As 2023 comes to a close, we decided to highlight some of the best opinion pieces and guest essays that we have featured at CALÓ News this year.
Teresa Puente
About
Teresa Puente is the former Opinion Editor at CALÓ News. Puente is a senior facilitator, coach and mentor with The OpEd Project, a social venture that helps promote and publish underrepresented voices in the media. She is an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach.
My mom didn’t make tamales. She was the youngest of 11 and told me her older sisters and mom kept her out of the kitchen, so she didn’t learn how. So during the holidays we’d go visit one of my aunts who made tamales. I always felt like somehow I missed out because even though I grew up eating tamales, I didn’t learn how to make them.
I went to Mexico to look for relatives of my great grandfather, who left there in 1890. My grandfather was a cowboy who rode cattle from Texas to the Midwest. I told a woman, who could have been a cousin, how my mom was born in Carrizo Springs, Texas and grew up in a migrant worker family. They picked cotton in Texas and beets in the Midwest and then wound up on a tomato farm outside Chicago. My mom’s sisters convinced the family to move to the city where they could make more money working in factories. My mom was the youngest, so she was allowed to go to high school if she got an after-school job. She found a job in a department store. My mom and dad, also a migrant from Texas, met in the high school cafeteria. They married and had five children, all who went on to graduate from college.
Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, spoke at the annual LULAC conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Aug. 5. Huerta, 93, was born in New Mexico but raised in California. She spoke about several key themes – abortion rights, gay rights, the importance of voting and dangers facing our democracy.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Barbie. She was blonde, thin, tall, the Americanized standard of beauty. As a young woman growing up in the early 1970s, Barbie made me feel ugly. I was nothing like her idealized beauty as a Brown, curvy, petite woman. I kinda hated Barbie because I knew I would never look like her. It took me into my 20s to see in myself that Brown is beautiful too.
I agree with the James Baldwin quote: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
I struggle to reconcile all the conflicts in our country such as police brutality and political violence against immigrants. I struggle to celebrate our independence.
Fernández left broadcast news for a period and started her own company. In 2018, she came back to Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles.
Fernández anchors the morning news and is host and executive producer of “LA Stories with Giselle Fernández.” This fall John Leguizamo is hosting a three-part documentary on PBS called “American Historia.” Cultural segments will feature visits to historical sites and interviews with notable historians and Latino cultural figures.
The film came out Friday Hulu and Disney+ is important to the Latino community as we don’t see enough of our stories on the silver screen. There are many stories like Montañez’s out there. These types of stories should be championed and Longoria should be lauded for making this film that uplifts our community.
The Dodgers controversy happened as many states are moving to ban or restrict drag shows.
Tennessee was the first state in the country to ban drag performances in public spaces and anywhere in the presence of someone under 18 years old. The law was set to take effect April 1 and now is tied up in the courts. A dozen other states have proposed similar legislation against drag performances, including Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.