Latinx Community

Activists and artists continue fighting to awaken U.S. arts institutions to the foundational Blackness of Rock, EDM and Punk. The whitewashing of music and dance is a supremacist project throughout the Americas. Choreographers and instructors oftentimes ignore the West African traditions undergirding salsa, merengue, tango, and bachata.

Does your sick leave policy include time off to care for roommates, best friends or chosen siblings? Over 60% of people under the age of 25 live in non-family households, and 28% of all adults live alone in the U.S. It is a distinct turn from historical numbers and the persistent, politicized ideal of the two-parent nuclear family. Workplaces and governments are beginning to broaden the definition of family to include non-biological relationships in their sick-leave protocol.

Cecilia Polanco’s parents did not dream of their daughter owning a food truck when they emigrated from El Salvador to the United States in the early 1980s. Their expectation was that she would get a respectable profession after college, or even better, a career, like her older sisters who work in law and insurance.

Many people associate pop art with American artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, but there were many contributions to the movement from outside the borders of the United States, notably from Latin American artists. A new exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University called “Pop América, 1965-1975” shares the work of artists from the Americas, from Tierra del Fuego up to Anchorage. 

Eleven percent of all voters on Election Day in 2018 were Latinx, based on exit poll estimates. According to internal analytics from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Latinx early voting participation was up 174 percent compared to the 2014 midterms. 

Luis Carlos Serapio crossed the border from Mexico as an undocumented immigrant in the early 1990s. He was looking for a better life. He moved around, from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Utah, and then to the East Coast. After visiting Asheville for a wedding, he and his first wife fell in love with the city. They soon decided to take a leap of faith and just move there.