“Por mi madre yo soy Mexicano / Por destino soy Americano.”
La Santa Cecilia has never shied away from examining the complex duality of being a Latino and American. The Los Angeles band has released songs that deal with the fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the immigrant community (“Ice, El Hielo“) and they’ve also covered some of the songs that you probably heard your parents listening to as you were growing up. With “México Americano,” La Santa Cecilia celebrates all the things that make Mexican-Americans who they are. For all the non-Mexicans out there, it is really simple to relate, especially if you’ve ever felt like you’ve lived between two worlds. This song is about loving all the different things that make you a unique and multicultural person. As they say in the song: “Dos idiomas y dos piases / Dos culturas tengo yo / En mi suerte tengo orgullo / Porque así lo manda Díos.” “Two languages and two countries / I have two cultures / Luckily I have my pride / Because that is what God commands.”
Good news, Selenators! Word on the street is that Selena Gomez will soon be dropping her first-ever Spanish language album. The rumors started after Gomez dropped a surprising (and beautiful!) new Spanish-language single, “De Una Vez”.
Soon after the single dropped, rumors of a full Spanish-language studio album began to swirl when murals promoting “De Una Vez” and a yet-unreleased single “Baila Conmigo” popped up across, Mexico.
To make matters even better, Selena already dropped “De Una Vez”‘s music video.
The lush and imaginative video has been garnering praise for its inclusion of Latin American visuals and symbols. Gomez hired Tania Verduzco and Adrian Perez to direct her video–a husband and wife team who hail from Mexico and Spain, respectively and go by the moniker Los Pérez.
Of hiring Spanish speakers to direct her video, Gomez revealed to Vogue online that the decision was intentional. “If I was going to completely immerse myself into a project inspired by Latin culture, I wanted to work with native Spanish speaking creators,” she said.
And indeed, Verduzco and Perez tried to infuse as much Latin spirit into the video’s conception as possible.
“Magical realism has always been part of the Latin culture, whether it be in art or telenovelas,” Gomez told Vogue. “I wanted [to capture] that sense of a supernatural world.”
They accomplished this sense of magical realism by utilizing motifs from Mexican folk art, like Milagro, which is symbolized by the glowing heart that is beating within Gomez’s chest throughout the video.
“We wanted to play with powerful language and images. We designed the heart—we call it the Milagro in Mexican culture—and its light to be a metaphor for the healing throughout the story,” Verduzco told Vogue.
Selena Gomez fans are especially excited about this project because Gomez has long hinted at her desire to release a Spanish-language album.
Back in 2011, Gomez tweeted about her plans to eventually record an entire album in Spanish. “Can’t wait for y’all to hear the Spanish record;) it’s sounding so cool,” she wrote.
She retweeted the sentiment on Thursday with the comment: “I think it will be worth the wait”–which many fans took as confirmation that a full studio album is on its way.
It’s worth noting that Gomez has already dipped her toe into the Latin music scene with 2010’s “Un Año Sin Lluvia” and 2018’s DJ Snake, Ozuna and Cardi B collab, “Taki Taki”.
As for the difficulty of recording songs in a second language, Gomez said that it was a practice that came naturally.
“I actually think I sing better in Spanish. That was something I discovered,” she said in an interview for Apple Music. “It was a lot of work, and look, you cannot mispronounce anything. It is something that needed to be precise, and needed to be respected by the audience I’m going to release this for.”
She continued: “Of course I want everyone to enjoy the music, but I am targeting my fan base. I’m targeting my heritage, and I couldn’t be more excited.”
Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan is the outgoing president of the National Lawyers Guild and her departure has taken a sudden turn. After years as an attorney, many are now accusing the attorney of posing as a Latina.
Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan is facing mounting scrutiny and backlash for her claims that she is Latina.
NEW: For more than a decade, prominent human rights attorney Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan has presented herself as a Latina of Colombian & Puerto Rican heritage. She was heralded as the National Lawyers Guild's first Latina president. But she is a white woman. https://t.co/9wY0GyPtTUhttps://t.co/0cNzoQesaZ
According to a post on Prism, Bannan has a history of claiming her Latinidad. The post points out several interviews the attorney has given over the years with different publications where she explicitly claims that she is part of the Latino community. In one YouTube video with ¡Voice Latina!, Bannan explicitly says that “as a woman, as an individual, as a Latina” she is inspired to do the work she does because of her hero Oscar López Rivera.
People are calling on others to do better about who they choose to represent various communities.
I have said over and over again: when speaking about matters regarding Puerto Rico – speak to boricuas who live in the island. Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan has been posing as a pro independence boricua in the diaspora for years. She has been taking up a space that is not hers.
Representation matters, especially when it comes to the issues that are facing our various communities. It is important to make sure that the representation reflects those being represented. According to Prism, Bannan has been pushing a narrative that she is of Puerto Rican and Colombian heritage for over a decade. She has even spoken out as a Puerto Rican woman that is fighting for the island’s statehood.
There are multiple media moments when Bannan claimed Latino heritage, according to reports.
Dear White People,
Which apparently includes Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan
* Being an ally is not cosplaying as an oppressed person *
No matter what work you do? That is NEVER "the work."
Prism points to an interview conducted in 2007 where she allegedly told “El Diario” that her heritage was “a little bit Spanish, a little bit Colombian, and a Sephardic Jew.”
“I am racially white, and have always said that. However my cultural identity was formed as a result of my family, both chosen and chosen for me, and that has always been Latinx,” Bannan wrote on Facebook Monday following the story. “My identity is my most authentic expression of who I am and how I pay honor to the people who have formed me since I was a child.”
The story is garnering so much attention because of Hilaria Baldwin and her claims of being Spanish.
🤬🤬Another white woman masquerading as a woman of color…..
Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan pretended to be a Latina woman of Colombian & Puerto Rican heritage.
Baldwin misled people into believing that she was of Spanish descent when she was a white woman born in Boston. Prism was able to decipher that Bannan is a white woman born in Georgia whose family immigrated from Ireland, Italy, and Russia.
