The Latino Newsletter

11/26/2025

We will back on December 1. to all. And thank you for making this year a fabulous one for The Latino Newsletter.

11/26/2025

New from Carlos Berríos Polanco for The Latino Newsletter

United States to Order a Year’s Worth of Food for Troops in Puerto Rico

Procurement record shows the Department of Defense plans to spend more than $30 million in 2026

SAN JUAN — As President Donald Trump weighs possible military action against Venezuela and the United States amasses the largest presence in the Caribbean in over 35 years, the Department of Defense (DoD) is planning to issue a multimillion-dollar contract for a year’s worth of food for troops in Puerto Rico, according to a procurement record reviewed by The Latino Newsletter.

The record, a presolicitation notice published on Monday, shows the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will make a solicitation in December for a 12-month contract to provide food support for visiting ships, military, and other federal customers located throughout Puerto Rico.

The supplier “will be required to support all authorized DLA customers, visiting or located in Puerto Rico (i.e., visiting U.S. Navy ships, military shore and/or ship facilities, mobile kitchen tents (“MKTs”), ration break points, trailer-transfer points, and military training exercise locations, etc.). As previously stated, these customers include military or other federally funded customers,” the record reads.

“Though the solicitation describes existing customers known to the Contracting Officer at the time of the solicitation’s issuance, other customers, including military, Department of Defense (DoD), or non-DoD, may be added as necessary during the life of any resultant contract. The addition of said customers located within the solicitation’s specified region will be at no additional cost to the Government.”

The food supplied by the future contract will go towards feeding the 15,000 troops that have gathered in the Caribbean since August, the largest deployment in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. The world’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and its nearly 4,600 sailors recently joined the contingent.

“This request to supply food for a year may be a key indication that the Department of War is indeed planning regional operations for the long term,” Luis Rosario Vélez, professor of international policy and diplomacy at Sagrado Corazón University, said.

Troops in Puerto Rico will have a buffet’s worth of choices to pick from over the next year, including frozen meats, fresh fruit, bakery products, juices, and other items. The estimated contract value is $32 million, with a maximum value of $40 million. There will be a one or two-month ramp-up period, followed by “at least, a 10-month performance period,” the record says.

The presolicitation is currently active with a response date of January 9, 2026, and an inactive date of March 9, 2026.

11/26/2025

New from Carlos Berríos Polanco for The Latino Newsletter

ICE Arrests Aided by Puerto Rico Vehicle Registration Data

Court documents show agents have access to more Puerto Rico data than previously known publicly

SAN JUAN — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has access to a database containing Puerto Rican vehicle registration data, including license plates and owner information, according to federal court records reviewed by The Latino Newsletter.

Queries to this database have preceded a federal immigration agency arrest of an immigrant at least seven times, per the records.

Vehicle registration data is particularly important to federal immigration authorities because it allows them to monitor vehicles around them and the people who own or drive them. Immigration officers can easily identify who is likely to be in a vehicle by searching the license plate or tracking a vehicle through automated license plate readers.

When combined with access to records that identify a person’s nationality, this data can be a powerful tool for immigration authorities as they continue their deportation campaign.

This is what happened to a Dominican migrant who was detained in the Puerto Nuevo neighborhood of San Juan.

According to court documents, ICE agents standing on a sidewalk observed a pickup truck with two men inside and conducted “record checks from the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation,” which revealed the owner. A search using the owner’s name showed they “identified themselves as a national and citizen” of the Dominican Republic. The agents followed the truck and arrested the owner of the vehicle, who was riding in the passenger seat, after the man tried to flee.

Read more here: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/ice-arrests-aided-by-puerto-rico-vehicle-registration-data

11/25/2025

Here is sharing more about his Netflix documentary story for

Read more at TheLatinoNewsletter.org

11/25/2025

New from Francisco Avilés Pino for The Latino Newsletter

Selena, Seen Clearly
The new Netflix documentary turns to the archive to reveal the person behind decades of mythmaking

LOS ANGELES — In Greek mythology, Selene is the moon goddess, the one who lights the night sky not by force but by reflection. According to the Quintanilla family, a nurse suggested the name to Marcella and Abraham on the day their daughter was born. It’s a small detail revealed midway through Isabel Castro’s Selena y Los Dinos, yet it lands with quiet inevitability. What else could she have been named? What else could she have become?

“My goal was to separate Selena from the symbolism and get to know her as a person,” Castro tells me over Zoom before the film’s Netflix November 17 debut. “The shift happened as I spent time in Corpus. The family talks about her as someone they lost, not an icon, not a legend, but a sister, daughter, wife.”

This is not the Selena of the 1997 biopic, whose story follows the clean arc of a hero. Castro is not interested in reenactment. She’s interested in proximity. “Our film is the scrapbook version,” she told IDA. Scrapbooks are lived-in, messy, curated, and unvarnished. They reveal what a family decides is worth remembering.

What Selena y Los Dinos offers is not the myth but the memory.
When I asked Castro what it means to be a Latina making nonfiction work at this scale, she answered with a mix of clarity and frustration. “Sometimes my work gets siloed into being exclusively for a Latino audience. I spend a lot of time fighting the assumption that these stories aren’t universal.”

This, too, is part of the film’s ethos: Latina stories are not confined to the Latina community. They speak to everyone willing to listen.

Here is full story: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/selena-seen-clearly

11/24/2025

Just in from Pew Research Center

Majorities of Latinos Disapprove of Trump and His Policies on Immigration, Economy

About four-in-five say Trump’s policies harm Hispanics, a higher share than during his first term

Latinos have grown pessimistic in the year since the 2024 presidential election. Most say their situation in the United States has worsened. And as Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, Latinos are increasingly critical of his job performance and his administration’s immigration and economic policies – two key issues for Latino voters in last year’s election.

READ HERE:

78% of Hispanics say Trump’s policies harm their group, but views of the president and policies differ widely by how they voted in 2024.

11/24/2025

In this episode, Michelle and Dolores Huerta talk about her ongoing fight for workers’ rights, the power of organizing, and the challenges facing the Latino community today.

Listen to the latest episode of the Latino Newsletter Podcast via the link in the comment section below 📻

11/24/2025

Thank you to for inviting to a recent panel.

11/24/2025

We will have some BIG Boston news to share next week that will increase our newsroom capacity in Massachusetts! Stay tuned!

11/22/2025

A new episode of The Latino Newsletter podcast with host Michelle Zacarias is now playing wherever you get your podcasts.

Dolores Huerta and People Power

Now at https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/people-power-with-dolores-huerta

11/21/2025

We just earned our second recognition heart in the beehiiv recommendations network ❤️❤️

11/21/2025

New opinion by Susanne Ramirez de Arellano for The Latino Newsletter

Did Puerto Rican Women Improve the Workplace? (Yes)

SAN JUAN — As I watched an episode of The New York Times’ aptly named op-ed podcast Interesting Times, titled “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace? (And can conservative feminism fix it?),” all I could think of was what Puerto Rican feminist and labor leader, Luisa Capetillo, would do if she were alive today.

I bet she would have rolled up her trouser legs and taken to the streets to fight.

Capetillo, the first Puerto Rican woman to wear trousers in public (she got arrested for it in 1915), would have thundered against the white entitlement of conservative columnist Ross Douthat and authors Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, two critics of feminism. She would have found their argument that liberal feminism, which seeks gender equality, is destroying the very “pillars of civilization,” particularly offensive.

A labor leader who read the works of Émile Zola and Victor Hugo aloud to workers on the to***co shop floor while also discussing feminism, Capetillo would have choked at the suggestion that the right should “roll back the entire feminist era” and replace it with “conservative feminism.” Or is it “pick-me girl” feminism? Women in the workplace who get their validation from men and put other women down to obtain it.

I clench my jaw just thinking of it, but it’s too common in the workplace.

READ HERE: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/did-puerto-rican-women-improve-the-workplace-yes