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The U.S. Latino consumer market is surpassing $1 Trillion dollars per year. This size makes the U.S. Latino consumer market one of the top 15 largest economies in the world — if compared with economies of countries. The U.S. Latino consumer market is on par with the gross national product (GNP) of entire countries, including …

Our Latino children receive messages each day from multiple locations — school, parents, friends, and of course, television. Like it or not, our kids are watching mucho TV (as are we!). So what messages are out there on TV, and what can we do about it? Ok, I’ll be the first one to admit the …

“I have challenged the schools PTA platforms to create Hispanic PTA-type platforms to welcome the overall community and to strengthen the overall PTA umbrella by creating an environment for parents of all backgrounds to participate in their own language if needed.” Edna Figueroa Let me tell you a little bit about the work of a …

During the course of the month, we’ve talked about some issues that are especially relevant for Latino children — educational support, poverty, immigration issues, and health care, among others. There are both organizations and individuals who take these issues very seriously, and are doing their part to support, nurture and empower Latino children. Take a …

As a high school administrator, I learned some simple but vital lessons about why certain students are successful and others aren’t. Much of it was through a family I’ll call the Garzas. Mr. and Mrs. Garza were immigrants from Mexico. The father was a blue-collar worker, and the mother stayed home. Neither of them finished …

When a parent is unfaithful, he (or she) is usually not thinking about how his conduct will affect his children. And yet a child whose parent engages in an extramarital affair suffers the consequences of being lied to and betrayed by the person who should be the most trustworthy individual in that child’s life. If …

Since we recognize that the mainstream media, and the role models portrayed there for Latinos, do not represent the broader spectrum of who we are, it becomes incumbent upon us, then, to make sure our children are receiving the messages we want them to receive. We start with our own children, and other family members, …

As we look at the numbers of Latino children, and recognize the booming growth in our communities (2 out of 3 children born in LA County, for example, is Latino!), we realize that the future for our country, and for us as Latinos, rests on the shoulders of these young beings. Therefore, the question of …

I write about strong girls, no apologies here. It doesn’t matter what anybody tells me about how boys read stories with main characters that are male. How sad for them, I think. Maybe what they need is to meet a gutsy Latina on the page to make them forget all that silliness. Besides, I’m after …

I’m the author in my family, but the truth is that no one I’ve ever met was a better storyteller than my grandmother, Benita Metauten. She left school after the eighth grade and rolled cigars in rural Cuba until she married. By the time she died at the age of 99, she had weathered the …