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You Are What You Create: 7 Brand New Latin Musical Inventions

This week on <em>Alt.Latino</em>, Jarina De Marco casts a spell.
Courtesy of the artist
This week on Alt.Latino, Jarina De Marco casts a spell.

In an essay about Mexican-Americans in the '50s titled "The Pachuco and Other Extremes," Mexican writer and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz writes that we "distinguish ourselves from other peoples by our creations, rather than by the dubious originality of our character — which was the result, perhaps, of constantly changing circumstances."

As our numbers rise quickly, many have attempted to define Latinos in America — often rooted in a desire to market to us rather than truly understand us as a people. That frenetic race to determine what a "Latino" is often leads to crass generalizations and stereotyping. And, let's be honest, we're as guilty of stereotyping as anyone else: We find ourselves in a time of tectonic sociopolitical shifts which are as terrifying as they are exciting, so that frantic desire to self-define comes as no surprise.

Stereotypes, many say, are rooted in some (often minuscule) truth. But they are also a petrification of qualities that, Paz notes, have to do with circumstances. They don't allow for evolution, complexity, an explanation.

On Alt.Latino, we agree with Paz that we are what we create — and respond by celebrating and discussing those creations. The music, the literature, the culture; the good, the bad, and that about which we're not yet quite sure.

Join us this week, as we discuss new musical creations and what they say about us, with stops in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Chile, New York and L.A.

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En su ensayo titulado "El Pachuco y otros extremos", acerca de los mexicoamericanos en los años 50, el escritor mexicano y premio Nobel de Literatura Octavio Paz reflexiona que "Lo que nos puede distinguir del resto de los pueblos no es la siempre dudosa originalidad de nuestro carácter fruto, quizá, de las circunstancias siempre cambiantes, sino la de nuestras creaciones.".

Con el crecimiento exponencial de la población de nuestra gente, se habla tanto de los latinos en Estados Unidos, se busca tanto definirnos, que a veces se siente sólo como el deseo de vendernos cosas en lugar de tratar de entendernos como el pueblo que somos. La frenética carrera para definir lo que es un "latino" a menudo lleva a groseras generalizaciones y el uso de estereotipos. Seamos honestos, nosotros también, en tanto que pueblo, somos culpables de estereotipar como el que más. Esta época de fuertes terremotos sociopolíticos, tan excitantes como aterradores, parece haber llevado a una frenética búsqueda de autodefinición.

Los estereotipos, como algunos destacan, tienen sus raíces en alguna verdad (aunque a veces minúscula). Sin embargo, también petrifican cualidades que, como destaca Paz, tienen que ver con circunstancias y no permiten la evolución, la complejidad o la explicación.

En Alt.Latino creemos firmemente y celebramos la idea de que somos lo que creamos y celebramos y discutimos estas creaciones. La música, la literatura y la cultura, lo bueno, lo malo y lo que no estamos muy seguros todavía.

Acompáñenos esta semana en nuestra discusión de nuevas creaciones musicales y lo que dicen de nosotros, desde Venezuela hasta la República Dominicana, con paradas en Chile, Nueva York y Los Ángeles.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jasmine Garsd is an Argentine-American journalist living in New York. She is currently NPR's Criminal Justice correspondent and the host of The Last Cup. She started her career as the co-host of Alt.Latino, an NPR show about Latin music. Throughout her reporting career she's focused extensively on women's issues and immigrant communities in America. She's currently writing a book of stories about women she's met throughout her travels.