A big year for Latinos, with more to come
Pivotal moments, from the Super Bowl halftime show to ‘ Selena.’ As to 2021 ...
Out of the sorrow of 2020, shared experiences through the virtual vortex of our home computers, phones and smart TVs managed to create organic and emotionally binding moments across the spectrum of U. S. society. At the core of many of these moments were people of Latin origins.
While fuller representation still lagged in the arts and entertainment industries — considering that 61 million people in the United States claim some Hispanic or Latino heritage, or more likely a subcategory therein — the year was marked with notable successes that foretell a hyper- interesting 2021 if we all fasten our seat belts properly.
Here are my entirely subjective highlights.
10. Latinas at the Super Bowl
When Shakira and Jennifer Lopez hit Hard Rock Stadium on Feb. 2 with a hip- shimmying, pole- dancing, intensely aerobic Super Bowl halftime show, a Colombian immigrant and a Nuyoricana from the Bronx shared the spotlight in what is year after the year the world’s most- watched musical performance. It was the first all- Latina headliner halftime show at an NFL Super Bowl, and it happened in Miami- Dade, of course. Co- produced by Jay- Z’s Roc Nation, the show breached a line we barely registered: an unabashed celebration of Latin pride for millions to see at the start of an election year starring Donald Trump.
The president debuted a $ 10- million reelection campaign ad during Super Bowl LIV, three days before he would be acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial. Yet in the middle of the game, Shakira and Lopez led their all- Latina revue ( with a cameo from Bad Bunny — see below), which reminded the world that they are phenomenally talented and driven women, whom millions of us have grown up watching and admiring.
9. Vanessa and Kobe, a California kind of love
Kobe Bryant’s death at age 41 thrust his wife, Vanessa Bryant, famously press- shy, into the limelight in the worst of circumstances: the awful, foggy morning of Jan. 26, when a helicopter accident took his life, along with those of eight others, including daughter Gianna, 13.
Vanessa became the protagonist in the management of her husband’s legacy and his post- basketball empire, and more recently, the target of a lawsuit by her mother seeking back pay for babysitting, all while in mourning. Bryant’s public poise amid heartbreak has been remarkable.
She had met Bryant innocently — the moment was literally caught on camera — on the set of a musicvideo shoot while she was still a student at Marina High School in Huntington Beach. The pair married after she turned 18. Kobe was 22.
Upon donning the Lakers jersey, Kobe embraced brown L. A. immediately, and the city embraced him back. As he matured into a father of “four black Mexican American daughters,” he referred to his all- female squad as “Latinas” and his wife playfully as “mamacita.”
The couple went through it; Kobe faced sexual assault charges, Vanessa forgave him for adultery. Later, she sought divorce, they reconciled. Beneath the intensity of the NBA life, and Vanessa’s brushes with controversy, the couple seemed to be building what looked like a fairy tale version of a typical Southern California household these days: mixed with at least one Latino parent. And they were totally O. C.
This is why many in Southern California are still processing Bryant’s death and feel empathy for Vanessa. The couple personified a ’ 90s California teen dream, so intimate to so many of us: Black and Mexican, a spark that sometimes happens at first sight.
8. Better representation goes to Washington
Inspired by long- standing efforts by Black creators in Hollywood to improve their presence before U. S. audiences, Latinx creators in 2020 coalesced across their diverse subgroups and networks of allies toward the same goal: agitate and organize to create, produce and distribute more nuanced and realistic stories reflecting the U. S. Latino experience.
In September, the fight went to Capitol Hill. Led by U. S. Rep. Joaquin Castro ( D- Texas), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing examining the issue of Latino, Black and Asian representation in Hollywood, with testimony from actor- producers Edward James Olmos, Erika Alexander and Daniel Dae Kim. This came after months of meetings between the caucus and top brass at entertainment companies. “Why should we subsidize exclusion?” Castro asked in a guest column for Variety titled “Latinos Love Hollywood, but Hollywood Hates Latinos.”
Then in October came a “we are tired” open letter to Hollywood from a group of more than 270 Latinx creators, led by buzzy showrunners Tanya Saracho (“Vida”) and Gloria Calderón Kellett (“One Day at a Time”). “We are tired of hearing ‘ we couldn’t find any Latinx writers to hire.’ ... We are tired of being painted with the same brush. ... We are tired of stories that are only about our trauma.” The group became the Untitled Latinx Project and its rallying theme, “No stories about us without us.”
Will we see a changing of the narrative in 2021? Efforts to fix the failures of Latino representation in Hollywood often fail, as initiatives get dropped by executives who cycle around different studio boardrooms at a constant clip. But in late October, the Government Accountability Office agreed to the Hispanic caucus’ request for a review of Latinos in entertainment.
Might Hollywood finally go, “Gulp”?
7. The death of the mythical Latino voter
One of the most elaborately false architectures in political thinking — that U. S. Latinos are a measurable voting bloc with immigration as their top priority — finally crumbled in 2020 after decades of making lots of consultants lots of money.
And phew, thank goodness! Because Latino journalists, including a brigade of folks at The Times, have time and again explained how U. S. Latinos are so far past the standard notion of a monolith in national elections that the terming has become laughable.
Latino support was strong for Sen. Bernie Sanders ( I- Vt.) early in the Democratic presidential primaries — especially in his decisive win in Nevada. Until the tide turned toward former Vice President Joe Biden in South Carolina, it seemed “Tío Bernie” could actually become the nominee.
Many found proof in Sanders’ wins in Western states that an overtly progressive campaign could indeed capture large swaths of what is now the largest electoral demographic beyond non- Hispanic whites. Yet on Nov. 3, Latinos in Democratic strongholds such as the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas shocked pundits when they repudiated national messaging about how bad Trump is for Mexican Americans and voted for him anyway. And among the diasporas of post- Cold War, post-" Pink Wave” South Americans in southern Florida, Trump fervor was strong. Suddenly, the message was that socialism remains a dirty word for Latinos. But which Latinos?
6. Pedro Pascal, hiding in plain sight
Pedro Pascal is arguably America’s latest crush, a bona- fide leading man employing all his strengths in the Disney+ hit “The Mandalorian” to convincingly express fear, anger and affection, despite the epic challenge of the helmet that totally obscures his face throughout much of the series. Which made it all the more powerful this month ( spoiler ahead) when he removed that helmet in the series’ Season 2 finale and shed tears of love toward Grogu, better known as Baby Yoda.
Call it credit to his craft that he was able to convey his character’s emotions while masked — or another case of Latinos hiding in plain sight.
Pascal, 45, is part of what we might call the normalizing of Latin American, Hispanic or Latino figures in non- Latino roles. This person is the Latinx lead whose ethnicity is almost afterthought or essentially obscured.
Consider Oscar Isaac ( full name: Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada), whose roles from “Inside Llewyn Davis” to three “Star Wars” movies rarely reveal his Guatemalan Cuban identity.
Pascal, born in Santiago, Chile, and a graduate of Orange County School of the Arts, has had a similar run of non- Latino roles. Although he spent three seasons playing cool- headed Agent Peña investigating Pablo Escobar in “Narcos,” many took notice of him a few years before that as the hotheaded Prince Oberyn Martell in “Game of Thrones,” and he can now be seen in theaters and on HBO Max as DC villain Maxwell Lord in “Wonder Woman 1984.”
5. Cardi B says ‘ coronavirus’
With swagger and sexual power, rapper Cardi B broke streaming records in 2020 with “WAP,” her nasty and much discussed collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion. Yet Cardi B is still the girl next door, literalmente.
She’s cultivated a massive media personality thanks in part to her homegirl candor, often in unscripted moments caught by social media or shared herself.
Her rise has been a poignant affair for many of us because of this. She remains, despite the fame and the sometimes- ugly self- inflicted media hits, a walking symbol of every assured, talented and unbossed Latina who “makes it.” When she reveals this side of herself, it is often as she careens into Spanish or Spanglish, showing us who Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar really is.
On March 10, Cardi B confronted her growing alarm about the then- new novel coronavirus by posting a brief but expletive- filled video on Instagram — and reflected so many of our own anxieties in the process. Dressed in a devastatingly form- fitting metallic dress, Cardi B warned people who might have doubted the severity of the new virus with a point about how it could shut down the economy and jobs and thus affect us all.
“Corona- VIRUS,” she digs in, with a dip of her hip, emphasizing the “virus” half of that word. “CoronaVIRUS! I’m serious! S— is real, s— is getting real!”
4. ‘ American Dirt’ and literary dignity
In early January, the publishing industry was abuzz with what was supposed to be the year’s first big blockbuster, “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins. The harrowing tale, told from the perspective of a Mexican woman escaping a brutal drug lord, was meant to humanize the epidemic of violence in Mexico.
Then came the righteous hatchet job by local Chicana author and teacher Myriam Gurba, “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck,” published at Tropics of Meta. The piece called out the book’s “overly ripe Mexican stereotypes” and sparked a grassroots backlash against the novel and its author. Within weeks, it seemed the entire U. S. publishing apparatus was backed into a cultural corner.
The New York Times was pressured into publishing a second, more critical review after its initial glowing endorsement. At the Los Angeles Times, two reviews were published simultaneously, one by critic at large Rigoberto González, who rejected the novel’s “moralizing” and “pandering.” Even Oprah Winfrey, who had made the novel one of her Book Club picks, hosted an Apple TV+ special featuring Cummins and a panel of indignant and intelligent Latina authors — sans Gurba — that seemed like a form of atonement from the Winfrey camp aimed at the crucial and always up- for- grabs U. S. Latina market.
According to reports, Cummins, who wrote of identifying as white, began claiming Latina heritage later in life, on account of having a white Puerto Rican grandmother. It was kind of Latina cultural transmutation or appropriation that did not fit the 2020 mold.
More and more public figures — Hilaria/ Hillary Baldwin being the latest — have suddenly been “outed” or called out for going public with either fabricating or “discovering” some distant Hispanic or Latin American ancestry, which is fine, unless the discoverer is using his / her new- found heritage for immediate personal gain.
Awkwardly and almost comically so, the backlash to “American Dirt” confirmed lifelong complaints of Latinas against the publishing industry for generations: that their stories — our stories — are simply not considered “mainstream” by virtue of some magic rule that no one at any level of American publishing has ever been able to convincingly answer.
3. Tiktok guy Nathan Apodaca
Nathan Apodaca’s meteoric rise to peak organic influencer status off his “Dreams” video is everyone’s social- media fever dream. All it took was a casual singalong with Fleetwood Mac while cruising on his longboard along an Idaho highway with a full bottle of Ocean Spray Cran- Raspberry juice.
The video, posted Sept. 25, spread to other social media platforms. Parodies upon parodies followed. Mick Fleetwood did a version. So did Stevie Nicks. In a year when so many brown and Black faces went viral because of police violence on video, Apodaca offered gleeful respite. As pop music critic Mikael Wood wrote in The Times, the clip was the antidote we all needed “during an increasingly ugly political moment.”
For Apodaca, now with more than 6.2 million TikTok followers, the fame inevitably led to endorsement deals: a new truck from Ocean Spray, a commercial for Boston Market, among others, “and he works with every major music label,” said his spokeswoman.
It all happened as if it had been written by Andy Warhol: the frenzy of going viral, the crescendo, the looney and inevitable intersections with brands and bona- fide sports or film celebrities. Apodaca is finishing the year at a plateau, and not without challenges, having recently caught COVID- 19. Said Gina Rodriguez, a rep for Apodaca, in a statement: “Nathan is still dealing with the sickness but is getting better everyday.”
2. Bad Bunny’s new dominance
If you still haven’t quite figured out what’s so special about Bad Bunny, here’s your cheat sheet.
With his raspy vocal delivery, good looks and chill attitude, Bad Bunny in 2020 became an avatar of contemporary female desire for the idealized contemporary non- machista male, one who is also comfortable with a measure of sexual openness. Look at the video for this year’s “Yo Perreo Sola,” the I- can- dance- with- myself anthem, in which he takes on multiple drag personas. Toying with gender norms in ways he hadn’t displayed in previous years, the Puerto Rican artist basically became what many straight girls wish their straight boyfriends would be like: slightly queer- signaling, but still madly and sexually in love with only her.
By default, he’s also an icon of attraction for a lot of gay guys too. And this means Bad Bunny is going to sell records and get streams. Lots and lots of streams.
Born Benito Martínez Ocasio, he was a grocery store bagger and student at the University of Puerto Rico before becoming the “conejo malo” of the Latin trap or Latin urban explosion. In 2020, Bad Bunny was crowned the most streamed artist of the year on Spotify, and his second album this year “El Último Tour del Mundo,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the first all- Spanish- language album to do so in history.
Anyway you cut it, he had an incredible year, in spite of his COVID- 19 infection last month.
He recently told The Times’ Suzy Exposito that he looked forward to the greatest bragging- rights test of them all in early 2021 — possibly winning a “gringo Grammy,” a winking nod at his Latin- lens world- view and that of legions of his fans. “To us,” he said, “the Latin Grammys are the Grammys.”
1. ‘ Selena: The Series,’ a pivotal moment
To this day, Selena Quintanilla — the superstar Tejana singer and style icon murdered at age 23, just as she was poised to take off in the U. S. mainstream market — remains a potent symbol for U. S. Latinas, even among those born after her 1995 death.
So of course, anything by Netflix about the singer would be expected to come under intense scrutiny by Selena’s fans — and it did. The series, which premiered in December, , faced criticism, including from Times critic Lorraine Ali, for seemingly building the story of Selena’s rise around her father and brother, pushing Selena aside to a supporting role in her own story. Particularly for young Latinas and Latinx viewers, who this year more than any yearned for richer depictions of themselves on major platforms, the male- centered story line of “Selena: The Series” especially stung.
But everyone was talking about the show, it seemed. Fans noted that their screens showed “Selena: The Series” was trending No. 1 on Netflix in the United States and across Latin America, proving in some way that 25 years after her death, Selena was still fomenting that cross- cultural energy she longed for.
And in truth, “Selena” is moving television at points. Its success meant that millions of non- Latino Americans spent hours over nine episodes observing an intimate, if almost romantic depiction of a typical U. S. Latino domestic dynamic, featuring the most likely kind of “Hispanic” they have next door, Mexican Americans. The Quintanillas are exceptional, but there’s a little bit of many of us in their household.