Research shows that wine consumption among Latinos has dramatically increased in the last few years, and wine makers are taking notice.
Part of what's pushing the increase in consumption is sheer demographics, with Hispanics accounting for more than half of the U.S. population increase over the last decade. Another factor is a cultural shift among the more established Latino generations.
Among the companies trying to reach more Hispanics is Beringer Vineyards in Napa Valley, Calif.
It's running Spanish-language television spots in Southern California. Beringer also has arranged sampling events and Spanish-language displays in Latino supermarkets and national chains with a large Hispanic customer base. READ MORE
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ShareDiscussDownloadThe buying power of Latinos in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last 10 years. That economic clout grew even during the most recent recession. But many businesses are still learning how to tap into the Latino market.
The intersection of cultures was recently on display at a business expo in Kennewick, Washington. Jessica Robinson followed one small business owner as he tried to make a good impression.
Let’s face it. There are certain things that most people are willing to do without in an economic downturn.
Dale Haven: “My name is Dale Haven. I do custom ice sculpturing.”
Ice sculptures might be one of those things.
Dale Haven: “Cinderella castles, swans, Honda emblems, I’ve done swans, hearts with fifteens in them. I’ve done fifteens with their names in them.”
Fifteens. That’s the category where Dale Haven has been seeing serious growth. The “fifteens” are for 15th birthdays, which is when Latina girls traditionally throw a quinceañera celebration.
It’s like a debutante ball the size of a wedding, complete with a big cake, fancy dresses, music, and yes, sometimes ice sculptures.
That’s what brings Haven and his glass-like carvimgs to this recent Latino Business Expo -- to meet potential customers.
Dale Haven: “So is this your baby?”
Glenda Moreno: “My oldest one yeah. They’re already ‘Look mom, look mom, look what you can do for my quinceañera!’”
Dale Haven: “¡Sí!”
Haven has learned a few phrases in Spanish for these occasions. Like this one, to describe his work.
Dale Haven: “Mucho bonita.” READ MORE
At the end of May 2007, Jorge Sanchez loaded his cousin's pickup truck and moved his young family from an apartment into a house in Fitchburg. The house was just three years old. Its light brown siding was accented by a bright red front door. A park sat invitingly down the street.
That was six years after Sanchez and his wife, Minerva Abrajan, natives of Puebla, Mexico, arrived in Madison. They're not citizens, but, as permanent residents who pay U.S. taxes, the UW-Madison janitors obtained a mortgage under a new loan program aimed at extending home ownership to people who previously couldn't qualify.
"We wanted a house because we had two kids already," Sanchez said. "We wanted something better for them."
The new program opened a door to home loans to non-citizens, helping usher in a sharp increase in homeownership among local Latinos in the second half of the last decade — shortly before a corresponding increase in foreclosure filings against the same group a few years later.
The loans, first offered through a Wisconsin Housing and Economic Authority (WHEDA) pilot program and later by an array of private lenders, allowed people with individual taxpayer identification numbers, or ITINs, to apply for home loans. But ITIN loans suffered from bad timing and, in some cases, left the intended beneficiaries more downtrodden financially than before they got the loans.
In 2004, when ITIN loans started being issued by a local lender, foreclosures were filed against eight Latinos in Dane County, based on a review of court documents identifying Latinos by what the federal Census Bureau defines as commonly occuring last names. In 2009, that number ballooned to 125 — Jorge Sanchez among them —an increase of 1,462 percent. Total foreclosure filings skyrocketed as well but at an increase of 302 percent. READ MORE
The findings help explain disproportionately high obesity rates in minority children. Family income is often a factor, but so are cultural customs and beliefs, the study authors said. They examined more than a dozen circumstances that can increase chances of obesity, and almost every one was more common in black and Hispanic children than in whites.
Factors included eating and sleeping habits in infancy and early childhood and mothers smoking during pregnancy. In a separate, equally troubling study, researchers found signs of inflammation in obese children as young as 3 years old. High levels were more common in blacks and Hispanics.
These inflammatory markers have been linked with obesity in adults and are thought to increase chances for developing heart disease. Their significance in early childhood is uncertain, but the study's lead author says she never thought they'd be found in children so young. READ FULL STORY
The 58-year-old Gomez has the potential to reshape the Archdiocese of Los Angeles over most of the next two decades, assuming he can successfully steer it past the shoals of a lingering sexual abuse crisis. In him, Pope Benedict XVI clearly saw a leader for a new kind of American church, one that is in sync with changing demographics but also adheres to Benedict's traditional notions about Catholic theology.
"This is an epic moment in the life of the church in the United States," Cardinal Roger Mahony said Tuesday as he introduced his successor during a news conference at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, itself a symbol of L.A.'s position as the new capital of U.S. Catholicism. Gomez, who stood near Mahony, nodding and smiling slightly as he was introduced, struck a humble tone in his own remarks to reporters.
"I know that God will give me the grace to serve this local church well, as Cardinal Mahony has done for so many fruitful years," he said. READ FULL STORY
The number of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, and the share of all current marriages that are either interracial or interethnic has reached an all-time high of 8.4 percent, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project.
Of the 275,500 new interracial or interethnic marriages in 2010, 43 percent are white/Latino couples, the most common type of intermarriage couple.
According to the report, intermarriage rates are highest among Latinos and Asians. In 2010, more than a quarter (26 percent) of Latino newlyweds, and 28 percent of Asian newlyweds, married someone of a different race or ethnicity, or “married out.” By contrast, about one-in-six (17 percent) newlywed black non-Latinos married non-blacks, and less than one-in-ten white non-Latinos (9 percent) married someone who is not white, the lowest among all groups.
Whites are by far the largest racial group in the United States, meaning that marriages between whites and people of color are the most common types of intermarriage. READ MORE
NPR has recently started a new series called "2 Languages, Many Voices: Latinos In The U.S." Pop culture will be one of many elements the series examines, as it does in a timeline out today, From Ricky Ricardo To Dora: Latinos On Television. While that's a more comprehensive look at everyone from Freddie Prinze to Sofia Vergara, in this short essay, Luis Clemens reflects on why hearing Spanish spoken on television made an impression on him as a kid in Miami. Stay tuned for more from this series.
I remember being wowed the first time I heard Spanish spoken on English-language television. It was a 1970s re-run of an I Love Lucy episode. I do not remember what was said. Just that Ricky Ricardo said it en español. And I remember how it made me feel — wondrous, proud, confused.
I was confused because it was disorienting to hear Spanish used on English-language television. As a Cuban-American kid growing up in Miami, I watched English and Spanish-language television but the two languages didn't overlap on-screen. There was the local newscast and then there was el noticiero local; each in a separate tongue and each with a different worldview. READ MORE
