The Mexican American experience in Minnesota is a profoundly important aspect to the state’s economy, culture, and history. This collection presents an audio glimpse.
May 3, 1999 - On this segment of Mainstreet Radio’s Rural Diversity series, commentator George Rabasa wants to talk about the immigrant "home."
May 4, 1999 - MPR’s Jim Bickal talks with musician and anthropologist Maya Lopez-Santamaria about “Musica de la Raza: Mexican and Chicano Music in Minnesota” CD. Lopez-Santamaria collected the music and wrote the book which accompanies it.
June 2, 1999 - MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews writer Elva Trevino Hart, who recollects on the six years of her childhood in Minnesota watching her brothers, sisters, and parents work long days in the fields near Moorhead. In her new book "Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child", Trevino Hart details her family's annual journey north from a small town in Texas.
November 16, 2001 - “The Color of Justice: The News Disparities” is part five of an MPR special series which investigates the racial disparity in Minnesota’s criminal justice system. Discussions of race and the criminal justice system tend to focus on the disproportionate rates at which African Americans are arrested and jailed. However, the growth of Latinos, Hmong, and Somali in Minnesota has broadened the scope of the disparities issue.
November 26, 2001 - MPR’s Jeff Horwich presents a Mainstreet Radio series looking at the growing role of Spanish in the Minnesota work place. The series begins in Cold Spring, along conveyor lines of butchered chickens.
November 27, 2001 - MPR’s Jeff Horwich presents a Mainstreet Radio series looking at the growing role of Spanish in the Minnesota work place. The series continues with report on one large Minnesota company finding biligual workers are good for the bottom line.
November 28, 2001 - MPR’s Jeff Horwich presents a Mainstreet Radio series looking at the growing role of Spanish in the Minnesota work place. Horwich spent an evening with one rural Minnesota police officer helping his department relate to the town's changing population.
March 6, 2003 - MPR’s Jeff Horwich reports on an old business with a new owner. The Renville Locker butchered meat under the same family ownership for 38 years in southwestern Minnesota. Over that time the population of the region has changed, and more change is on the way. There may be no better symbol of the shift than the new face behind the meat market counter.
March 31, 2003 - MPR’s Tim Pugmire reports that Phalen Lake Elementary, a St. Paul school, is launching new enrichment program that focuses on Hmong language and culture. The school will also offer students the option of a Spanish program.
May 2, 2003 - MPR’s Dan Olson profiles the music known as Mariachi, and one of Minnesota's best-known Mariachi bands, Mariachi Flor y Canto, as they prepare to perform in the state's biggest Cinco de Mayo celebration on St. Paul's West Side.