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HEB, the Texas super-mega grocery store chain, is jumping on the pickle trend and the chamoy train with their new Pickle Chamoy Sherbet. It has chunks of pickle, according to one reviewer, and it’s getting mixed reviews. I have a strong feeling I would… love it?

In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

She went from being the Latina “Judge Judy” on Telemundo with millions of viewers to leaving the network and making a living from interacting with her more than 23 million followers on Facebook. Behind that transition is Iván Carrillo, a Colombian journalist-turned-social-media-agency-owner who manages the accounts of some of the biggest names in Hispanic entertainment, including actress and entrepreneur Ximena Duque, host and actress Adamari López and Mexican singer and actress Ninel Conde.

“I started doing social media work more than 15 years ago when it wasn’t really a thing,” Carrillo said. “I did it for myself, and I had a few contacts with sizable followings, personalities I’d met working at Telemundo and Univision, and I started offering my services to these people, helping them manage their social media presence.”

His first paying client was Quique Usales, who was working as on-air talent for Telemundo at the time.

“He offered me $300. I lived in London at the time,” Carrillo said. “He worked for ‘Al Rojo Vivo,’ I believe, and he told me, ‘Help me manage my social media.’”

But the real catalyst for what is now a full-fledged agency working with a roster that boasts more than 150 million Instagram followers was TV presenter Carolina Sandoval, aka “La Venenosa.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DXtyEbUDSGn/

“She told me, ‘Ok, here are the keys to my social media. Let’s grow,” Carrillo said. “I would tell her jump, and she’d jump. We grew tremendosuly.”

But there was one catch.

“She paid me zero dollars for six months,” Carrillo remembers. But then the results started coming in.

“We’ve made millions of dollars with her social media,” Carrillo said. “We’ve done partnerships with Amazon and the White House. We interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci before even the big networks.”

Carrillo is now the founder and CEO of The Social Rooster, an agency that offers talent representation and influencer marketing for brands, with a focus on the U.S. Hispanic market. Some of the accounts he and his team of 12 manage have generated as much as $100,000 a month through content they post on Facebook, but it’s not all rose-colored dollar signs. He says there’s a real gap in what brands pay Hispanic talent for partnerships.

“Everyone knows this. They pay Latinos less,” Carrillo said. “I work with some English-language partnerships … The rates are always different.”

He likened it the lower advertising rates Telemundo and NBC command for similar airtime. While they have the same parent company with similar programming, their audiences are valued differently.

“Brands have not given us the opportunity to help them see that we are an economic force,” Carrillo said.

But he thinks continuing to grow the accounts of Latino personalities in the U.S. is a way for brands to see the value of the Hispanic consumer.

“For me as a Latino, social media is important. [It helps] make our voices heard, because it’s a way to show others that you can achieve things regardless of where you are.”

He highlights the fact that many of his clients were pushed out by the TV networks they used to work for and are now making upwards of five times what they used to make a month.

“It’s been a beautiful opportunity for me to help people see that it’s possible.”

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How much do you think a traje de charro, the traditional garb worn by a mariachi, costs? What’s the most expensive element? And who’s buying them in the U.S.? I visited mariachi tailors in Los Angeles to see how the industry has changed in the last decade.

I post a mini-doc every two weeks on my YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss the next one.

Art imitates life, and life imitates art. Cristo Fernández, the actor who plays Dani Rojas in Ted Lasso, is now a professional soccer player. He signed with the El Paso Locomotive FC. The team is part of the second-tier United Soccer League. It’s a return to soccer for Fernández, who played for the Tecos FC academy before an injury when he was 15 made him leave. [El Paso Times]

Don Francisco is back. TelevisaUnivision announced Mario Kreutzberger, who gave life to “Don Francisco,” on Sábado Gigante, is returning to Univision. The network famously cancelled his Saturday variety show in 2015 after decades on the air. [Watch my video]

Texas public school enrollment is down, and Latinos are why. The state saw its first non-pandemic related enrollment drop in nearly 40 years, according to policy research group Texas 2026. Hispanic students accounted for 81% of the enrollment drop this academic year. The group says this is noteworthy considering the decline happened even as the Texas population grows. [Houston Pubic Media]

Lucha Libre era. That’s what L.A. appears to be in. The city just had a Lucha Libre Art Show. Then there’s La Bulla, an annual festival featuring Lucha Libre matches, this weekend. Katherine Portela wrote about the “chokehold” the art form is haivng on some L.A. artists. [Los Angeles Times] 

An Argentine Oscar-winning composer made a fragrance, and it’s named after an instrument. Two-time Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla and Julián Bedel, founder and artist of Fueguia 1833, teamed up to make Ronroco, a fragrance that draws inspiration from an Andean instrument of the same name and its “warm, resonant sound and wooden body. [Fueguia 1833]

Tatiana is back with… adult music? The Mexican American singer known for her children’s entertainment career is back with new music that’s not for kids. That makes it sound like it’s NSFW. It’s not. The single is called “No vuelvas a besarme,” and it’s a return to how Tatiana’s career started, with adult pop music. She released another adult song a couple months ago. I’m going to stop using the word “adult” to describe her music now, and this is also where I tell you that Tatiana was my first concert ever.

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

This week’s rant: I have to rename this section because the word “rant” has a negative connotation. I’m not bad about this, but I have noticed DoorDash has a lot of bilingual ads in Los Angeles, near Hollywood at least. Here’s a picture:

I say this isn’t a rant because I’m not mad about the ads so much as I am confused by them. Presumably they are targeted bilingual Gen Z and millennial Hispanics. The copy is what confuses me. It’s funny — the fact that when someone tells you five more minutes, it really means two more hours. At first I thought it was in reference to how long it takes food to get delivered. I thought that was a weird flex for a food delivery app. Several reflections later, I reasoned it’s likely a reference to hanging out with loved ones. What do you make of it?