De Los turns 2. Here’s what we did over the last year
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On the night of July 9, 2023, one of the De Los editors — they shall remain nameless — accidentally flipped the site live while doing some last-minute revisions, a full 12 hours before our announced launch date. And so, after nearly a year of planning and prepping, The Times’ section focusing on Latino culture and identity was born.
Wednesday marked our second anniversary, and let me tell you, the last 12 months have been quite a ride. Whereas Year 1 was full of growing pains, Year 2 was all about us hitting our stride.
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During this period, we’ve extensively covered the ever-growing popularity of Latin music, profiling some of the genre’s biggest stars and providing context on some of the year’s most important albums — take this story, which explains how Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” isn’t just a love letter to Puerto Rico, but a history of the island as well. Curious about the current state of Latin music? We put together a roundtable of hitmakers and asked them to weigh in.
The De Los team also proved to be ambitious during our sophomore year, undertaking three separate packages: a deep dive into the many ways in which música Mexicana has influenced Southern California culture; the De Los 101, a curated list of 101 businesses and organizations we felt represented the best of Latino L.A.; and a retrospective on the impact of Selena Quintanilla’s legacy 30 years after her death.
In addition to our culture coverage, we also supplemented The Times’ great coverage of major news events by reporting on how these effected the Latino community, whether it be the L.A. wildfires or the ongoing ICE raids. We also partnered with the Cultivating Inland Empire Latino Opportunity (CIELO) Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation to expand our coverage into the Inland Empire, a relationship that has yielded one of my favorite De Los stories to date — a feature on Las Valentinas del Valle de Coachella, a group of middle and elementary schoolers who are keeping the traditional Mexican sport of escaramuza alive.
Beyond our reporting, the last 12 months saw us be more in community with our audience. We were at South by Southwest in March for our second annual music showcase. A month later, we were at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with two days of programming at the De Los Stage in association with L.A. Times en Español. Last summer, we co-presented a free concert with Grand Performances headlined by Daymé Arocena, and we’ll be back again on Aug. 2 with Adrian Quesada and his “Boleros Psicodélicos” — you can RSVP here. We’re also planning something special for Día de Muertos, so stay tuned for more details.
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None of this would have been possible without your continued support. The De Los team is heartened every time one of you stops by our live events, or shares one of our stories or Instagram videos with your friends.
Thank you and here’s to Year 3!
Comic: In the shadows, life goes on
Julio Salgado is a visual artist based in Long Beach. His work has been displayed at the Oakland Museum, SFMOMA, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. (@juliosalgado83)
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