In 1939, a Mexican-American high school basketball team shocked the world. Basketball, at the time, was considered a white man's game. Until Lanier High School, with their all Mexican-American basketball team, won the 1939 San Antonio city championship. But at the moment of their greatest triumph, things suddenly took a turn for this worse.

This episode originally aired in 2016.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

“Latinos are not a monolith” is something we hear whenever politicians want to court Latino voters, and no one understands the nuances of this community quite like journalist and author Marie Arana. She’s the author of “LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority," which explores the complexities, histories and cultures of Latinos in the United States.

In this moment of political change, Maria Hinojosa sits down with Marie Arana to discuss just how wide-ranging Latinidad is, unpack this community’s place in U.S.political history, and reflect on the future of Latinos in this country.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, signing sweeping executive orders targeting climate, trans rights and immigrants. We hear reactions from a diverse range of those affected, including a Venezuelan migrant at the border, a trans activist in Arizona, and an undocumented domestic worker in New Jersey. 

Then, host Maria Hinojosa sits down with Princeton Professor of African American Studies and author Dr. Eddie Glaude and Senior Political Reporter for Vox Nicole Narea to break down what it all means and where we go from here. 

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

This week on Latino USA, listen to those directly impacted by the devastating wildfires across Los Angeles County, where at least 25 people have died, thousands were displaced, and communities completely destroyed. Guest host Fernanda Echavarri is joined by Antonia Cereijido, host and reporter at LAist, to talk about the situation on the ground and the community solidarity that has sprung from this disaster.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

As a Zapotec and Maya Ch’orti’ environmental scientist, Dr. Jessica Hernandez has always found academia to be a hostile place. She had looked forward to sharing what she learned from her grandmother and father about nature as an undergraduate student, but her lived experiences and knowledge were dismissed and sometimes mocked by her professors.

Now, Dr. Hernandez is working to change how we think about environmental sciences by centering Indigenous science to heal our planet, because she knows Western conservationism isn’t working.

This episode originally aired in 2022.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

Much has been said about Latino men after the presidential election, but a lot of it lacks context. In order to deepen our understanding of Latino manhood and its influence in the United States at this moment, we are launching a new series, "Hombre: Understanding Latino Men" today. The series features nuanced conversations with a diverse group of hombres latinos.

Our first guest is political consultant and Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha. He sits down with Maria Hinojosa to unpack why Latino men shifted further right in 2024 and how the Democratic Party failed to reach these voters.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

Netflix has brought Gabriel García Márquez’s iconic novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to life with a two-part limited series spanning over 16 hours of television. The Colombian masterpiece tells the multi-generational saga of the Buendía family, who establish the utopian town of Macondo. The story captures their struggles with love, war, curses, and solitude, intertwined with the magical realism that defines García Márquez’s literary style. 

We spoke to Alex García López, one of the series’ directors about the experience of creating the magical world of Macondo.

This interview was recorded in early November.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

Nachos: They’re one of the most popular snack foods in the United States, and the name is instantly recognizable worldwide. Bright yellow nacho cheese is now a staple at countless sports events and movie nights, serving as a flavor of nostalgia to many.

But nachos’ immense popularity over the years has overshadowed their true history. The first nachos weren’t invented in ballparks or designed for concession stands. They were created 80 years ago in a small town in Mexico, along the south Texas border. And they weren’t made to be a big hit. Still, nachos would end up bigger than anyone could have ever imagined.

This episode originally aired in January 2023.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

For Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Ileana Cabra — known by her stage name, iLe — music has always been a way to reflect and comment on the world around her.

iLe began her musical career singing with her brothers in their renowned rap group Calle 13. But in 2016, iLe decided to go solo. She would go on to release three studio albums, using those platforms to explore many musical genres with deep roots in Latin America and the Caribbean: from boleros and salsa, to pop and reggaeton. As a songwriter, iLe puts her lyricism at the forefront, delving into themes of patriarchy and colonialism in her music.

In this episode iLe walks us through the evolution of her music as a form of protest, and how she is daring herself to show a more personal side in her most recent album, “Nacarile.”

This episode originally aired in 2023.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

On May 3, 2017, a young woman was found dead on the campus of a prestigious university in Mexico City. Soon after the Mexico City Attorney General's office sent out a series of tweets—that would be picked up by the Mexican media—that characterized the 22-year-old as a dropout and alcoholic. The response online was immediate: many women saw these tweets and media reports as an attempt to discredit the woman as a victim and in response, thousands of women started to tweet with the hashtag #SiMeMatan or “if they kill me.” It was short for: “If they kill me, what will they say to blame me for my own death?” Latin America has some of the highest rates of femicide in the world—and Latino USA dives into a case that demonstrates the deep challenges that remain for women in Mexico.

This episode originally aired in 2019.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage. 

Filmed over six years, "The Silence of Others" reveals how survivors and their families have struggled to cope in the aftermath of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco. The film, executive produced by Pedro Almodóvar, follows the victims as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a “pact of forgetting” around the crimes they suffered. Survivors of the dictatorship and human rights lawyers built a case in Argentina that Spanish courts refuse to hear. Maria Hinojosa speaks about the film with its directors, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar.

This episode originally aired in 2019.

Follow us on TikTok and YouTube. 

Subscribe to our newsletter by going to the top of our homepage.