Entries by Monica Haim

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CNN Hero Catalina Escobar Restrepo: Helping Cartagena’s Teen Moms

Actress Meryl Streep once said that “motherhood has a very humanizing effect. It gets reduced to the essentials.” And Catalina Escobar Restrepo—the award-winning businesswoman and entrepreneur with the soul of a social activist—literally brought this concept to life in 2001 when she conceived the Juan Felipe Gómez Foundation, an organization with the sole mission to […]

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Ondatrópica Revives Colombian Tropical Music

The Buena Vista Social Club documentary was released in 1997 along with the corresponding album featuring, among other re-emerging icons, the great Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez and Omara Portuondo. A beat-laden fire was lit under the collective rump of the world. The high art of Cuba—its irresistible music—was reborn for the masses everywhere, igniting a […]

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Latin Power 2.0: The Latino List Volume Two

Growing up as a first-generation Colombiana in the United States during the 1980s, the references in popular culture that depicted what it meant to be Latino in this country were limited. It was mostly a two-dimensional Que Pasa U.S.A representation for many of us who were trying to really understand the quirks and nuances of […]

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5 Hip Superfoods That are Longtime Latin Staples

Today the word superfood is a household term, with health-foodies eternally scavenging the world of nutritional wellness to discover the next unknown source of innumerable antioxidants; the next It consumable life force, the newest, most avant-garde gastronomical tool that will help them live even longer. But the irony is that when it comes to many […]

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Pheromone Parties: Love at First Sniff

If you think online dating is not intimate enough; if you miss the good old days of straight up tangy humanity, and if you long for an earthy, nitty-gritty alternative to mate-finding in today’s over-digitized world—behold (or rather take a whiff): Pheromone Parties. Think of them as speed-dating—except they’re really more like nose-dating. The concept […]

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Classic Lipsticks of the Last 100 Years

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Part of a series devoted to Mamiverse attending Festival People en Español Presented by Target in San Antonio on September 1-2. The inaugural festival promises to celebrate Latino contribution to art, music, lifestyle and culture. Join our Twitter parties for a chance to win fabulous prizes! RSVP here.] It’s no mystery that for many women […]

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New Findings Trace Obama Ancestry to First African Slave

United States President, Barack Obama is no stranger to the many ongoing debates surrounding his roots, a subject that has now taken yet another fascinating turn. As reported by The New York Times, a team of genealogists at Ancestry.com announced new research suggesting the Obama ancestry—that of his white mother, Stanley Ann Dunham (and not […]