It’s the waning days of December, which means it’s time to look back at the year that was. For this week’s newsletter, here are four trends in Latino media — music, television and film — that stood out to me in 2024.
Música Mexicana reigns supreme.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but música Mexicana — the broad subsection of Latin music that includes everything from banda to cumbia to corridos tumbados to Reggaeton mexa — had a spectacular 2024. It was everywhere.
Música Mexicana dominated the streaming charts and was repped at music festivals like Coachella and South By Southwest. Superstar Peso Pluma played at both events, and Southern California native Estevie won the Grulke Prize for Developing U.S. Act at the latter. It went country thanks to crooner Carin León, who performed at the legendary Grand Ole Opry in February. Even Drake, who’s long been accused of being a culture vulture, has jumped on the música Mexicana train, collaborating with Chino Pacas and Fuerza Regida on “Modo Capone.” (Not to be outdone, Kendrick Lamar featured mariachi singer Deyra Barrera on several tracks of his new album, “GNX.”)
As someone who has reported and assigned stories on música Mexicana, I can confidently tell you that this genre is not a fad. On the contrary, we’ve only seen the beginning. Though it has been a mainstay in the U.S. for decades, música Mexicana blew up in the last few years thanks in large part to social media, streaming and an ever-growing, young bicultural fanbase. I’ve often told people that chronicling the rise of the genre nowadays is what I imagine covering the rise of West Coast rap in the late ’80s and early ’90s must have been like.
The year of prestige Latin American television
Netflix has “Senna” and “100 Years of Solitude.” Hulu released “La Maquina,” a mini-series by the charolastra duo of Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal about an aging boxer and his manager. HBO Latino countered with an adaptation of the Laura Esquivel novel “Like Water for Chocolate” produced by Salma Hayek Pinault. Not to be outdone, Apple TV+ put out “Familia de medianoche” (“Midnight Family”), a drama out of Mexico about a family-operated ambulance service.
What’s the common denominator? All of these television shows came out on streaming services looking to expand their footprint globally. The end result has been a renaissance of Latin American television.
“People were able to make films, but the television that they were able to make was linear and, in the classical way, was more serialized telenovela content,” Francisco Ramos, vice president of content for Latin America, told Deadline in October. “For sure, the long-formatted novelas are a huge and very successful business. But now you have talent saying, ‘Oh, I can tell my story in eight episodes or in 12 episodes. I get to dig deeper into characters in a seasonal arc.’ A lot of things have started opening up for filmmakers, creators and writers.”
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A mixed bag for U.S. Latino TV
2024 was a historic year for Latina talent. Selena Gomez (“Only Murders in the Building”), Nava Mau (“Baby Reindeer”), Sofia Vergara (“Griselda”), Issa López (“True Detective: Night Country”) and Liza Colón-Zayas (“The Bear”) were all nominated for Emmys — Colón-Zayas was the only winner, taking home the award for comedy supporting actress, and making history as the first Latina to ever win in that category.
“Thank you for giving me a new life with this show,” Colón-Zayas said in her acceptance speech. “And to all the Latinas who are looking at me: Keep believing and vote. Vote for your rights.”
Other highlights in U.S. Latino television this year included the success of “The Lincoln Lawyer.” The third season of the Netflix legal drama, whose showrunner and star actor are both Latinos, was the most watched show across streaming platforms after it premiered — and the premiere of “Fantasmas,” the lovable and absurdist comedy limited series by Julio Torres that is easily among my favorite shows of the year, Latino or otherwise.
On the flipside, sitcoms “This Fool” and “Primo” were canceled early in the year by Hulu and Freevee, respectively. (Amazon also shuttered FreeVee in November.) Both series were axed too soon, beloved by critics and audiences alike.
Latino cinema won big at film festivals
Independent productions featuring Latino talent had a stellar 2024 in the film festival circuit. At Sundance, “In the Summers,” a family drama starring René Pérez Joglar (better known as Residente from hip-hop group Calle 13), took home the U.S. dramatic competition’s grand jury prize, while “Sujo,” a new kind of narco film by directed by Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, won the festival’s global competition.
At SXSW, “Bob Trevino Likes It,” starring John Leguizamo and Barbie Ferreira, won the audience award in the narrative feature competition; “Clemente,” a documentary on baseball legend Roberto Clemente, won the documentary spotlight competition; and “Bionico’s Bachata,” a charming love story about a crack addict looking to get his life together before the love of his life gets out of rehab, won the global competition’s audience award.
The strong showing of these productions at these festivals is proof that there is an audience for Latino-focused stories. And yet Hollywood continues to ignore us, leaving independent filmmakers and producers to pick up the slack.
“I never wanted to be the Latino programming person, but the way the system works has put me in a position where if I don’t fight for these projects, no one else will,” Sergio Lira of Luz Films, the L.A.-based media company that co-produced “In the Summers,” told me in February.
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(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)
My favorite De Los stories of 2024
Over the last year, De Los, The Times vertical I help oversee that focuses on Latinx culture and identity, published hundreds of stories. Below is a selection of some of my favorite stories.
Ahead of the release of “Orquideas,” easily one of the best albums of 2024 (and one that gave us Peso Pluma singing on a disco-infused track), former De Los culture columnist sat down with Colombian American about having to simultaneously navigate the Anglo and Latin music worlds and being comfortable in her own skin. Oh, and she also broke the news of her pregnancy.
There are few things in this world that bring me as much joy as a good cultural mashup. Los Shinigamis del Norte, a band that performs norteño covers of anime theme songs, certainly fit the bill. It’s not a bit or a gimmick, either.
“We’re real musicians that are serious about the music, the performance, about everything sounding good,” founder Yair Guzmán told De Los contributing columnist Alex Zaragoza. “We don’t do it as a joke or a way to mock. We do it to put on a good show.”
Latinx Files: A eulogy for my father [published April 11, 2024]
One of my favorite things about writing this newsletter is that I am afforded the opportunity to get personal now and then. On April 1, 2024, my father, Fidel Martinez Sr., died after fighting cancer for nearly two years. I still carry a lot of grief over losing him, but being able to use this space to write about how much he meant to me has been an instrumental step in my healing process.
Column: Melissa Barrera is not afraid [published April 23, 2024]
In November 2023, Melissa Barrera was fired from the “Scream” horror movie franchise after repeatedly expressing support for the Palestinian people in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. In April 2024, the actor, who was characterized and accused of antisemitism, agreed to speak to De Los contributing columnist JP Brammer and opened up about the professional fallout that came from speaking up.
“It wasn’t easy to be labeled as something so horrible when I knew that wasn’t the case,” Barrera told Brammer. “But I was always at peace, because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I was aligned with human rights organizations globally, and so many experts and scholars and historians and, most importantly, Indigenous peoples around the world. I find that the Indigenous communities around the world are always on the right side of history, point blank, period.”
De Los contributor Tina Vásquez wrote about the journalism program at Downey Unified School District, which has been providing hands-on training for budding journalists since 1994. This thoroughly reported story was a labor of love — Vásquez is a byproduct of the program — and it might very well be my favorite story I worked on in the last year.
For The Times’ 1999 Project, a yearlong series that revisited some of the most culturally significant moments from 25 years ago, reporter Andrea Flores wrote about “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” a song that propelled an already famous Ricky Martin into global stardom. The ubiquitous track is also credited for ushering in the so-called “Latin explosion” in music — 1999 also gave us debut albums by the likes of Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Lopez. But as Flores reports, that explosion turned out to be an orchestrated flash in the pan.
I was hooked the moment I read the following opening two paragraphs of this profile of artist Isaac Psalm Escoto:
“My car got impounded again. I am so sorry I’m late,” said Isaac Psalm Escoto, practically running into Jeffrey Deitch, a contemporary art gallery on Santa Monica Boulevard, energy drink in hand. It was the second night in a row that his 2006 Scion xA got towed.
Escoto, also known by the graffiti alias Sickid, is on a tight deadline to finish the final installment in his first solo exhibition, “Gas Station Dinner.” From the crevice of his ear to the shoelaces on his Converse sneakers, he’s covered entirely in unintentional paint splatters.
From the get-go, De Los reporter paints — sorry! — Escoto as a modern day Mad Hatter-like character whose art captures a version of Los Angeles that exists in a “florescent realm of mischief and humor.”
‘La Bamba’ is getting a remake. Luis Valdez isn’t sure why [published Aug. 27, 2024]
In August, Variety reported that Sony Pictures and production company Mucho Mas Media were planning to remake “La Bamba,” the 1987 biopic about Mexican American rock and roller Ritchie Valens, who died in a 1959 plane crash alongside fellow musicians Buddy Holly and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. Many questioned why it was being remade. Among them was Luis Valdez, the writer and director of the beloved film.
In 2019, Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed at the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. Gustavo Dudamel, the beloved conductor of the orchestra, said that the show was among the best performances in the history of the iconic venue. Five years later, Lafourcade, who has established herself as one of the most revered and respected artists from Latin America, returned to the Bowl. I spent some time with Lafourcade ahead of her back-to-back concerts in September.
For Becky G, ‘Encuentros’ marks her next chapter [published Oct. 14, 2024]
As I wrote in the top section of this newsletter, música Mexicana enjoyed a massive surge in popularity in 2024. Rebbeca Marie Gomez, the 27-year-old artist better known as Becky G, has helped lead the charge. She used her 2023 Coachella performance as an opportunity to highlight the likes of Peso Pluma and JOP of Fuerza Regida.
“Brick by brick, we’re continuing to build this bridge that artists like Selena Quintanilla started and couldn’t finish,” Becky G told reporter Andrea Flores about her “rising tide lifts all boats” approach to working with and uplifting other música Mexicana acts. “I hope that we can help kids who grew up like us feel more OK to be themselves.”
Belissa Escobedo is finding her happy place [published Nov. 13, 2024]
Things hadn’t panned out for actor Belissa Escobedo after appearing in “Blue Beetle.” Hollywood went on strike before the first Latino live action superhero movie premiered, and Escobedo found herself tending bar at a New York City tavern. Ironically, it would take another bar — the fictional “Happy’s Place” — for Escobedo to get back on track.
