One of the most interesting sites I’ve added to Trove’s source catalog in recent weeks is Zócalo Public Square, a “living magazine” that combines written work with a traveling series of lectures, screenings, and conferences. The site, a project of the Center for Social Cohesion, states its goal as “connecting people to ideas and to each other” — a sentiment that gets right to the heart of the WaPo Labs team’s work.
The stories featured on Zócalo (the Mexican word for plaza) cover a wide-ranging group of topics, including healthcare, religion, citizenship, and politics. While the coverage is diverse, a few Latino-focused items grabbed my attention:
One recent piece takes a look at the only woman candidate in Mexico’s presidential race, Josefina Vázquez Mota, who approached the topic of gender in Mexican politics by saying, “I’m here not just because I’m a woman. I have a different point of view on my country.”
Zócalo in Mexico City
In a quirky yet touching take on day laborers, writer Dulce Vasquez describes how she learned to love the men she previously dreaded seeing on her morning trip to Starbucks. After moving beyond the catcalls and whistling, she realized that, like them, she was “fighting to make a living, trying to be successful, trying to make my family, which is thousands of miles away, proud.” She added, “Take away the Ann Taylor suit and I have more in common with them than with most of my friends or colleagues.”
My favorite discovery is one of the magazine’s older articles. In an essay from 2010 describing his double life as an undocumented student, Erick Huerta recalls how, at the age of 7, he fell asleep in Michoacán, Mexico, and awoke in Los Angeles. Thus began a stressful adolescence battling the weighty expectations thrust upon children of immigrants and the overwhelmingly negative stereotypes faced by “illegal aliens.” Reading the piece, which looks toward the possible passage of the DREAM Act, with the knowledge that the bill stalled in the U.S. Senate just a few days after the essay’s publication, makes the story particularly touching.
Zócalo is just one of the thousands of sources powering Trove channels. Dig in to discover your own favorites.