Awake Zion: A Latina Jewish Girl’s Rasta-Reggae Odyssey

Awake Zion: A Latina Jewish Girl’s Rasta-Reggae Odyssey

“More love!” says Ras Tewelde, an Italian Rastafarian at Rototom Sunsplash 2012, when we say goodbye after meeting for the first time under a scorching Valencia sun, where the scents of seafood paella, hemp and human musk mingle in the air against the ever-booming bass that thumps from the speakers and then reverberates inside our [...]

CNN Hero Catalina Escobar Restrepo: Helping Cartagena’s Teen Moms

CNN Hero Catalina Escobar Restrepo: Helping Cartagena’s Teen Moms

Actress Meryl Streep once said that “motherhood has a very humanizing effect. It gets reduced to the essentials.” And Catalina Escobar Restrepo—the award-winning businesswoman and entrepreneur with the soul of a social activist—literally brought this concept to life in 2001 when she conceived the Juan Felipe Gómez Foundation, an organization with the sole mission to [...]

On Thanksgiving—An Attitude of Gratitude

On Thanksgiving—An Attitude of Gratitude

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto, goes the first line of the world famous Mercedes Sosa song that tells the story of the singer/writer’s gratitude for the many blessings that life has given to her. It’s an anthem-like ballad that depicts the notion of giving thanks as not only a way of [...]

Ondatrópica Revives Colombian Tropical Music

Ondatrópica Revives Colombian Tropical Music

The Buena Vista Social Club documentary was released in 1997 along with the corresponding album featuring, among other re-emerging icons, the great Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez and Omara Portuondo. A beat-laden fire was lit under the collective rump of the world. The high art of Cuba—its irresistible music—was reborn for the masses everywhere, igniting a [...]

Musicians on Call Bring the Healing Power of Music to Sick Kids

Musicians on Call Bring the Healing Power of Music to Sick Kids

While laughter may very well be the best medicine, many would likely argue that music isn’t far behind. The great Sufi Master, Hazrat Inayat Khan, wrote in Mysticism of Sound about how sound and music can permeate the entire being in such a way that “the physical body recuperates and becomes charged with new magnetism.” [...]

Latin Power 2.0: The Latino List Volume Two

Latin Power 2.0: The Latino List Volume Two

Growing up as a first-generation Colombiana in the United States during the 1980s, the references in popular culture that depicted what it meant to be Latino in this country were limited. It was mostly a two-dimensional Que Pasa U.S.A representation for many of us who were trying to really understand the quirks and nuances of [...]

Adelante! Grassroots Financial Empowerment for Latinas

The Adelante Movement-Nely Galan

“My dream for all of us is that we make enough money to work because we have to and not because we want to,” says Nely Galan, media dynamo and founder of The Adelante Movement, a grassroots movement that was created to unite Latinas socially, economically and politically. “We need to own more businesses, raise [...]

5 Hip Superfoods That are Longtime Latin Staples

latin superfoods

Today the word superfood is a household term, with health-foodies eternally scavenging the world of nutritional wellness to discover the next unknown source of innumerable antioxidants; the next It consumable life force, the newest, most avant-garde gastronomical tool that will help them live even longer. But the irony is that when it comes to many [...]

Pheromone Parties: Love at First Sniff

pheromones and dating

If you think online dating is not intimate enough; if you miss the good old days of straight up tangy humanity, and if you long for an earthy, nitty-gritty alternative to mate-finding in today’s over-digitized world—behold (or rather take a whiff): Pheromone Parties. Think of them as speed-dating—except they’re really more like nose-dating. The concept [...]

Classic Lipsticks of the Last 100 Years

Red lipstick

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Part of a series devoted to Mamiverse attending Festival People en Español Presented by Target in San Antonio on September 1-2. The inaugural festival promises to celebrate Latino contribution to art, music, lifestyle and culture. Join our Twitter parties for a chance to win fabulous prizes! RSVP here.] It’s no mystery that for many women [...]