Latino USA

A man is in his kitchen when water rushes through the door, nearly drowning him. A mother is unable to reach her son in prison, and is desperate to know whether or not he's doing ok. Another man, who requires electricity to power the ventilator that keeps him alive, struggles to find a generator to plug into after the power grid fails. Latino USA producer Andres Caballero visits Puerto Rico to record stories of surviving hurricane Maria—and the devastating consequences of the storm.

When we talk about what made rock & roll as we know it, the most common answer is: a mixture of R&B, a predominantly black genre, and country, a predominantly white genre. We explore the Latino influences that helped shape rock & roll, and we profile unsung Latino rock artists who had a hand in crafting the sound—which is not as black and white as many think.

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the Perejil Massacre, in which Dominican soldiers under dictator Rafael Trujillo massacred thousands of Haitians living near the Dominican-Haitian border. After the massacre, the Dominican press didn't carry the story and Trujillo attempted to sweep the killings under the rug of history. Today, the massacre is little discussed, and there are no monuments or memorials for the dead. Latino USA travels to the Dominican-Haitian border to ask the question—why don't people want to talk about it? And what are the consequences today?

Today we bring you a special podcast checking on the status of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Julio Ricardo Varela, co-host of our sister podcast In The Thick, is a native of Puerto Rico, and has been intensely reporting on the hurricane. So he wanted to dispel some myths about what's happening on the island today. We hear from the First Lady of Puerto Rico, Beatriz Roselló, about her take on the devastation. And we get a sense of what Puerto Rico feels like now from Latino USA producer Andrés Caballero, who is on the ground reporting for an upcoming episode.

A professor at UCLA recently calculated what he is calling the Latino GDP: If all the Latinos in the United States made up their own country, their GDP would be the 7th largest in the world, right behind France. Today, Latino USA explores the effects of this rising Latino economic power, from the arrival of hit bilingual shows like Narcos to how brands develop advertising campaigns targeted at Latinos. Plus, a conversation with one of the first Latinas at NASA, Sylvia Acevedo. And a conversation with Latina icon Dolores Huerta about her new documentary.

The Latino USA road trip continues. Producers Zakiya Gibbons and Jeanne Montalvo, who both grew up in the South, take host Maria Hinojosa on a road trip through the heart of the South to learn first-hand what it's like to be Latino and Southern today. We go to rural Alabama and learn what happened after the controversial law HB 56 was passed. We drive through Albertville, Alabama, rumored to have become a "ghost town" after the law went into effect and find out if this is true. We also get a slice of what life is like in a post-Trump South for Latinos.