New York Latin Culture Magazine®

World-class Indigenous, European & African Culture since 2012

Rafael Ithier ~ Vaya Con Dios

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico (the artists)
El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico (the artists). Rafael Ithier is in the center in the brown suit.

“E-le-le, le-le-le, A-la-la, la-la-la-a…” Rafael Ithier, founder of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, passed away at 99 years old in San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 6, 2025. With Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera, Ithier was one of the artists who mixed Puerto Rican bomba and plena with son Cubano to create what we today call la salsa. El Gran Combo is the most popular salsa band of all time. It launched the careers of so many great artists that it is known as “The University of the Salsa.” That is the legacy of Rafael Ithier who will live forever in the hearts of every Puerto Rican and salseros everywhere. El Verano en Nueva York will never be the same. Con Dios. 🇵🇷

Dios te bendiga (God Bless) la Virgin de Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico. She represents the fusion of Indigenous and European peoples and culture. That’s the story of the Americas. She is one of the saints who has become a unifying figure and part of her peoples’ identity.

"Navidad: A Mexican-American Christmas" Calpulli Mexican Dance Company (Julieta Cervantes)

“Navidad” by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company, the Mexican American Nutcracker, Has Become a New York Holiday Tradition 🇲🇽

African Diaspora International Film Festival NYC (Lvnel/Adobe)

African Diaspora International Film Festival NYC Screens the Many Faces of Mother Afrika Around the World 🇧🇪 🇧🇷 🇧🇫 🇨🇲 🇨🇦 🇹🇩 🇨🇱 🇨🇼 🇩🇴 🇪🇬 🇪🇹 🇫🇷 🇬🇭 🇬🇵 🇬🇾 🇭🇹 🇮🇳 🇯🇲 🇲🇱 🇲🇶 🇲🇦 🇳🇬 🇳🇿 🇵🇪 🇼🇸 🇿🇦 🇹🇳 🇺🇬 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇺🇾 🇿🇲 🇿🇼

The Virgin of Guadalupe (Jesus Eloy Ramos Lara/Dreamstime)

Virgin of Guadalupe is the Patron Saint of Mexico and Multiracial People

More Latin Culture this Week
Things to do in NYC (AboutLife/Adobe)

Things To Do in NYC

January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Dance

Music

Theatre

Repertorio Español is New York’s Busiest Spanish-Language Theater

En el tiempo de las mariposas, Dominican drama 🇩🇴
La Ternura, Spanish comedy 🇪🇸
La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao, Dominican American dramatic comedy 🇩🇴
El Quijote, Spanish tragic comedy 🇪🇸
La Gringa, Puerto Rican comedy 🇵🇷
Más Sabe El Saulo Por Viejo…, Colombian standup comedy (NEW) 🇨🇴

KIPS BAY, Manhattan

Festivals

Art

Film

Sports

Estamos Bien

In Caribbean Spanish, when someone asks “how are you” (cómo estás), the answer is not “I am good” (estoy bien), it’s “we are good” (estamos bien).

Dominican NYC 🇩🇴

Repertorio Español is New York’s Busiest Spanish-Language Theater

En el tiempo de las mariposas, Dominican drama 🇩🇴
La Ternura, Spanish comedy 🇪🇸
La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao, Dominican American dramatic comedy 🇩🇴
El Quijote, Spanish tragic comedy 🇪🇸
La Gringa, Puerto Rican comedy 🇵🇷
Más Sabe El Saulo Por Viejo…, Colombian standup comedy (NEW) 🇨🇴

KIPS BAY, Manhattan

Puerto Rican NYC 🇵🇷

Mexican NYC 🇲🇽

Ecuadorian NYC 🇪🇨

Queens Hispanic Parade Desfile Hispano de Queens

37TH AVENUE, Jackson Heights, Queens 🇦🇷 🇧🇴 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇨🇷 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇪🇨 🇸🇻 🇬🇶 🇬🇹 🇭🇳 🇲🇽 🇳🇮 🇵🇦 🇵🇾 🇵🇪 🇵🇷 🇪🇸 🇺🇾 🇻🇪

Colombian NYC 🇨🇴

Repertorio Español is New York’s Busiest Spanish-Language Theater

En el tiempo de las mariposas, Dominican drama 🇩🇴
La Ternura, Spanish comedy 🇪🇸
La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao, Dominican American dramatic comedy 🇩🇴
El Quijote, Spanish tragic comedy 🇪🇸
La Gringa, Puerto Rican comedy 🇵🇷
Más Sabe El Saulo Por Viejo…, Colombian standup comedy (NEW) 🇨🇴

KIPS BAY, Manhattan

Honduran NYC 🇭🇳

Queens Hispanic Parade Desfile Hispano de Queens

37TH AVENUE, Jackson Heights, Queens 🇦🇷 🇧🇴 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇨🇷 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇪🇨 🇸🇻 🇬🇶 🇬🇹 🇭🇳 🇲🇽 🇳🇮 🇵🇦 🇵🇾 🇵🇪 🇵🇷 🇪🇸 🇺🇾 🇻🇪

Hispanic Heritage Month in New York City

A meditation on what it means to be “Hispanic” in America today.

🇦🇷🇧🇴🇨🇱🇨🇴🇨🇷🇨🇺🇩🇴🇪🇨🇸🇻🇬🇶🇬🇹🇭🇳🇲🇽🇳🇮🇵🇦🇵🇾🇵🇪🇵🇷🇪🇸🇺🇾🇻🇪

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Sponsor New YorK Latin Culture

Latin, Latino, Latim ~ Tout Moun se Moun

Keith Widyolar in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2023
Getting ready for a teteo in Capotillo 42, the cradle of dembow in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; after leaving Puerto Rico 🇺🇸 🇵🇷 🇩🇴

¿KLK? Dime a ver. Editor Iroko “Kíko” Keith aquí con todos ustedes. Vamos a gozar la vida Latina juntos. ¡Ay bendito! Tú lo sabe.

What’s up? Iroko “Kíko” Keith Widyolar, the founder of New York Latin Culture Magazine, here. Everywhere I go, except New York City, people tell me, “you’re not from here.”

Claro que si. I’m a native-born multigenerational American of the United States who chooses to live in Spanish. So my point of view is American with Caribbean and Latin American influences. ¡Aché!

My first home was in Boyle Heights, a Chicano neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. I was a pre-teen in an African American suburb of Washington DC, where both my parents are Howard University graduates. I was also raised in Bangkok, Thailand where I learned that most of the world is poor, but it’s not their fault. Also that all religions seek to explain the very same mystery.

I’m a 20-year New Yorker, where I learned that life doesn’t end at the rivers, it begins there. Yo soy Boricua (de corazón) pa’ que tú lo sepa. In the Caribbean, Cubans and Dominicans say I am “aplatanado,” a gringo who has adopted local customs. I don’t know, I’m just me.

Soy calle. What I learned from the road is that we are far more African and Indigenous, and Latin culture is a far bigger part of United States culture, than most of us have been taught.

The Magazine is my way of understanding and thanking the Brazilian, Argentine, French, Colombian, Puerto Rican, and Afro-Dominican friends and families in my life’s journey. I have a mixed up Creole accent, but my family doesn’t speak English.

So over nearly 20 years, my concept of Latin has grown from the traditional Caribbean and Latin American; into the great mix of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas plus our mother cultures in Africa and Europe, with Jewish, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and even German influences.

“Tout moun se moun” is Haitian Kreyòl for “All People Are People.” There is only one human race and Afrika is Mother. “If you are not African, you are not human.” Please quote me on that.

Appearance is a false flag. We are all mixed, and when you learn to love and respect all peoples, your world grows exponentially. Mine has. I don’t just write about Latin culture, I live it. ¡Mi Gente, Ustedes!

“Ven, ven, Iroko, ven ven…”

How We Got Here

Puerto Rican NEA Jazz Master Eddie Palmieri (vaya con Dios) defined Latin in the Americas and the Latin influence on United States culture in the simplest way:

The Spaniard brought the African
The African put everyone to dance
In the States, they took away the drum,
and we got the blues“

Eddie Palmieri at the 92nd Street Y in 2016 🇵🇷

The blues is the root of most American (and some Caribbean) popular music and dance, including: jazz, rhythm and blues, country, rock, reggae, soul, funk, disco, house, hip hop, reggaeton, and trap. Even American country music originates in Mother Afrika.

The Latin family has created art, music, dance, theatre, and food that is uniquely American, and loved around the world. It’s because Latin culture brings people together and turns the blues into joy. ¡Aguanilé!

The Kalûnga Line (Andreykuzmin)

Oye, you are crossing the Kalûnga

The Kalûnga is the border of the realms of the living and the dead in Central Africa’s traditional Kongo culture. It is the horizon in the Yowa or Dikenga Cross, the Kongolese cosmological diagram which represents the spiritual journey through the stages of life and death. Psychology texts use similar diagrams to describe psychological development. La Altagracia taught me this. ¡Strange, but true!

In life, the Kalûnga is the Atlantic Ocean. Kongolese knew that anyone taken away across the ocean, never came back. It was believed to be a terrifying journey to the land of the dead. For too many it was, but it turns out there was life on the other side. More or less, that is the mix of Indigenous, European, African, and Asian peoples in the Americas, that we call Latin.

La Llamada de los Tambores
(The Call of The Drum)

A TV reenactment of traditional Bomba Puertorriqueña in Loíza Aldea, the Puerto Rican town with the strongest African Diasporic culture. 🇵🇷

Bienvenido a el areíto en el batéy del pueblo Latino. Somos uno en el tambor.
Escucha la llamada. La rumba ya se forma en el solar.
Yo prendo una vela.

(Welcome to the community gathering in the sacred circle of the Latin people.
We are one in the drum. Listen to the call. The party is starting in the patio. I lit a candle.)

Bom, bom, bom
ba-ta-ba-ta, ba, ta-ba, ta-ba
Bom-ba, ta-ba, Bom-ba, ta-ba
Bom-ba, ta-ba, Bom-ba, ta-ba

This call of the drum is Bomba Puertorriqueña Sicá.

“E-le-le, le-le-le, A-la-la, le-le-le“
Loíza Aldea, Loíza, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷

La salsa begins with the “Diana,” the call to prayer that asks for spiritual connection before we dance;
because by tradition, dance is how we pray.

“E-le, le-le, le-le-le-le“
La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba 🇨🇺

Rumba is what the first Africans in Cuba did, as soon as their hands were free.

“Yo Soy Ogun Balenyo”
Los Congos, Villa Mella, Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana 🇩🇴

Palo, even more than merengue, is the root music of La República Dominicana.

“Diki riki riki riki, Diki riki riki riki, Diki riki riki riki, Di, Diki ri”
Capotillo 42, Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana 🇩🇴

Dembow is the sound of the streets in La República Dominicana.

“Ay, ay, Ay-ay“
San Juan de Ulúa, Veracruz, México 🇲🇽

“Canta y no llores…”

“Aí aí aí“
San Basilio de Palenque, Bolívar, Colombia 🇨🇴

“Ajai, al son de los tambores…”

“Bim Bom, Bim Bim, Bom Bom“
Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 🇧🇷

“O meu coração pediu assim, só…”

“I like to be in América“
San Juan Hill, New York City 🇺🇸 🇵🇷 🇮🇱

“Okay, buy me in América,
Everything free in América
For a small fee in América…”

¡ A-G-U-A-N-I-L-É !
El Barrio, Loisaida, Bushwick, y El Bronx 🇵🇷

“Aguanilé” is a healing prayer to Ogun.

Who answers the call? The community responds!

Latin is family and community.

¿Oye Cómo Va?

playingforchange.com Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman, Tito Puente, Jr, Al Harban Brothers, André Siqueira, Andreus Valdés Torres, Chouloute Minouche, Cory Henry, Estevinson Padilla Valdés, José Valdés Terán, Karl Perazzo, and more.

We are Indigenous, European, African, Jewish, Arab, South Asian, East Asian, and everything in between.

“¿Oye cómo va? Mi ritmo, bueno pa’ bailar, mulata.”

Hey, how’s it going? My rhythm is good for dancing, Latina.

“Andando, andando, andando…”

(Walking, walking, walking…)

“Yo me tiro pa’l solar”

(I throw myself into the field)

Dios te bendiga

(God bless you)

¡Aché!

(Amen)

“E-le-le, le-le-le…”

(We start and end the dance with a call to Eleguá, God’s messenger, because dance is how we pray)