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Hi {{first_name | friend}},

Are your pets no sabos? The other day I realized mine are, and it made me sad. I didn’t even make a conscious decision to not speak Spanish to them. It was subconscious, which makes me feel worse. Anyway, I’m trying to speak more Spanish to my cats. Will report back.

Like my mini-docs, my newsletter explores the hyphen between various topics through the lens of Latino culture. In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

It’s been 21 years since Los Horóscopos de Durango released “Antes Muerta Que Sencilla,” and it’s been 22 years since “Dos Locos” hit the airwaves, two songs that have amassed more than 135 million streams combined on Spotify. The songs are back-to-back releases that cemented the Chicago-born group’s role in the male-dominated world of duranguense.

“It’s funny because we didn’t even want to record the song, because we loved it in bachata,” says Vicky Terrazas from her home in Illinois about “Dos Locos.” “What if people get upset because we’re recording this song?”

The song “Dos Locos” was a duranguense cover of the song made popular by Monchy y Alexandra (the original version is at 289 million streams on Spotify right now, just to give you an idea of how popular).

Vicky remembers saying no to a duranguense remix of the song. A year passed, and the group’s label brought it up again.

“So then we ended up recording—I think it was like two years later,” Vicky said. “And it was awesome, the response of the people. At that time, duranguense was starting to be really popular, but it was more, like, just male singers. We were the first band that actually had the male and the female voices, and then we bring this song, this love song that’s a really nice song.”

Vicky has one more theory for why the song catapulted the group’s profile. The lyrics of the song say this:

Que tontos, que locos somos tú y yo
Estando con otros y amándonos
Que tontos, que locos somos tú y yo
Estando con otros y aún amándonos

“Lots of kids liked it, and I think it was because they would say ‘locos, tontos,’ you know?”

I’m talking to Vicky Terrazas and Marisol Terrazas, the lead singers of the group, in between shows on their La Gira de Oro celebrating 50 years of the band. For anyone trying to do the math, they weren’t in the group from the beginning. Their father started it before they joined the band later.

“I started when I was 9 years old,” Marisol said. “I would play the six or five hours that you would play in quinceañeras, bodas, all kinds of private parties.”

The sisters kicked off the tour in Los Angeles last year (after a brief separation) and are now circling their way back to the City of Angels as they wind down the tour at the Peacock Theater of Oct. 9. I asked them what’s been different about performing duranguense in 2026, a subgenre that dominated the regional Mexican charts in the 2000s but has since been replaced by others.

“It just feels so much more intense,” said Marisol. “It’s so much more intense than 20 years ago.”

“It just feels like the energy and the vibe, it’s like wow, you know? It’s like double or triple from the first time,” Vicky said. “And I think it’s all due to social media.”

On social media, one song has dominated edit after edit: “Antes Muerta Que Sencilla.”

I asked Vicky and Marisol if they’ve heard any song recently that could do what “Antes Muerta Que Sencilla” did when they recorded a duranguense version of an unlikely song: a bubblegum pop song from a Spanish 9-year-old named María Isabel.

“‘Padam’ by Kylie Minogue,” said Vicky. “When I heard it, I was like, yeah that would sound awesome in duranguense.”

“‘Borderline’ or ‘Material Girl,’” said Marisol before the two broke out into an impromptu cover of Madonna’s 1984 song.

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The National Museum of the American Latino gets a home. And its location tells us something more than what its address will be. Rather than building a new structure for it, the new museum will be housed inside an existing building: the Arts & Industries Building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Why is that significant? The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents won’t need Congressional approval for the location, since it’s a property already owned by the organization. [The Architect’s Newspaper]

Latinos don’t care as much about AI in healthcare. A Pew Research Center survey asked Americans if they think it’s highly important their healthcare provider tells them if they are using AI. Seventy-five percent of white Americans think so, compared to 66% of Hispanic Americans. [Pew Research Center]

Is it too early for pumpkin spice lattes? How about pumpkin spice season-scented Fabuloso? The floor cleaner company hopes your answer is no to the latter. The brand (which started in Venezuela, did you know that?) released a limited edition scent for all, which is a play on the PSL trend and a manifestation of a comedian’s prediction six years ago? [See what I mean here.]

A state-sponsored Mexican singing program is embracing Mexican Americans but banning something else. México Canta, which began in 2025 to promote musical narratives “beyond themes of violence and drug-trafficking” isn’t allowing songs that use AI or glorify violence or drug use, which shuts out one of the most popular music genres in Mexico and the U.S. right now: corridos tumbados. But is that censorship? [De Los from the Los Angeles Times]

A Colombian journalist and TV presenter left her job to help victims after the deadly earthquake in Colombia. Or at least that’s what people thought. Rossy Lemos, who works at Canal RCN, said she took a break from her daily job to help her family in Quibdó, and later others in the larger department of Chocó. But in a video on social media, she revealed the network allowed her to remain employed while she helped, and the company even helped rebuild her family’s damaged home.

Kali Uchis enters the “Bluey” universe. “SE ME JUNTARON LOS FANDOM QUE RANDOM AJAJJAJSJA” wrote one commenter on @blueyespanol’s post announcing the Colombian American singer-songwriter is the voice of the character Bingo in a new episode of “Las historias de Bluey.” Listen to a snippet below:

Tired of living in the legal limbo of work permits with 2-year expiration dates, some DACA recipients decided to move to their birth country in the first year.

A year ago, I did a story on people who were considering doing so or had just recently made the move, but I wanted to see what the transition was like once you were actually there.

I talked to three DACA recipients who made the move—one of them two years ago, and the others less than a year ago.

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This section is a random musing from the week that is not related to my work as a journalist, usually. 

This week’s musing:

Last week marked the beginning of my sixth year teaching at USC. I’ve been an adjunct there since my NBC days. It’s a job I absolutely love because it’s part-time, gives me the space to look at the industry critically (because I have to teach students about it) and has allowed me to pitch and teach classes I’m interested in (Olympics and creator journalism).

But it’s not well paid. And everyone is always stunned to hear that. That’s one of the reasons non-tenure-track faculty are unionizing. But USC is trying to toss the unionization vote (70% voted yes). I’m not sure what readers not in Los Angeles can do, but if you’re in L.A. or have ties to USC, urge USC President Beong-Soo Kim to drop the university’s legal challenge and bargain in good faith.