tragedy and I was forced to come back home to Los Angeles. I was contracted to spend a year at the Los Angeles Times building and was paid a fortune to be ignored by journalists laying in velvet caskets. At the end of my contract, I packed my bags and moved to Spain. I spent half the time in Girona and the other half in Ronda. Although both are beautiful places, I walked away with one very definitive realization: Spain cannot compare to Mexico. I left Spain and moved to Guanajuato, Mexico and I was whole again.

In 2007, I was invited to the Inter American Press Association’s celebration of Gabriel García Márquez’ 80th birthday in Cartagena, Colombia. In direct contrast to Spain, upon spending a week in Cartagena, I definitely thought that I could live a wonderful life in Colombia. At the time, I was single and childless and to a certain extent, I had lots of energy. I loved everything about Cartagena on the surface. Like Shirley Valentine, I didn’t want to go home when the celebration ended. But, I witnessed two things on that trip that were outside of my normal routine. The first was the busloads of European men fueled by cocaine doing sex tourism in this place filled with extraordinarily beautiful women. The second was the aggressiveness of the (strong) men attempting to make commerce with you on the street. I compared all of it just like I did in Spain … to Mexico… I thought, this isn’t me lounging on a tropical beach relaxing and playing my nylon-string guitar. This is me being hyper vigilant in a Darwinian place. In 2026, in a totally different lifestyle, I asked myself: Do you want to always be fucking ON and being protective of your (pretty) Mexican introverted wife and your (blonde) nerdy skinny introverted child? I answered my own question by returning home.

Again, in 2026, upon being overwhelmed by the social media feeds and success of Karol G at Coachella and apropos of my prosperity interview with Eblis Javier Álvarez of the Meridian Brothers of Bogotá, I began to ask myself about the places where Karol G, Juanes, J Balvin, Shakira and Sofía Vergara might decide to live in their time of ultimate prosperity. It seems to me that their sensibilities almost always land most of them in Miami. Why? I have been in the most luxurious parts of the keys in Florida and I didn’t see the allure at all especially in comparison to Cartagena or México but I came up with a provocative title for this tangent:

Is there a Latin American Identity for the Tax Brackets of Miami?

I thought it would be an intellectually interesting exercise to ask these types of questions in a series on Prosperity but I don’t necessarily have the answers. I asked a touring rock star that wished to remain anonymous in my network about this and he told me that he also saw this pattern for hyper-successful Latin American superstars, not just from Colombia but also from Venezuela and Cuba.

• How much success does a Latin American identity have to enjoy before it makes sense to get a penthouse in Miami?

• At what point does a Latin American identity become a flexible asset that is optimized for capital gains in the USA?

• Is Miami the high performance “Top” for Latin American artists?

• And most importantly in my mind relative to this particular episode of On Prosperity: Are these Colombians mentioned above the Darwinian equivalents of always being ON because that is how they were raised on the streets of Colombia?

I know that I could pull out my contacts and ask these types of questions to folks in my rock star network but I don’t think they are necessarily thinking about this enough to get me closer to the curiosity that I am pursuing. I do know that El Dusty is actively and repeatedly being recruited to leave Corpus Christi and move to Miami or Los Angeles. And this ain’t a diss in any way but I know that there is a taboo price that could convince him. As much as he loves Corpus Christi and as much as I love being in the quiet natural peaceful jungles of Catemaco, Veracruz, México, I know there is a carrot that could convince both of us to change the places where we want to be set.

El Precio del Arraigo

Cuando realicé mis entrevistas sobre Prosperidad con Betelgeize y Beatfarmer, me sentí inspirado por los entornos que eligieron para situar sus narrativas de vida, financiadas íntegramente por la música. Betelgeize, de origen ruso, se estableció en Bali; Beatfarmer, nacido en Inglaterra, optó por la Columbia Británica. En ambos casos, a pesar de la naturaleza idílica de dichas locaciones, nunca las consideraría como destinos para ejercer mi propia prosperidad. No obstante, frecuentemente reflexiono sobre mi propia geografía ideal en un escenario de riqueza fortuita.

En 2003, las repercusiones del 11 de septiembre me forzaron a una transición. Residía en Montpelier, Vermont y era el epítome de la plenitud. Los dos años dedicados a la banca en línea en Vermont y en Dartmouth, New Hampshire, representan algunos de los periodos más gratificantes de mi trayectoria profesional. Sin embargo, el ecosistema empresarial fue descarrilado por la tragedia y me vi obligado a retornar a Los Ángeles. Bajo contrato en el edificio del Los Angeles Times, percibí honorarios sustanciales por ser ignorado por periodistas que yacían en “ataúdes de terciopelo”. Al concluir dicho contrato, me trasladé a España, dividiendo mi tiempo entre Girona y Ronda. Pese a la belleza de ambos sitios, alcancé una conclusión definitiva: España es incomparable con México. Al mudarme a Guanajuato, recuperé mi sentido de integridad.

En 2007, asistí a la celebración de los 80s de Gabriel García Márquez en Cartagena, Colombia, invitado por la Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa. En contraste directo con mi experiencia en España, tras una semana en Cartagena, vislumbré la posibilidad de una vida excepcional en Colombia. En aquel entonces, mi perfil demográfico era el de un individuo soltero, sin descendencia y con una energía inagotable. Estéticamente, Cartagena era fascinante; como el personaje de Shirley Valentine, no deseaba retornar. Sin embargo, presencié dos fenómenos ajenos a mi cotidianidad: primero, el flujo de hombres europeos impulsados por el consumo de cocaína practicando un turismo sexual en un entorno de mujeres extraordinarias; segundo, la agresividad mercantil de hombres que operaban bajo una lógica de supervivencia en el espacio público. Al contrastar esto con México, comprendí que mi ideal no era la vigilancia hiperactiva en un entorno darwiniano, sino la serenidad de una guitarra de cuerdas de nailon en una playa tropical. En 2026, bajo un estilo de vida transformado, me cuestioné: ¿deseo mantener un estado de alerta constante y actuar como protector de una esposa mexicana introvertida y un hijo nerdy y retraído? La respuesta fue el retorno al hogar.

Nuevamente en 2026, abrumado por el impacto mediático de Karol G en Coachella y a propósito de mi entrevista sobre prosperidad con Eblis Javier Álvarez de Meridian Brothers, comencé a indagar sobre las preferencias residenciales de figuras como Karol G, Juanes, J Balvin, Shakira y Sofía Vergara en su cúspide económica. Resulta evidente que sus sensibilidades convergen casi siempre en Miami. ¿Por qué? Habiendo recorrido las zonas más exclusivas de los cayos de Florida, no percibo el atractivo en comparación con Cartagena o México, lo cual me llevó a formular una premisa provocadora:

¿Existe un precio para el arraigo?

Considero que este es un ejercicio intelectualmente estimulante para una serie sobre Prosperidad, aunque no poseo respuestas definitivas. Consulté a un artista de rock de renombre internacional que prefirió el anonimato, quien confirmó este patrón no solo para colombianos, sino también para venezolanos y cubanos de alto perfil.

• ¿Qué umbral de éxito debe alcanzar una identidad latinoamericana antes de que la adquisición de un penthouse en Miami se convierta en una consecuencia lógica?

• ¿En qué punto la identidad latinoamericana se transforma en un activo flexible optimizado para la ganancia de capital en los Estados Unidos?

• ¿Es Miami el “Top” de alto rendimiento para el artista latinoamericano?

• Y fundamentalmente: ¿Son estas figuras el equivalente darwiniano de un estado de alerta permanente (always ON) derivado de su formación en las calles de Colombia?

Cuento con los contactos para elevar estas interrogantes a mi red de colaboradores en la industria del rock, pero dudo que hayan reflexionado lo suficiente sobre este fenómeno. Sé que El Dusty está siendo reclutado sistemáticamente para abandonar Corpus Christi en favor de Miami o Los Ángeles. Sin pretender ser peyorativo, reconozco que existe un “precio tabú” capaz de persuadirlo. Así como él valora Corpus Christi y yo valoro el aislamiento natural de Catemaco, Veracruz, reconozco la existencia de incentivos económicos capaces de redefinir nuestra ubicación geográfica ideal.

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via the ZZK Records newsletter

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) newsletter

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

Eblis Javier Álvarez, Meridian Brothers

Sergio: I’d like to touch on complicated issues if you allow later on in the interview….

Eblis: As a musician, I find myself in situations that are not suited to my career. Especially as it relates to the verbal. I think it is necessary to have some compassion because my thing is music and not words.

Sergio: Ok Maestro, how do you identify?

Eblis: Espíritu Humano

Sergio: Pls describe your childhood house at 16YO….

Eblis: I was born in Bogotá. We lived in a multifamily apartment building. It was very communist looking like most of the buildings were in the 70s in Bogotá. It was salmon colored with yellow. Bogotá is very salmon colored. 80% of Bogotá is salmon colored brick. It had five floors with many apartments and we lived on the fifth floor. I lived there with my mother, father and two sisters.

Sergio: Did you understand your socio-economic position in Bogotá at the age of 16?

Eblis: Yes, more or less. I was very middle class but I studied at a school where there were lots of moneyed families. The reason being because my mother was a teacher there at that school. It was strange because I didn’t have that type of money but I was surrounded by folks that did. We talked a lot about classism and I could easily see how different my friends were when they had lots of money and when they didn’t. The society was very divided. I was also somewhat innocent because I didn’t understand all of these differences very well even if I could distinguish their differences while I was living my reality.

Sergio: Was there music in your life at this time?

Eblis: Yes, I was already a musician. I had already been educated in music at this age. I played classical guitar and I was already performing. I knew that I wanted to become a musician when I was an adult. I wanted to play jazz, classical music, and eventually prog rock. I looked up to Antonio Arnedo, a jazz saxophonist that was very recognized in Colombia.

Sergio: What was expected of you at the age of 18?

Eblis: To play my guitar, to study music, to jam. I was expected to learn the science of music. I was very protected by my parents. They supported me in all that I did and all I wanted to do was study music. I studied at two universities, at the National Conservatory and also at the Javieriana. I graduated in 2001.

Sergio: I believe that as a musician you have a magic that allows you to get very exciting and valuable media coverage in the highest of publications like The New Yorker and the New York Times. Do you agree?

Eblis: I am very happy that I get coverage. I do enjoy being able to develop my career as a musician and I have an artistic route where I have my own goals. The media coverage is part of the public domain but I have private goals too. Like, I want to explore musical frontiers that do not yet exist. In the whole spectrum of music, harmonies, rhythms, etc.….

Sergio: I listened to your new disc with Mexican Institute of Sound and Beck, for the album Ruido Tovar. And I know that you have a concert in Los Angeles in August at the Regency. Let’s start with this: Are you happy with your position in the music industry in 2026?

Eblis: Yes, I am very satisfied. I didn’t ever expect to have a career in music, like a touring musician that sells music. I have been to Los Angeles five times. Every time I go to perform in LA, I feel like it’s the “Top.”

Sergio: Pls describe the home where you live present-day in Bogotá…

Eblis: I live in a 4/3 brick house that is salmon colored. It has a music studio and I live there with my wife. I own this house but it is the second home that I have purchased. Prior to this, I bought an apartment.

Sergio: It sounds like you learned to do economic laddering. Is that correct?

Eblis: Yes, I think everybody has the goal of owning their own home. I was very happy when I purchased my first apartment. It gave me a lot of satisfaction. I purchased it at 33YO. Bogotá is full of musicians and there are many factors that go into whether a musician has enough income to own a house.

Sergio: Most of the time, when I interview musicians in Latin America, they also have a second career to supplement their income as musicians. Most of the time it is where they show their entrepreneurship.

Eblis: I also had a second career for the last twenty years. I was a professor of music and I thought that was what I was going to do with my life. When I began to generate income as a musician, I felt that was extra. I retired from being a professor about five years ago. I wasn’t so much an entrepreneur, more like an employee. The university employed me. As a musician, I have received a lot of grants. Both in Colombia and in Denmark where I was studying my post-graduate degrees in music. When I won the National Composition Grant in Colombia and when I won a Grant from the Danish Institute for the Arts, I was able to start my economic life. I was also an employee at a software company. I don’t feel that I had to struggle in the music industry at a young age. At a young age, I was only performing local concerts. Even with all this, I wouldn’t say that I know a lot about finances, I live with only what is necessary, including with my instruments.

Sergio: I am curious to come back to what you mention is the “Top.” It could be argued that Coachella is the “Top.” And this year, a Colombian artist was headlining Coachella. Do you have any thoughts on the incredible achievements of Karol G.

Eblis: As a Colombian, I am informed on Karol G and I think it’s a tremendous achievement but I don’t really listen to that type of music. I admire her greatly though from the point of view that when you have such success with your career, it means that you have had to struggle a lot to make it to the top. I think it’s incredible.

Sergio: When Colombia is mentioned in the mainstream media in the United States, the news is really an atrocious coverage of life in Colombia. Do you have an opinion about what life is like in 2026 in Colombia?

Eblis: It is a place with an emerging culture. This makes things difficult and it also provides a lot of opportunity. The regional cultures have a lot of differences and they have a lot of conflicts. And it is a passage for narcotics and so all of those conflicts become more accentuated by that reality. I think there is also a marriage between the political powers in Colombia and the narcotics industry. It is a complicated country but we have a lot of resources for the cultural arts, in music especially. I think Colombia has great music in the past, present and future. It has always had great potential, especially in the present. Since that is the case, it should have great music in the future too.

Sergio: Maestro, in terms of prosperity who is doing better, you at 16 or you at your current age?

Eblis: I would say the both of us are doing the same. I have been fortunate to be able to make music all of my life. I have always had a great support system. I have also had a lot of limitations so I was able to avoid both abundance and the opposite. I was never at zero and for folks that do not have anything at all have a tougher time to get started. I think that I was blessed to have enough to get started and also plenty of opportunities to create music. I have been lucky. Everyone has a destiny and everyone has opportunities throughout their life that reveal their destiny. I do believe that we all have an innate instinct and a sense to find our destiny.

Link: Eblis performs at The Regency in Los Angeles on August 5, 2026

#Intelatin #Media #Music #Colombia #Bogotá #MeridianBrothers

Kat Von D was delivered by her grandfather in Monterrey, Mexico in 1982 as the eldest of two other children to Argentine parents working as church missionaries who eventually settled in the Inland Empire of Los Angeles when Kat was 4. At the age of 14, she dropped out of school and became a tattoo artist in Hollywood. At 22, she broke through and landed on TLC’s television program Miami Ink. After three seasons, she spun off her own show in her hometown of Hollywood called LA Ink. Today, it is the highest rated show on TLC.

The success of this television show has created an enormous business empire for the now 28-year-old Latina. She owns her tattoo parlor, High Voltage Tattoo, an art gallery called Wonderland next door, a cosmetics line with Sephora, a clothing line, a pending recording career and has penned two best selling picture books through Collins Design. In addition to tending her business affairs with the help of a team that includes her brother and sister, she is also a model, a photographer, a musician, a teacher and a unique art collector.

Her second book, The Tattoo Chronicles, is a collection of her journals for a one-year period while she was dating Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe and living what seems like a very hectic life in Los Angeles. Over the telephone, Kat tells me, “I ♥ living in Los Angeles. These are my stomping grounds. There is such a mixture of cultures and sub-cultures in LA, I feel more connected here than anywhere else in the world.”

Yet upon reading the words and the feelings in the book, you get the sense that Kat Von D is a lonely, anxiety-prone, recluse searching for love at a moment in her tremendous career when she simply doesn’t have the time or the capacity to love. Kat is the fortunate recipient of an extreme celebrity sized fame that entitles her to Bentleys, lucrative investments and best sellers but it also attracts violent stalkers and a startlingly ignorant and hurtful establishment that doesn’t care to understand her point of view and instead parades her circus-style on a tabloid conveyer belt.

In the end, Katherine is either smiling or crying all the way down the Hollywood walk of fame to the bank. In some circles with the uptight rich and judgmental she may feel out of place but in others, she is a beautiful rags to riches story of a starry-eyed romantic outsider who dreamt and made it big with her own integrity in tact. She is the girl who got on a greyhound bus and landed in Hollywood and made something of herself in the cruel and heartless town she has grown to love: Los Angeles.

#Intelatin #Music #Media #KatVonD

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

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George Carrillo, CEO of HCC

Sergio: How do you identify?

George: I was born in Chicago and my family is from Ecuador. I am Latino American.

Sergio: Describe your childhood house….

George: 1,600 square feet with front yard. Bug window in the front of the house where the staircase was. We had a basement and two stories above. Traditional Chicago type of house. I lived there with my parents and my siblings but when I was ten years old, my three siblings had already left the house. My parents left Ecuador in the 50s with a work visa. My father was a dishwasher in Connecticut and he was offered a better job as a machinist in Chicago. They came from Ecuador to escape poverty and to separate from living with the in-laws.

Sergio: What was expected of you at 16YO?

George: To get up, do good in school and come home after school. There was no bussing system because I lived one mile from my school. I had to walk there and back at the age of ten. Sometimes the snow was up to my waist in the winter. I was raised to be independent and figuring things out on my own. My earliest memory of pre-school was that my sister dropped me off and that was the last time. My parents tried to be more present for me by working graveyard shifts but it was hard. Everyday was a full state of survival to make it through the day.

Sergio: What was expected of you during the transition after high school?

George: My high school guidance counselor advised me to follow my father into factory work. Other than that, I felt like I had no guidance and I was lost at graduation. High school was a struggle. I decided to begin working until I could figure things out. I started as a telemarketer for a mortgage company. I started making great money and eventually I became a loan officer in the nice part of the city. I was always wearing suit and tie at that age. I was hazed mercilessly by the other loan officers. It got so bad that my boss ended up isolating me to a different office and when I decided that I couldn’t take it any longer, I enlisted in the Marines.

Sergio: Tell us about the experience of being a Marine…

George: I told the recruiter at the Marines that I wanted to belong to something. In total, I spent six years in the Marines. It was a mixed bag. If I were to do it all over again, I would have gotten a degree and come in as an Officer. I didn’t fit in very well. I was able to develop great relationship. I pushed my body and my mind to the absolute limits and I have faced challenges that I will never talk about. Over all, I felt like the person to the left and right of me in the war zone had my trust 100%. We protected each other.

Sergio: You were intending to be a career Marine, right?

George: Yes. I re-enlisted and I became an instructor, interrogations, navigation, combat training. I got hurt during a deployment and I was past my 5 year marker. I failed an exam because of a tumor and I was given an honorable discharge. My career ended with paperwork that took three minutes to complete. I was not prepared to leave the Marines. I went into recovery in Arizona where my parents lived and began a new transition. I was 25YO at the time.

Sergio: Into the Police?

George: Yes, I graduated from college with honors and I became a police officer in Arizona. I was a cop for ten years. It felt like a very catastrophic time in my life. I got married and had a baby. My father passed away. It was a difficult, devastating time. Since my in-laws were in Portland, Oregon, we decided to move to Portland. For such a blue State, I came to discover that Portland is such an incredibly racist place. Built off of a white utopia. They struggle a lot with colorism. I could not get hired on the police force in Portland. It was an unbelievably challenging recruitment process. During this time, we hired a subcontractor to do some work on our house and every time the white subcontractor showed up with his Hispanic workers, they would ask me who the owner of the house was because they couldn’t believe that it was me.

Sergio: Where do you live present-day?

George: 1,700 square foot townhouse with a small front yard in Portland. Made of stucco. Three floors. Different from my childhood home in Chicago. I live in this home with my wife and my two kids.

Sergio: What is your work today?

George: I am the CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council (HCC). The mission of the association is: To provide representation to Latinos in the construction industry. We go against or we support legislation in DC to benefit four million workers in the construction industry. It is very entrepreneurial because you are always chasing funding.

Sergio: Do you represent the American workforce? From my perspective, an American born, Marine, Cop, former State level Health Official, CEO of a trade association, I think you make a great candidate as the representative of the future of America. What do you think?

George: I am, yes. My roots and who George is comes from my family culture in Ecuador. I bring that lived experience into every position that I have worked for. That part of me is a part of the American story. When I think of the American workforce, there are disparities in the leadership roles. They love to have us as workers but breaking the glass ceiling is more challenging. The overall number shows a major discrepancy. I have been trying to help people to break those ceilings. I struggle with how things are done, they are punitive, top down structure, its not very empowering. The more the role that I take on as a leader inspires loyalty and that produces better outcomes. I think that I am better suited for government and for nonprofit work than as a corporation. HCC doesn’t just look at Latinos and Construction. We look at the industry as a whole, we always trace back to health. Lets look at the suicide rates, the fatality rates, the graduation rates … when I was the Director for Social Determinants of Health, I learned to look at all the pieces of the individual. I am constantly in a balancing act with my work, my family, and myself in this political climate.

Sergio: Are you familiar with the Latino storyline of Landman? In the first season, there was a group of Latinos, construction worker types in the oil industry, in the Permian Basin. In a group of four workers, three were Latinos. By the end of the Season, all three Latinos were dead. And they died the most grizzly death imaginable on the job where there was no body to turn over to the moms and widows.

George: I haven’t seen it yet.

Sergio: The HCC has a national report coming out in April. How many Latina/os are in the construction industry?

George: 4.4M and about our presence as owners is about 90,000. We account for 7% of the total industry as business owners. The construction industry as a whole is very old. Latina/os are big in roofing and framing. The average age of a roofer is 48 so it is an aging workforce. If I, as a 47YO, wanted to own my construction business and secure that type of work, where would I get the access to capital?

Sergio: Let’s talk about my unicorn scenario:

There are 68M Latina/os in the USA. There are 4.4M Latina/os in the construction industry. Of those, 90,000 Latina/os are business owners. Of those, a tiny, tiny percentage are young, at around the 18. I want us to think of a scenario where we support one on their graduation day in June and by September, when they would have previously gone to college, they have their LLC ready to go and they are ready to subcontract with a company like MasTec so that they can begin building portions of the AI data centers in the Permian Basin of Texas.

George: Total unicorn situation. They are probably second or third generation. There is a lot of risk to that scenario.

Sergio: JP Morgan Chase just issued a press release about how they can support the younger generation to find the “American Dream.” It is called ADI. Let’s run one person through getting access to capital from the ADI. We all know it’s really hard to do but let’s just imagine it as possible.

George: There are plenty of individuals exiting the university path and looking for direction. The construction industry is low barrier and that is useful. It is very demanding work and low paying when you start out. To make good money, you need apprenticeships, you need qualifications, certifications, you need all sorts of things to advance, have benefits, be a part of union. The industry in general has struggled to engage in the high school setting. The NFL, for example, creates a path through college and they do a lot of recruiting through a system to get you from point A to point C to make sure that if you are good enough, you make it. Even if it’s a small percentage of people who make it, the NFL invests money to find the next Tom Brady. The construction industry does not do that yet.

Sergio: After speaking with George, I asked Javier Palomarez for his macro-take on this unicorn scenario. Speaking speaking ahead of his fireside chat with Former Secretary of the Interior and Former Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar at EarthX, this is what Javier told me:

“Initiatives like this are emerging across a variety of sectors and industries. These include JP Morgan's American Dream Initiative, Verizon's Small Business Digital Readiness Program and Capital One's Business Resources Suite. The programs that educate young entrepreneurs and provide them with previously inaccessible opportunities are not just beneficial, they are necessary for our economy's well-being. Our nation is powered by small businesses, which create two thirds of net new jobs and generate roughly half of our GDP. Historically, education, access to capital and general access to various resources have been issues for these entrepreneurs, especially in their early stages. This is particularly true for the Hispanic community, which as an example, receives loan approval half as often despite comparable credit and revenue. The sooner we can bring resources, education and access to capital to these entrepreneurs, the sooner they can contribute to our economy and ultimately build prosperity.”

Sergio: After speaking with Javier, I asked Tayde Aburto for his micro-take on this unicorn scenario. Here is the starting point of our dialogue. You have a son who is going to turn 18 soon, do you think that he believes in the American Dream in the same way that you believe in it?

Tayde: I want to believe so. My son has been blessed to travel to many countries at a young age. He has explored different cities around the world. Most recently, we did a trip to look at colleges throughout the United States and he realized that he has a very unique opportunity. When we talk about it together, it gives me the impression that he does.

Sergio: So, do you think that he believes that a college education in the United States is going to be exceptional in comparison to a university degree anywhere else in the world?

Tayde: Yes, if he picks the right college. He wants to major in Business. If he ends up going to a university with a strong business program. I say this but I do believe that there are exceptional business programs that are competing with the USA, like the one that I went to, Tec de Monterrey in Morelia.

Sergio: Your wife is hyper-educated in Finance, you have a Bachelors, a Masters and all sorts of Executive Certificates. Do you think he believes that college is what is expected of him at 18?

Tayde: Yes, but at the same time, we are not married to the idea that he must earn a college degree. But he sees us with our degrees. He sees how much I think about education. He knows that I want a PhD from London School of Economics. He knows that I am headed to Dartmouth next week for a program. My son has witnessed this throughout his life. I believe that this experience has helped him to consider it. We want him to be a productive asset to society however that plays out.

Sergio: I think you and I went along the executive path but being an entrepreneur is a different path. The type of entrepreneur that is 18, incorporated, working in the construction industry, profiting from the goldrush of data centers in the Permian Basin, how do you see the difference between the two paths?

Tayde: A hybrid would be perfect. Studying for a college degree and experience with these types of verticals. I do like that idea of being a high school grad thinking about this option. Going to college is very expensive. Not everybody is going to be able to do it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had not married my wife. She helped me get financially literate in ways that I didn’t know before I met her as a surfer in Ixtapa. This path is great to become one of the future entreprenuers right out of high school without having to worry about the cost of college. You will learn a lot of practical skills that will translate in so many of your experiences in business later in life.

Sergio: The United States is in a type of crisis mode where young people aren’t going into these fields. You know all the opportunities that we are discussing.

Tayde: I was not aware of all those opportunities. There should be a better way to promote these opportunities. I have been working with contractors recently for a project in my backyard. I am putting together a YouTube series to promote one of my entrepreneurial ventures: It is called the Salted Entrepreneur. Upon meeting this family of workers that built the studio for my series, I learned a lot about how the father is preparing his sons to take over the business and how the sons are adding their skillsets to their father’s business. I just think there is a need to promote these opportunities across the country.

Sergio: The Tu Futuro venture that you started is going on five years now, you also have the vantage point of your 17YO child, how do you see his futuro?

Tayde: I have a very Mexican way of thinking about my children: I work for them! I am going to support them as much as I can. I like to work hard, I like to give back, I don’t have a magic wand to educate children but my wife and I just want them to be productive assets to society. I am confident in their success. I am bullish on the future of Latino children in the United States. It doesn’t have to be the millionaire and billionaire lifestyle. I am just talking about a nice decent life enjoying the good things that abound around us.

#Intelatin #Media #USHBC #HCC #ADI

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

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Félix Medina, El Capitán

Sergio: How do you identify?

Félix: I was born in Mexicali but my hometown is Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. I am a Mexican immigrant.

Sergio: Tell me about your childhood home at 16YO?

Félix: Two floors, a big pine tree that my brother and I planted. The house has a pale gray color. We built a high fence so that our dalmatian, Willy, couldn’t escape. A driveway for two cars. It was a private neighborhood, gated community. 2 1/2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms. I lived there with my mom and dad and my older brother and my older sister.

Sergio: What do you think was your personal socio-economic position at the age of 16YO?

Félix: It was not something I thought about it. I was fixated on my youth. I definitely identified as middle class. Juarez was a very diverse city. I had friends that had homes made of metal sheets and cardboard. I also had friends that had farms and had big companies. I had exposure to both sides and it was easy to identify. I also had a lot of exposure to El Paso because my dad was an entrepreneur bringing semi trucks from Juarez to El Paso. We were crossing the border on a daily basis. My dad was a great bridge for this type of international business. My mother sacrificed her career as a teacher when my dad’s business got big. She saw that she was more needed at home when the business was booming.

Sergio: This concept of being a bridge between two cultures seems to have made a big impact on you. Is that right?

Félix: Definitely. I think it started when I got obsessed with American cartoons. Thundercats, Silverhawks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, I loved them. I loved the language. I was so eager to learn everything about the American culture. I thought they were so cool. I collected all the figures.

Sergio: What was expected of you at the age of 18?

Félix: To start my college education and to take a seat at my father’s business. At the time, he had 15 full time employees and a nice size fleet. I had to start with the delivery people and to understand the business from the ground floor up. I attended college at the Universidad Autonoma in Juárez. You could see El Paso from the campus across the river. I got my degree in 2006.

Sergio: What is your immigrant story?

Félix: In my second year of college, I met a foreign exchange student at the same college. She was from a tiny town in Indiana called Martinsville. I fell in love with her, redhead, freckles, blue eyes, and I acted like her guide and protector. We married and moved to Indiana. Indiana and the state of Chihuahua have a lot of similarities. Especially in business. It may not be the most appealing place but they make up for it in their open-ness and flexibility in their culture. They love to learn and they are always open for business. They call it Hoosier Hospitality. We are good people.

Sergio: You consider yourself a Hoosier?

Yes, I have skin in the game. I am a Mexican Hoosier. And I have a daughter that was born in Indiana.

Sergio: Tell us about the home where you live today….

Félix: Greenery in the front, a nice flower bed, bushes, nice mulch, flowers, a pathway to the main door. One story without a basement. It does have an attic. It has a nice cantaloupe color. It’s in a quiet neighborhood with a beautiful backyard with access to a pond. I do a lot of my decisions and introspection at this pond. It is a 2 bedroom and 2 bath.

Sergio: Do you have a perspective on prosperity?

Félix: I define it as a combination of a balance between wealth, health and good experiences. This makes for prosperity and happiness.

Sergio: Who do you think is doing better, Félix at 16 or Félix today?

Félix: When it comes to business and growth, Félix today has so many opportunities. When it comes to health, we are about the same. Perhaps Mexico has better health options for me. When it comes to experiences, they are about the same. I recently went to Mexico so I think it’s a hard question to answer.

Sergio: If you are representative of being a Latino entrepreneur in the United States and what it is that you contribute to the US economy….

Félix: I think it’s a very specific spot to be in because at El Capitán we primarily help companies understand audiences that they do not understand. Just existing is an act of rebellion. Even before the southwest was a part of the US, even from those times, Mexicans have never been recognized. The fact that I have created this company to help them communicate with a 4 trillion dollar purchasing power, we are important. In 30 years, we will be 50% of the population. The majority of our prospects still don’t understand that but fortunately we have clients that do understand.

#Intelatin #Media #USHBC

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

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• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

Stephanie Amaro

Sergio: How do you identify?

Stephanie: I’m a third generation Mexican American. My parents were born in California, my mom’s parents were from Arizona and my father’s family migrated from Mexico to Utah and eventually California. My great grandparents were from Zacatecas.

Sergio: Please describe your childhood home….

Stephanie: I grew up in Whittier in a Tudor revival on half an acre. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, nine avocado trees as well as fig, grapefruit, oranges, persimmons, peaches and loquat trees. That’s what we ate as latch-key 90’s kids. I lived there with my mom, brother and sister. When I was really little, my parents made extra money playing in a band for hire. I started learning to play music on the piano in the living room, then the guitar. I taught myself the Beatles songbook. I learned practically all of them. My dad was a mega fan and had all the deep cuts, all the books of behind-the-scenes lore and bootleg copies of rare studio outtakes. He was really into them. It was good education to learn their songs because they’re simple but you really learn a lot about harmony. We didn’t have cable so I couldn’t watch MTV but I did get my hands on CDs and made mix tapes from the radio of course. Anyway, around 15 years old I got really into grunge rock. My favorite was Hole. I wanted to be Courtney Love so bad.

Sergio: Is it a jump from the Beatles to Hole?

Stephanie: Not really. The song structures and harmony are pretty much the same, it’s just a different sound palette.

Sergio: What was your socio-economic position as a 16YO?

I don’t think I was very conscious of that at that age. In the 90’s it seemed like Uptown Whittier was the place for the up-start Latinos that wanted to blend in with the white folk. When those kinds of Latinos “graduated” Whittier they went on to Hacienda Heights and after that, Newport Beach. A very “Latinos for Trump” pipeline. My parents always had me in some religious school as the only brown girl with the white kids until high school, which was public, and therefore a little more diverse. My high school was predominantly Latino, of the aforementioned brand. It felt like a very suburban upbringing.

Sergio: So, music is already in your life in high school, right?

4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” was my 6th grade anthem. I remember one time during recess the kids were taking a poll as to which “Creep” was better…Radiohead or Stone Temple Pilots? I was the only kid who voted Radiohead. I had minor key anguish in my blood I guess.

Sergio: What was expected of you at 18?

My home life was pretty chaotic leading up to and following my parents’ divorce. They’re stereotypical “me” generation boomers. I wasn’t asked about school or grades or got any guidance about going to college. At 18, my mom decided to start charging me rent to live in her back house. I didn’t feel it was worth it, neither could I afford it, so I up and started touring with an indie band from Denver called Uphollow as their bass player. It was what I call proto-emo. We opened for Jimmy Eat World, who were just getting their first big break at the time. Although I knew I could sing (I DID win the kindergarten talent show singing “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tale), I didn’t sing much at all during my rock/indie/punk years. I had this thing in my head that I didn’t want to be devalued as some singer/songwriter that can’t play. I’ve since cured myself of that kind of internalized misogyny.

Sergio: When did you become a Mariachi?

I got into regional Mexican music at 19. My grandma introduced me to the music of some ranchero artists on one fateful trip we took to her pueblo in Mexico. When I got back to LA it became an absolute hyperfocus. I started seeking out mariachi groups to go see and study. I’d go a lot to Cielito Lindo in El Monte, they had a world class mariachi there. Very successful. The director of the group also owned the restaurant and used it as a musical “home” for the group to perform. I thought that was pretty cool. What wasn’t so cool was the gender segregation of these groups. The main group was all men as a rule, and there was a separate all-female group that basically got second billing and less pay. I’d come from a rock background and was naïve to how the system worked and really thought I could audition for the main group. Anyway, they let me play a little for them and they told me my left hand was great but that my right hand had no idea what it was doing. So they offered to train me. The guitar player was cool enough to let me show up on their breaks at the restaurant for private lessons. He taught me all the different rhythms and styles and what regions they come from as well as repertoire I needed to know in order to start working in the mariachi scene. I worked at Marie Calendars at the time and would pay him with French Apple pie and avocados from my mom’s backyard. That’s how I got my world-class mariachi education, and I’m beyond lucky to have learned from the best. Fast forward about twenty years and here I am. Along the way I even managed to become the first-- and so far only-- female guitar player in the history of the genre to be invited to join one of those all-male elite mariachi groups. But even though it had been my dream, the reality of it as a system run by and for patriarchal men didn’t sit well with my autistic need for justice and equity and I ultimately left. The group that I play with now is called Mariachi Las Catrinas. It’s an amazing independent all-female group of bad-ass seasoned musicians and we have a great time and have done some amazing things together.

Sergio: The last time we met, you were doing well with Trio Ellas, when did that start?

We started playing together in 2008. When we were nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2012 things got serious and we incorporated, but like any gig worker or anybody that hasn’t been in the corporate world like me, we didn’t know much about running the business end of an unsigned semi-successful independent musical project. Income-wise, Trio Ellas was split three ways. We had publicists, we made money from gigs, streaming, merch, and CDs but we didn’t have a label so we didn’t have that support. We had a joint account where we saved a percentage from every gig in order to pay for recordings, wardrobe, gear and incidentals. The group disbanded in 2020.

Sergio: In 2012 you were performing in two bands, got nominated for a Latin Grammy, and you had a baby. That must have been tough for you.

Yes, my life was a LOT at that time. Trio Ellas was just taking off and I remember being miserably huge pregnant at the Latin Grammys trying to waddle down the red carpet. The Blue Agave was my ex’s sort of passion project. It was a cute concept; a fusion of dark surf rock and classic Latin repertoire. Like the kind of music that would be in a Tarantino-en-espanol film. But like I said, I had a lot of stuff going on and unfortunately – ask any woman in an otherwise all-male band—it was like, EXPECTED that as the only female member I had to be the one in charge of booking, promo, logistics, merch—anything that wasn’t the actual music. Man I resented that. Sorry bro I’m ADHD, it was way too much.

Sergio: When did you join Las Catrinas?

I began working with them in 2021 as a sub and committed to the group as a full-time member in 2024. The reason it took me so long to commit to such a great group was totally on me. I have a VERY hard time being a member of anything, whether it be organized religion, sports, hierarchies, tribes, clubs, a gang—whatever.

Sergio: Where do you live now?

I live in an awesome Spanish style house in South Gate. It’s a very family oriented community. It’s white with a terracotta roof, a nice garden, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. I live there with my 13 year old son, a bird, a dog and my cats.

Sergio: Who is doing better, Stephanie today or Stephanie at 16?

Ha! Well, at the moment we have the same haircut. The Stephanie of today is hands-down doing better. I was very confused at 16. Getting diagnosed as on the spectrum and seriously ADHD put a LOT of things into perspective. Like, why did I have perfect pitch as a child and all this crazy intuition and pattern recognition but no friends and an almost inability to complete homework? Why did I only have a natural propensity for skills that were useless for financial gain in this society? Why was I so socially awkward? I used to beat myself up for it. I spent many years feeling like a loser, lazy, and a failure no matter what level of success I achieved in music. The me of today knows what I’m good at, knows what I want and don’t want in my life, and is on a never-ending journey to figure out what my body needs to stay happy and productive. I definitely prefer the me of today.

#Intelatin #Media #Music #Mariachi

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Dave Lombardo

Sergio: What is your immigration story from Cuba?

Dave: In 1959, communism took over, or better said, Fidel Castro took over Cuba, and in the schools that my two older brothers were in, they started teaching the communist ideology and my mom and dad didn’t want to be a part of it. There was an underground project with the Catholic Church, Pedro Pan, Peter Pan, my brothers were 10 and 12 and my mom and dad put my two brothers on a plane and told them that you are going to the United States and in five months we will see you soon. My sister was too young so she stayed behind. I was not born yet. But you can imagine what this must have been like. I have three children of my own and I could not imagine putting them on a plane and sending them to a foreign country. I wouldn’t do it. The uncertainty and the experience that my parents went through. But they trusted the Catholic Church and the program. Next thing you know, there is a clash and Russians are sending over missles and the wall goes up. All flights to the United States are stopped and nobody is going to America. The government had take away my father’s meat markets, carnicerias, he had three in different parts of Havana and the family went into crisis and they didn’t get to see my brothers over five years. During that time, I was born. My brothers connected with a foster family and then in time all of us eventually reconnected in Long Beach. My mom told me that it was a crapshoot and she didn’t know where her boys would end up but she loved California and I love California so in the end, I am good with the series of events. We ended up moving to southeast LA, Maywood, Bell and South Gate.

Sergio: When you end up connecting with the guys in Slayer and you come to find Tom Araya is from Chile, did you two bond over your backgrounds?

Dave: Absolutely. There was a lot of connection. I spoke to Tom’s mom and dad in Spanish. What is really cool is that I met Tom in 1982 but fiver years prior, I met him when he played at the local Cuban social club, they would have matinees and I would go to watch to enjoy the music. He played in a band called Tradewinds. The music community was so small back then. I remember watching that show. When we got Slayer together, I asked him if used to play the club in Maywood and so we shared that history too. I do think we had a lot in common.

Sergio: In my childhood, the three Slayer albums that were critical for my youth were Reign in Blood, South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. Would you agree that was the sweet spot for the band?

Dave: Absolutely. That was the era. An amazing era. It’s been a steady climb for the band but that was the pinnacle musically for the band.

Sergio: Did Slayer tour throughout Latin America for those albums?

No, Slayer toured Latin America for the first time when I wasn’t in the band. I did return with the band and we did go to Latin America for those tours.

Sergio: Where did you end up finding the best rhythms throughout your touring career. I know that there are people in my circle that would point to Cuba.

Cuba is definitely in the front. But there are some fantastic rhythms in the Middle East and in Brazil. Trance like rhythms that people are really passionate about. Dancing is a big part of rhythms throughout the world. The latin influence in my drumming was from the Cuban timables players so I would watch these guys these Cuban clubs and their syncopation and how unique it was to rock music so my drum rolls were pretty unique. Where I start them and whow I end them. This technique was not common in heavy metal music.

Author’s Note: Apropos of the themes in this series called On Prosperity, Dave was filmed in 2014 talking about money relative to Slayer and the music industry. What follows is a transcript of what he said while talking to an audience that came to hear him play the drums. It starts with a fan offering him an apology for Slayer not working out for Dave in the end.

“I tried my best to work it out but I just couldn’t. You can’t be shafter like that. Nobody should be able to take advantage of another person like that. I held my breath for a long time. Red flags were going off and my books were telling me that something was up. I tried to work it out with the guys. I brought Tom into my hotel room to talk to my attorney and he told Tom everything that their management company had been doing to them for the past thirty fricken years. We had a forensic accountant ready to go in there and detail everything but Tom got bought out. Management flipped him over a couple hundred grand or who knows how much. Kerry too, they needed them to go against Lombardo. So they turned their backs on me. Here I am spilling my guts. I went to rehearsal the next day and I told him that we needed to update the business plan, that we had been on the same business plan for the last thirty years. I was a percentage holder. If you are a percentage holder, you have a right to see where all the expenses are going. We would get paid off of Net and if the band made $4.4M and we were only getting paid $400,000. I wanted to know where the rest of the $4M was. It was going to the lawyers, accountants and to the managers. And they took my information and I remember the day this happened, they took the information that I gave them from their accountant and it showed Gross, Expenses, Net. And out of that Net, I made on that tour $67,000 dollars. Kerry and Tom made about $114,000 dollars. Ninety shows, divided up, break it up per show. It’s disgusting. I bust my ass playing drums. I am covered in sweat at the end of a show. I am just beat. And I’m making money for the guy in the Hollywood Hills with his facials and his manicures. I’m not gonna play like that. My schedule is open.”

I thought about this interview that I did with Dave when I was on the radio at KBeach for a very specific reason. At the time, he was doing promotion for the Philm album.

This was years after all my time spent with those three Slayer albums. I didn’t follow Slayer after they stopped playing with Dave Lombardo. And, to a certain extent, I became an adult. I moved on to other genres of music and Slayer became just a nice memory of the music, the concerts and the friends that I had that shared a love for heavy metal.

Well, 35 years went by. And last Saturday night, I went to the grand opening of the David Geffen Galleries for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Afterwards, I went to a restaurant off Rosecrans that was mostly empty. The few people that were dining were on the patio. And as I was getting up to leave, Kerry King from Slayer walks in. And immediately, I was flooded by all those memories of my time with my friends listening to Slayer and going to Slayer concerts. Some of these friends have since died. It was a fond memory and it caused to me reflect on just what it is that is so deep about the connections that we have with music. How unexplainable that connection is. And even though I don’t go to Slayer or Testament or Metallica concerts any longer, I am so pleased that I had that history and how I had that one moment when I spoke to Dave Lombardo about his story. I think that the radio broadcast should have done more to promote my show to the majority Latino campus at Cal State Long Beach. The show that I ended up broadcasting that included Dave’s story also had a long part about Operación Pedro Pan. I imagine that this history is little known and I wish there was a way to promote it better.

#Intelatin #Music #Media #Slayer #DaveLombardo #OperaciónPedroPan

There is a place in Malibu called Woodshed. More than anything, it looks like a big luxurious room made from cherry-wood filled with instruments. If I had to say in pure ignorance about architecture, I would say that it looks like a Japanese Zen room. Before the entrance is a koi pond. Beside the entrance is a soaking pool. Enveloping the room is a terraced garden. And, beyond the terraced garden is a gully that leads to the Pacific Ocean at Point Dume. 

Musicians make music at Woodshed. As an example from contemporary pop, here is Shawn Mendes making music at Woodshed:

There are three obvious things that you can focus on when you come to the Woodshed:

• The design and architecture of the space.

• The instruments in the space.

• The mystique of the musicians that have made music in the space.

After spending five hours at Woodshed with the owners, Richard and Linda Gibbs, I have decided to focus on a fourth thing that isn't obvious to anybody fortunate enough to come to the space: The soil. To get the background on why the soil is so valuable to Woodshed, here is Richard Gibbs telling the story of the studio. In short, the studio would not exist were it not for the soil it rests on. Linda Gibbs saved the studio from a recent 2,500 degree fire simply by being smart about soil.

I have a reason for being interested in Woodshed and it isn’t necessarily about music. I want to holoport the "filin" of the space. "Filin" is a (Cuban Spanish) misspelling of the English word, Feeling. Holoportation is the transfer of something from point A to point B without physically moving from Point A to Point B. Holoportation requires a capture point A, in this case a 4k camera. And a receiver point B, in this case a PROTO. So, if I have a camera at Woodshed, and a PROTO stationed anywhere in the world, my goal becomes to transfer the filin from Woodshed to the PORTL. Or, if I have a PROTO at Woodshed and a camera stationed anywhere in the world, my goal becomes to transfer the person in front of the camera to the filin at Woodshed. 

But, here is the million dollar conundrum. I have to also wrap a business model around this filin. Let's continue using Shawn Mendes as our example. Shawn has 70M followers on Instagram alone. Here is a photograph of Shawn at Woodshed...

If I was to generate an offer of access to Shawn to his 70M followers and I gave them the choice of:

• Talking to Shawn

• Listening to Shawn

• Looking at Shawn

• Receiving a filin from Shawn

How many of them would choose the fourth option of filin? I could also strangle it harder by offering them the ability to receive a filin from Shawn using the soil under and around Woodshed as the focal point of the exchange.

Now, I happen to know what the single most important filin is in the world and it is not the filin provided by music which is in the top ten. It is the filin provided by food. And what does food grow in? Soil. And what resource do I have that nobody else has? An enormous plot of land that stretches from the studio to the Pacific Ocean. What would happen if I could holoport a filin from Shawn with food and music, both of which were nurtured at Woodshed? I believe that Shawn Mendes’ market on Instagram would pay for that but the question becomes, how do I do it?

#Intelatin #Music #Media #ShawnMendes

Created & produced by Sergio C. Muñoz at Intelatin, LLC | AMA: smunoz@intelatin.com - I am the author of the On Prosperity series.

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via the ZZK Records newsletter

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) newsletter

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

In 2026, we will begin filming new episodes at A Place Called Home (APCH) with Anthony Valadez as the Creative Director

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via the ZZK Records newsletter

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) newsletter

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

In 2026, we will begin filming new episodes at A Place Called Home (APCH) with Anthony Valadez as the Creative Director

Eva Aridjis Fuentes

Sergio: How do you identify?

Mexican American. My father is Mexican and my mother is American. I have both nationalities. I’ve lived in both countries. The bulk of my film work has been in Mexico. That is where I grew up and it has been the dominant part of my identity. I am a film director and a writer.

Sergio: Please describe your childhood home….

Mexico City, where my parents still live today. It is a small two story house painted brick red. Lots of trees and foliage. It is a very modest house in a wealthy neighborhood surrounded by much larger houses. My father is a poet so our house is modest. The street has a big hill and we were at the bottom of the hill in Las Lomas de Chapultepec. I lived there with both of my parents and my sister Chloe. And our dog.

Sergio: Tell me about your socio-economic perspective at age 16…

We were part of the small middle class of Mexico. In Mexico, there is a very large working class and then a very small upper class and then a middle class, contrary to the United States where I would say that most are middle class, in Mexico, most are working class but there is a small middle class. I went to the American School in Mexico City. It was mostly the politicians’ kids because it was considered the best school in terms of education. My sister and I were there on scholarship. My classmates had drivers, bodyguards, they would never wear the same thing twice. The boys didn’t care about their grades because they were going to inherit their daddy’s business and all the girls were going to marry the rich boys. I understood what privileged and wealthy looked like. Our neighborhood was surrounded by rich people. My sister and I were goths and we went to El Nueve and Tutti Frutti and we had friends who were artists and musicians and filmmakers. I also saw a lot of extreme poverty in my grandparents’ village in Michoacán. In the 80s, it was mostly peasants and agricultural workers before the great migration to the United States in the early 90s. Folks were extremely religious, very Catholic. They didn’t have much.

Sergio: Were you gravitating to the urban …. poetry and the visual arts … or Nature?

I love nature but I grew up in cities. Major cities like Mexico City and New York City. I do like cities a lot. I grew up reading, writing, painting, watching and listening to music, going to museums. I became a filmmaker because I couldn’t decide between writing, visual arts and music, and film was a good way to combine them all. Still, I love animals a lot. I have been a vegetarian since I was 10 and I am most in awe of Mother Nature.

I was impacted by a scene from The Silence of the Lambs because of the music playing along with the actions of the serial killer. It is, in my opinion, the most perfectly placed sync that I have ever witnessed.

In the scene, the audience has been waiting to better understand who the killer is and what his motivations might be. We see him in his dungeon-esque bedroom, cross dressing semi-naked and dancing to a beautiful song. As someone raised in the 80s, I was certain that the song was an obscure British new wave deep cut. Decades later, after the advent of YouTube, it became a song that folks could download from a random post because it didn’t seem readily available in the same way that The Cure, Tears for Fears, The Damned or even Grace Jones or Siouxsie and the Banshees were available at Tower Records. I downloaded it myself and I have placed it on several of my mixtapes but were anybody to ask me anything about the band, Q Lazzarus, I did not know what to say except to reference The Silence of the Lambs.

Again, decades later, in Winter 2025, I was surfing on the Criterion Channel in my Roku and I saw a tile for a documentary on Q Lazzarus. I thought: #mimeromole - - - I recognized the name Aridjis and I asked my father if he still kept in touch with Homero Aridjis, a poet that was famous in our house and was part of an intellectual group centered around UNAM. He told me that Homero had visited our home in Los Angeles in 1997 for an interview in the Los Angeles Times when he was elected President of PEN International. In his remembrances, he told me that Homero had two daughters that were “muy talentosas y que una de ellas hace películas que son muy aclamadas.” I put two and two together and I thought: I must have been living a parallel life with this filmmaker because my mother’s family is from Las Lomas de Chapultepec and my cousins were living in the highbrow world of art & film in New York City.

Now, just because I kinda knew the family of Eva and I knew one sync from Q Lazzarus, I was still not ready for the story of Q … Diane Luckey … and although Eva was kind enough to tell me some inside information about the film, it would contain major spoilers that I don’t think would be beneficial for the core audience of this documentary so I am going to skirt & edit around some of what she told me.

Sergio: In your work as a filmmaker, what happened after you decided what your subject was going to be?

It took five years from meeting Q to when it premiered at the Morelia Film Festival. I had no idea how crazy her story was going to be nor why she disappeared. At the time, I knew that there was a lot more music that nobody had ever heard and the documentary was going to end with her comeback concert in New York City with her original bandmates and she would get her happy ending on stage after thirty years. As documentaries are about real people with real lives, they never turn out the way you expect them to. Especially, if a pandemic hits while you are shooting your film.

Sergio: Your film showcases the worst case thanklessness of putting a beautiful song into the world and getting nothing financial in return. But ultimately, it is wonderful that the song was sync’d, right?

It’s a double sided curse and a blessing to be featured in The Silence of the Lambs. It’s such a horrifying scene. However, when folks remember the film, they don’t say that the Hannibal Lector stuff or the Jodie Foster stuff are the most memorable scenes, it’s the scene with Q Lazzarus’ music in the background. It gave the song cult status. I was probably around 16 at the cinema in Mexico City when I first heard it. Music people tuned into it.

Sergio: It seems daunting to compel young Latina/os to find your film at the Criterion Collection. Is that really the goal?

They can find the film on Vimeo; Amazon Prime or Criterion. We had a one week run in Los Angeles at the NuArt and we’ve played in several festivals too. I feel honored to be in the Criterion Collection. My producer pitched and licensed it to them and they fell in love with Q the way most people do when they see the film. They want more new documentaries on their platform so it’s been a great collaboration. I think my film, like the song, will have a cult following and it will have longevity because Q, as a protagonist, is so unique, powerful and memorable.

Sergio: Please describe where you live present-day…

I live in Brooklyn on the top floor of an eleven story brick building. It is almost a hundred years old. It is a residential area, there are lots of families, dogs, I am close to Prospect Park. There are a lot of brownstones and too much traffic. I live with my daughter and my dog.

Sergio: Looking back at the 16YO Eva and the type of prosperity that you are looking for in life, how do you define or understand your prosperity?

Film is a extremely complicated medium. I wish I worked in easier mediums so that I wouldn’t have to depend on so much money and so many people. Making a film is a miracle and once you make the film, there is no guarantee that there will be an audience for that film or that it will get distribution. It can feel thankless and very masochistic at times. It can also be very gratifying. Every project is different. I really love traveling, working with people, collaborating, creating beauty together. I love documentaries and going into somebody else’s world and you shine a light on them and try to make a difference in the world. It can be very frustrating and financially it’s not very rewarding but I value my time as an artist over having a stable paycheck. I think that is a huge luxury. I can go to a movie or a museum in the middle of the day. I am grateful to have that freedom.

#Intelatin #Music #Media #EvaAridjisFuentes #QLazzarus #DianeLuckey

In the lates 90s, my cousin Sebastián Hofmann was studying to be a filmmaker at Art Center College of Design. He came to my studio in Bel Air and asked me to star in his student film about Juan Diego and the apparition of La Virgen de Guadalupe. I would play Juan Diego and Tepeyac would be shot on Mulholland overlooking the valley.

I remember the first time he pointed a camera at me on the Beverly Glen and I was walking along a vine covered wall and I started walking differently. I asked myself; “Why am I walking differently?” I didn’t like it very much. It felt phony. I got self-conscious and never acted again.

Decades later, he would have a film on Netflix called Tiempo Compartido / Time Share. In this film, he names a character after me and I don’t know why he did that because although I appreciated him and loved him from afar, we weren’t exactly close. Regardless, I thought it was a cute claim to fame. I remember talking to him about his experiences and he told me the same thing that Eva told me which was that money and his type of filmmaking were horribly disconnected.

Still, as I go into the pre-production on the third season’s opening episode of my On Prosperity project at A Place Called Home, I view it entirely different. Truly fantastic in the hallucinatory way of Balzac. I have this idea in my head that if I can just do everything I can as the Creator to set the stage for this upcoming short film. And then, Anthony Valadez, my shooter and editor turns it into magic. And then an AI engine metabolizes it into a valuable tokenized asset …. It would be an incredible life changing transaction for me to license this video to Criterion. Once there, because of the prestige, my life would presumably change. How so?

What you see in this image is basically my fantasy vision of Prosperity. First, it is set in Mexico. Second, it is set in a hotel which relieves me of any type of land owning or real estate responsibility. Third, it is set in a delicious hot tub filled with velvety well-water. Fourth, it is set next to the Pacific Ocean. Fifth, it features a fit & lean attractive suntan brown skin [Mexican man]. Sixth, it features a fit & lean attractive suntan brown skin [Mexican woman]. The only thing missing is the avatar for my delightful 8YO son. Off-camera, I imagine things like botanas de aguacate, palitos de mango, nopalitos, taquitos dorados de hongo, perhaps a few colonche spritzers. If I won the lottery, I would be working my creative projects from this type of setting while collecting mailbox money from my licensing agreements with Criterion.

To understand how I came up with my fantasy of prosperity, see my interview for this series. All said, I look with enormous buenavibra envy at filmmakers like Eva or Sebastián or my other cousins Polo and Everardo. I wish I could be more like them. I wish I knew what they knew about how this works. I wish Polo & Everardo’s mom, Andrea Valeria, was still near to me so that she could explain to me how the astros will help me understand this magic. I’ve begged Polo to bring me into his world. I remember Polo introduced me once to Ken Hertz when I was selling holoportation to the stars and there was a snapshot nano-moment in time when both David Copperfield and Brock Pierce were going to purchase hundreds of them and popularize them and I visualized myself bareback and suntan in the prosperity fast lane on my way to a hot tub in Mexico. #GoodbyeHorses

Please consider purchasing a sample of salt from our sponsor, Santa Prisca & Co: https://bit.ly/Intelatin - After a tasting menu with the CEO of Santa Prisca, hand harvested by salineros in Cuyutlán, Colima, Mexico, I am using this salt exclusively for all my high profile culinary tasting events.

• Pilot on PBS Studios (KLCS) with Wil Dog of Ozomatli

• Monthly via Caló

• Monthly via the ZZK Records newsletter

• Monthly via the US Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) newsletter

• Sponsored by Santa Prisca & Co

In 2026, we will begin filming new episodes at A Place Called Home (APCH) with Anthony Valadez as the Creative Director

Anthony Valadez

Sergio: How do you identify?

Compassionate, full of empathy, understanding, to feel, to flow, all that….

Sergio: Please describe your home at the age of 16?

In North Hollywood. Blue, gated. Needs a paint job. I can hear people coming and going. I can hear the security buzzer and the kids inside running and screaming. Not a consistent flow of shades and curtains. Different colors, different flavors. It seems so big to me but I know it’s not. I live there with my grandfather and my two brothers.

Sergio: Where do you see yourself socio-economically at this time?

We were surviving. We were called Wards of the Courts. My grandfather had custody but technically we were property of the State. My grandfather relied on those checks from the government to survive in addition to his own retirement that wasn’t much. We were poor by society standards but rich in spirit.

Sergio: How did you come to be property of the State?

My mom was incarcerated.

Sergio: What were you like at 16?

I was fully independent, much like I am now. I didn’t have the terminology but looking back, I knew how to create boundaries, I knew when things didn’t feel safe. I knew how to retract myself from situations.

Sergio: When does music enter your life?

When I was eight years old. I heard Diana Ross sing the theme from Mahogany and I felt like she was talking to me. As I’ve gotten older, I revisit that song and it hits every time. We were at a red light on Sepulveda with my mom about to turn left. The lyrics: Do you know where you’re going to and do you like the things life is showing you?

When I got older, senior year, I got involved in college radio. I was hanging out with kids at Valley College. I would ditch sixth period and bring my records and hop the fence. I got my entry point into DJ culture and record pulls and doing gigs.

Sergio: You strike me as being a character that really loves LA. Is that accurate?

Yeah. It’s more than love. She’s my mistress, she’s my wife, she’s always been my boo. Big time. I was able to take the RTD all over LA to buy records. It’s different areas and different energies but it’s all Los Angeles.

Sergio: Where do you live present-day?

Venice. I see the Pacific Ocean. I see Abbot Kinney. I see people walking to the coffee shop, transplants, look like they are straight out of an Urban Outfitters ad. I see houseless people. Some on meds and need help. I also live next to the founder of TikTok. It’s a mix of haves and have-nots. It’s a three unit apartment and I live in a great little artist unit. I live here with my dog.

Sergio: Tell me about your perspective of prosperity….

I have a non-attachment to things on Earth. I think that’s why I love taking photos and videos. This is all temporary. We are just a little gas in this gigantic universe of solar systems. I don’t want attachment. I don’t want to own something that I can’t take with me into the next galaxy. My goal is to exist from my birthday to my end date in happiness. A lot of that comes from within. My home is my memories. There’s a Beatles song where Paul is singing about home … Golden Slumbers. You can’t go back home. Home to me is that broken beat up textures in that giant blue apartment building where I lived with my grandfather. Its in the past but that is home. A moment in time. Purchasing actual property doesn’t stimulate me. Having the possibility of the LAPD kicking down my door because my mother was a dope dealer in Van Nuys, that was very tiresome growing up, now, I sleep soundly because I know that the LAPD is not going to kick down my door. I have peace. I have found home. I feel very complete.

Sergio: Your artwork is very beatnik. What is driving you with your creation of visuals and sounds?

Your perception is not wrong. I’m walking down the street and I see magic before my eyes and I want to capture it. The next day, I’ll edit it. It’s not intentional.

Sergio: What’s your relation to money in relation to your talent?

I understand my role in the toilet bowl. We live in a capitalist society and I understand why they don’t want to pay a lot for talent. I don’t agree but I understand. I used to spend a lot, buying sneakers and records. Something snapped in me along the way and I want to have memories over sneakers. I made sure that my finances were in order to go across the southwest last week because I deserve it. I’ve taken gigs for low pay and I follow my gut to tell me when I should and should not do things. I do a lot for free because I believe in community.

Sergio: Who is doing better, Anthony at 16 or Anthony present-day?

We are both doing great.

#Intelatin #AnthonyValadez #PublicRadio #Prosperity

Please consider purchasing a sample of salt from our sponsor, Santa Prisca & Co: https://bit.ly/Intelatin - After a tasting menu with the CEO of Santa Prisca, hand harvested by salineros in Cuyutlán, Colima, Mexico, I am using this salt exclusively for all my high profile culinary tasting events.