Latinx Files: Here’s what we’ve learned two weeks into De Los

I wasn’t planning on writing about De Los in consecutive newsletters, but so much has happened in the nearly two weeks since we launched the vertical — you can read all about it here — that I wanted to update you with what we’ve learned so far.

Here are our three big takeaways:

Spanish is still a significant marker of Latinidad

On Sunday night, after Mexico defeated Panama in the CONCACAF Gold Cup final at SoFi Stadium, a video went viral that sparked a conversation about the importance of Spanish to Latinx identity.

In it, ESPN Deportes reporter Juan Del Valle interviews a young Mexico fan in Spanish about the victory and asks for his analysis. Except the child doesn’t speak the language.

“My name? What?” he responds in confusion.

It wasn’t long before people were dunking on the child on Twitter, ridiculing him for not speaking Castellano and chastising his parents for not teaching him.

But not everyone felt that way. De Los senior reporter Alejandra Molina spoke with several people who shared their own struggles in learning Spanish. Alejandra’s story highlighted that although more and more Latinxs are becoming English-dominant, the so-called mother tongue still holds a lot of sway in how we see ourselves.

It also made it clear to me that this will be a topic we will be covering repeatedly.

‘Night of a 1,000 paísas’

Not to sound like a broken record, but one of the goals at De Los is to tell stories that focus on our joy and leisure.

Imagine my excitement when columnist Suzy Exposito approached me with the idea of what we’ve jokingly referred to internally as “the night of a thousand paísas.”

On Saturday, Fuerza Regida and Eslabon Armado had dueling shows mere miles from each other — BMO Stadium and Crypto.Com Arena, respectively. This was a big deal: Two Mexican regional powerhouses were forcing fans in Southern California and surrounding areas to pick between them.

Call it the paísa version of “Sophie’s Choice.”

Our plan was to send a reporter and photographer to each show. Suzy and freelance photographer J. Emilio Flores would go to the Eslabon Armado concert and speak to the sad bois and the lovers. For Fuerza Regida, we assigned De Los contributor Alex Zaragoza and freelance photographer Lorena Endara to cover the beautiful chaos.

The end result were these two dispatches that not only chronicled a significant event in a city that’s long been the epicenter of the fast growing genre, but also made it clear just how much diversity exists within Mexican regional.

But wait, there’s more.

As we discussed these stories, assistant editor Christian Orozco pointed out that the Viva Pomona festival was also taking place that weekend, and suggested assigning a photo essay. As he put it, it would be a yet another documentation of Latinx in leisure.

Collaborating with L.A. Times En Español

As of this writing, the most read story on De Los is this recap from Saturday’s Fuerza Regida concert. (Yes, we did two stories from the same show, ¿Y qué?). Its success is no doubt attributed to the fact that it doubled as a report on the run-in members of the band had with the Los Angeles Police Department after the show. The musicians were detained and handcuffed early Sunday morning in Hollywood before being released two hours later without charges or arrests made.

This story first ran on Los Angeles Times en Español. The version on our site is an English translation of Tommy Calle’s report.

As we planned the launch of De Los, the leadership team decided that collaborating with our L.A. Times En Español made sense. Latinx households tend to be multilingual, after all.

Two weeks ago, we weren’t entirely sure what that cooperation would look like.

Since then, we’ve translated several of their stories into English, and they’ve done the same with ours — this long read on the diasporic sport of ecuavoley was translated into Spanish so the subjects of the story could read about themselves.

It’s still early on in the process, but I’m heartened by how easy it’s been to highlight and uplift each others’ work.

Things we read this week that we think you should read

— Have plans to travel to Mexico City and need recommendations? Our Food desk has you covered. In addition to this guide on where to eat and drink, editor Daniel Hernandez also put together a helpful list of practical tips for navigating the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. And as a former resident of el D.F., Daniel also wrote a personal essay from the perspective of a former resident on how it has changed.

— My colleagues Rachel Uranga, Priscella Vega and Paloma Esquivel report on how particularly brutal the heat wave sweeping California has been on the state’s farmworker communities.

— Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent another bus carrying migrants to Los Angeles, the fourth in recent weeks.

— It’s Barbie’s world; we’re just living in it. De Los reporter Andrea Flores spoke to enterprising bakeries across the country making and selling Barbie-themed conchas ahead of the film’s premiere.