(Photo: Wikipedia)

“Mi Querido Barrio” is an exhibition with both physical and virtual components, mapping an historic and cultural tour of El Barrio to foster greater awareness of the cultural history of the area’s long-standing residents. The works of intergenerational artists in both traditional media and augmented reality will explore the concept of home/community in a global reality.

The physical exhibition will document the lives of 5 families with a generational history of living in El Barrio. The virtual exhibition will place virtual computer graphic artworks and environments throughout my neighborhood to reflect on El Barrio’s past, present and future in cultural memory, history, fantasy, and reality.

Via website


Last week, Dr. Marta Moreno-Vega, president and founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), announced the planned art and historic exhibition “Mi Querido Barrio” (My Dear Neighborhood), celebrating the rich history in East Harlem’s El Barrio.

Mi Querido Barrio, a two-year project, is an augmented reality exhibition. Simply put, it is a view of a real-world environment (which is/was physically somewhere else) transformed digitally, appearing on your smart phone.

Triggers at on-site posters throughout East Harlem (La Marqueta, Tito Puente’s birth location, the Young Lord’s garbage offense, or Willie Mays stickball locations, to name a few) call forth on your phone the digital artwork. Sound, graphics, and video are also part of the digital-transformed creation.

If this all seems very conceptual, a demonstration using a smart phone makes it straightforward.

Nine artists from diverse artistic backgrounds have been brought together to produce an exhibition using this latest technology paying homage to the vast contributions of East Harlem’s community.

The newly launched art project will map historic and cultural areas of New York’s El Barrio neighborhood. Each artist will create a site-specific virtual artwork. At the end of the training period for artists, there will be a limited public exhibition as an example of what the final project will be.

The artists have been trained by Tamiko Thiel, a German-based visual artist, who has developed artistic capabilities of various forms of this technology for exploring social and cultural issues. Bruce Lincoln is directing the project along with a technology advisor, historian, and workshop coordinator.

This is a homecoming for cultural activist Dr. Moreno-Vega, who was born and grew up in El Barrio.

Having devoted her life to preserving, nurturing and showcasing Hispanic arts, she is clearly on the wave of a “now” art form, situating CCCADI stanchly into the 21st century. With this recognition, Dr. Moreno-Vega says, “It is an exciting time for us here at the Center as we have the opportunity to train and open a new field to a diverse group of artists.”

Via Caribbeanlifenews

Jenni Rivera was the top-selling artist within the Regional Mexican music genre. With a weekly radio show, her own reality show, a makeup and clothing line, and her own foundation, she was at the height of her career and life. Everything she had conquered, with blood, sweat, tears, and smiles, hap¬pened, as she said, with God leading her by the hand. However her life, her dreams, and the joy she shared with so many came to a tragic end just before dawn on December 9, 2012.

In Jenni Rivera: The Incredible Story of a Warrior Butterfly, Leila Cobo—pianist, TV host, and Executive Director for Latino content and programming at Billboard—brings us Jenni Rivera’s intimate and moving biography, reflecting on the party girl, the elegant woman, the great diva, the friend, the mother, and the grandmother. 


A Fulbright scholar from Cali, Colombia, Leila Cobo is a novelist, pianist, TV host  and executive Editor for Latin Content and Programming for Billboard. Under her tenure, Billboard has expanded its coverage of Latin Music and for the first time in its more than 100-year history, the magazine has a complete weekly section dedicated solely to Latin music. 

As an author Ms. Cobo’s first novel, Tell Me Something True, was published Oct. 1 to critical acclaim by Grand Central Publishing/Hatchette and is now in its third printing. Her second novel, The Second Time We Met, was published in 2012.

Prior to Billboard, Leila wrote for the Los Angeles Times and was later the pop music critic at the Miami Herald. She’s written liner notes for Ricky Martin, Shakira, Julio Iglesias and Selena among others, and collaborates closely with Grammy in the Schools and Teach for America, among other projects.

Ms. Cobo is also one of the authors of the Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music and a guest writer on the anthology Quinceañera.

The other day while browsing the meat aisle of my local A&P Supermarket, after stocking up on healthy snacks at Trader's Joes, I spotted a package of taco seasoning labeled "Nueva Cocina® Latin" that claimed to be MSG- free, gluten free, and all-natural; all products contain no artificial ingredients or preservatives.

I am not sure if you've spotted this brand before, I certainly hadn't but I was really pleased to discover it. Keep an eye for their rice, seasonings and soup products. I hope they extend their line too and make some low sodium versions soon.

I read Mama's Child by Joan Steinau Lester in one day. It was that gripping and enticing, a tale about identity, race, denial and fealty. I almost stopped reading the book immediately at the begin when I realized their dog was named "Che" but honestly this book blurb does not do this book justice. It definitely resonated with me.


A stunning tale about the deeply entrenched conflicts between a white mother and her biracial daughter.

Mama’s Child is story of an idealistic young white woman who traveled to the American South as a civil rights worker, fell in love with an African American man, and started a family in San Francisco, where the more liberal city embraced them—except when it didn’t. They raise a son and daughter, but the tensions surrounding them have a negative impact on their marriage, and they divorce when their children are still young. For their biracial daughter, this split further destabilizes her already challenged sense of self—“Am I black or white?” she must ask herself, “Where do I belong?” Is she her father’s daughter alone?

As the years pass, the chasm between them widens, even as the mother attempts to hold on to the emotional chord that binds them. It isn’t until the daughter, Ruby, herself becomes a wife and mother that she begins to develop compassion and understanding for the many ways that her own mother’s love transcended race and questions of identity.''

Joan Steinau Lester, Ed.D., is an award-winning journalist and author of four critically acclaimed books. Her writing has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including Essence, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Northern California.

“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. 

It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. 

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. 

That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.” ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus



The Last Bookshop imagines a future where physical books have died out. thelastbookshop.co.uk

- Isabel Allende: By the Book: The author of the forthcoming novel “Maya’s Notebook” says reading Gabriel García Márquez made her want to become a writer: “I thought, ‘If this guy can do it, so can I.’ ”

- Emilio Gil on Modern Spanish Book Design

- Lulu Delacre, Bilingual Children’s Book Author & Illustrator Says, “The Power is in Numbers”

- Top 20 Spanish-Language Novels Written Since 1982, (written in 2007)

- What librarians consider when putting together a Spanish-language children’s book collection

- If you have not see the documentary, The Central Park Five, you must watch it. It's online and in Spanish.