Surpriiiise!

I’m launching one month early. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for the In The Hyphen newsletter, an extension of my YouTube channel by the same name that covers U.S. Latino culture.

I originally planned to launch this March 5. Why am I launching earlier than planned? Because Bad Bunny is performing at the Super Bowl this weekend, and I couldn’t not write anything about it (I think I used the double negative correctly there).

Like In The Hyphen’s YouTube channel, every newsletter will explore the hyphen between two things, two issues, two entities. In this newsletter, I’ll explore the hyphen between:

- Fernando

The day Bad Bunny was announced as the Super Bowl halftime performer last year, Washington D.C.-based Kimberly Hamilton celebrated and then bought the domain BenitoBowl.com.

“When you're searching for Google “Benito Bowl,” it's probably one of the maybe top five [results] that comes up right now,” Hamilton said. “And so I was hoping to lean into that.”

Hamilton is a full-time personal finance educator and runs the site on the side, where she sells all types of merch, from glasses to shirts and posters.

In New York, Amaurys Grullon, the co-founder of clothing store Bronx Native, quickly got to work on Benito Bowl designs.

“Here in the Bronx, more than half of the population is Hispanic. A lot of the population is Puerto Rican,” Grullon said. “We always try to stay pop-culturally accurate and on brand—and just on point with everything that's happening in the culture. And this is a big one right now. This is something that has gotten all of us proud to be Latino, to be Latina.”

The Instagram post announcing the shirt is one of the most viral posts in the history of Bronx Native’s social media presence. Did that translate to actual sales?

“It was our best January yet since we've opened,” Grullon said.

Jennifer Mark is a Dallas-based designer who runs MARQ THE LABEL, a boutique streetwear company. A jersey inspired by Puerto Rico’s flag that sold well prior inspired her to make a Benito Bowl jersey that incorporated Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” album cover.

“I thought, OK, if I can put this album on a jersey, I think that we will have an amazing piece of clothing, like a piece of art,” Mark said. “Like you literally get to wear art.”

The jersey sold out in 2 minutes. You can hear more from these entrepreneurs here.

If you don’t know who Dr. Simi is, watch this video. If you know who he is but want to understand what in the helly he’s doing in the U.S., watch this video.

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

Did you know you can buy a molcajete (mortar and pestle) at JCPenney?

That’s thanks to Jenny Martinez. You’ve probably seen her TikTok recipe videos, which blew up during the pandemic. JCPenney announced in January that it was launching Jenny Martinez Home Collection, a line of home goods from the Mexican chef and creator.

The line is actually an extension of Martinez’s Mesa Mía line, which was announced in 2023 and focused on kitchenware items.

I caught up with Martinez to find out how a TikToker ends up with her own line of home goods at an American retailer. I knew it helped to have 3.7 million followers on TikTok, but I wanted to know how conversations with JCPenney transpired in the first place.

“It's really, really funny how this started,” she said.

It was during the pandemic and Martinez had just posted a video recommending a pan she found at JCPenney, when a buyer from the retailer slid into her DMs.

“She's like, ‘Hey, I saw you picking up one of our pots and pans. And I would like to talk to you about it.”

Martinez’s daughter thought it was a scam, but Martinez decided to respond anyway. “I'm like, let's just call her. Let’s see what she says,” she said.

“She says, ‘I want you to represent and promote our line.’ So I did it for six months, and they wanted to renew my contract. But I said, no, I really want my line. That's what I really want. And this is what I told you [when we first talked]. You said you were going to try. And so she says, you know what? I did tell you that. So let me get back to you. It took her two months. She came back and she says, let's do it, Jenny.”

That led to a pandemic Zoom meeting with JCPenney executives, where Martinez walked them through the vision of her kitchenware line inspired by her hometown and a tile in her mom’s kitchen.

“I said, ‘If I'm ever gonna make a collection or a product, it has to come with these patterns,’” Jenny remembers.

“We didn't even finish. In the middle of the Zoom meeting, [the executive] says, ‘OK, let's do it,’” Martinez said. 

The remark was so nonchalant Martinez wasn’t sure she heard the executive correctly.

“I was like, wait, did he say…?”

So what made the executive tick?

“I think what really, really got to the decision maker was when he saw all the comments [I receive],” Martinez said. “‘Jenny, like where do I go get a pan?’ Or ‘What type of pans do you use?’ [My followers] wanted to buy what I was using. I kept on sending people to TJ Maxx, to the swap meet.”

Now she sends followers somewhere else.

“You don't have to be running to the swap meets or TJ [Maxx]. I mean, you can go to JCPenney and get a molcajete, a real authentic molcajete from Mexico.”

Did Buc-ees really donate $1 million to ICE? Journalist Tomás Mier reached out to the famous mega-convenience-store chain to find out.  [Tomás Mier]

Latino enrollment is down at elite universities. A new analysis of 2024 admissions data, following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action, shows enrollment of Black and Latino students is down. [The Hill]

Melissa McCarthy makes her telenovela debut. Kind of. Melissa stars as “Melisa” in this Super Bowl ad from e.l.f. Cosmetics, featuring Mexican telenovela star and melodrama queen Itatí Cantoral. It’s pretty funny.

Airbnb is looking for a communications professional to focus on U.S. Latino outreach. The role will oversee all types of content targeting “Latinos based in the U.S.” and integrate “Latino media strategy” into global communications  [Danny Miró-Chinea]

What would Christian duranguense music sound like? You don’t have to imagine it. This guy makes it using AI. The creator of the music commented on a mini-doc I recently made about a potential comeback of the Mexican subgenre duranguense, and that’s how I learned about it.

Jimmy Kimmel’s sidekick is entering the salsa retail space with the help of Ithaca Hummus’ founder. Yes, the founder of Ithaca Hummus, that colorful hummus brand, has teamed up with Guillermo Rodriguez to launch Guillermo’s Salsa nationwide. Kimmel’s Kimmelot Labs, a creative agency, is handling the creative and marketing. [People] 

Because I like to hear myself write. Jk.

When I launched In The Hyphen in early 2025 as a YouTube channel, a newsletter was always part of the vision. 

It was an element I quietly let go of as I found myself overwhelmed with the work that goes into keeping a journalistic YouTube channel running—researching, shooting, writing and editing a 12-minute mini-doc every two weeks is a lot of work.

In the last few months, I’ve gotten faster at doing that, and I finally have free time! So I’m taking the natural next step, which is finding a way to fill that time. 

The non-facetious answer to why I’m doing this is that I sit on a lot of reporting—not because I want to, but because I don’t have enough visuals to turn it into a mini-doc, or sometimes I don’t even have enough information to turn it into a short TikTok. This newsletter is a space for me to share all my reporting.

At the root of all this, though, is that I like to write. Writing is a nice break from looking at a neon Premiere Pro timeline for hours. A blank page haaaaates to see me coming.

Btw, if you don’t know why In The Hyphen is called that, check out this video.

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

This week’s rant: I think we need to stop normalizing knowing people’s birthdays by heart! Knowing the birthdates of parents and immediate family/significant others is OK. But knowing your best friends’ birthdays from memory? No! Knowing the month is a reasonable expectation, and having it saved in your phone, but knowing the exact date by heart is too much to keep track of.