New Podcast Celebrates Loras’ Latinx Community
Two Loras students are connecting with fellow Latinx students and faculty through a new podcast, Sabor Latino, to bring Latinx flavor to the College.
Laura Brinez-Camacho (’21) and Andrew Martinez (’23) are the hosts of Loras College’s latest podcast that focuses on the growing Latinx community on campus. Through a combination of Spanish and English, they hope to bring everyone together by celebrating their perspectives and those of their fellow students of Latinx descent.
“This podcast is a recognition to all our Latinx community at Loras, students, faculty, staff,” Brinez-Camacho said. “It is a space for us to talk about how we got to Loras, what we’ve accomplished so far since, what have been our biggest memories, and maybe what have been those ups and downs along the path that have made us the persons we are today.”
Martinez sees the podcast as a chance to connect more Duhawks by sharing different student experiences.
“We have a very nice Latinx community on campus. This podcast allows Latinx students to not only introduce themselves but introduce their culture to the Loras Community,” he said.
The format of Sabor Latino will see the co-hosts welcome different students into the studio to share their paths to Loras and talk about their experiences since they have been on campus. Originally from Bogota, Columbia, Brinez-Camacho knows that her background gives her a unique set of experiences. That is an avenue to inform others about different cultures while finding common ground through common bonds.
“We want more people from Loras to be engaged with our culture, with our background and who we are,” she said. “We want them to see beyond a face, a country, and understand that we all come from different places and have had different histories, but in the end, we are here right now, living the present and sharing experiences with people we never thought we would be. We want to reach out to people, let them know that we are here and that every individual matters, every story matters and that we all have things to share.”
While the original idea of the show was to be recorded entirely in Spanish, the two hosts felt it would be more effective if they used a combination of Spanish and English. With the goal to appeal to the entire campus community, the two-language approach seemed to meet that end.
“We wanted this to be an opportunity for all of the Loras Community to get to know a little about some of our Latinx Duhawks,” Martinez explained. “We not only want the Loras Community to feel comfortable listening but whoever we are interviewing to feel comfortable as well. Not only are they forced to speak Spanish throughout the entire podcast, but they can freely switch back and forth from English to Spanish, something we like to call ‘Spanglish.’”
Added Brinez-Camacho, “I think we also agreed that Andrew unrolled himself better in English than me and I could unroll myself better in Spanish since most of my life I lived in Colombia. So why not? We thought it was a fun way for people to have the best of both worlds and learn a little bit of Spanish at the same time.”
Both agree that the most challenging part of getting the podcast off the ground was finding the correct name.
“One of the things we did want to start with was ‘Con mucho Amor,’ which means ‘with lots of love,’” Martinez recalled. “We tried adding Latinx Flavor and con mucho amor together, but it wasn’t working, so Laura had the idea of switching Latinx Flavor to Spanish. We instantly knew it flowed way better than anything else.”
Even though the podcast is in the early stages, Martinez is excited to celebrate the different cultures that make up the Latinx community and hopes the College community can find new ways to connect with them.
“I hope that this podcast educates the Loras Community that being Latinx is not just being Mexican, but it is so many other cultures that share distinct differences from one another,” he said.
You can listen to the initial episode of Sabor Latino below. Be sure to check back to the podcast page on the Loras Daily or on platforms like iTunes and Spotify, where other podcasts are available to catch new episodes as they are released.
