NuevaYorkinos Celebrates Five Years of Ancestral Legacies
The platform pays homage to OG Latinos and Caribeños in New York City.
Photo by Sono
Growing up, we often find preserving familial and ancestral stories, memorabilia, and connections more challenging. NuevaYorkinos is changing that for Latino and Caribeño New Yorkers. Founder and curator Djali Brown-Cepeda and creative director Ricardo Castañeda created the platform as a digital archive and multimedia project. Their unwavering love for the melting pot that is New York City has inspired them to help native New York Latinos and Caribeños document, preserve, and celebrate their cultures and heritages.
New York City Latinos and Caribeños can submit family photos, videos, and stories to NuevaYorkinos, allowing audiences to experience collective and even similar stories—an imperative aspect as many Latino and Caribeño communities are gentrifying. As NuevaYorkinos celebrates its five-year-anniversary, they partnered with Buchanan’s Whisky to present the We Are the Spirit of the 200% campaign, honoring those who are 100% Hispanic and 100% American. We spoke with the cultural archivists Brown-Cepeda and Castañeda after their anniversary celebration dinner at Republica to discuss how NuevaYorkinos represents Latino and Caribeño cultures, what they’ve achieved in five years, and their mission for the next five years.
How does NuevaYorkinos represent NYC's rich Latino and Caribbean cultures?
NuevaYorkinos represents New York City’s Caribbean and Latino culture predominantly through collecting family photographs, videos, and their accompanying stories, written by those who choose to submit their memories to our archive. With over 2,000 photographs and videos in our collection, we’ve been able to hold space for stories across the majority of New York City’s Caribbean and Latin American diasporas throughout the five boroughs. While working mainly through Instagram to showcase these stories, we also do installation art, hold exhibitions (in person and online), and, when we can, engage in community events, from talks and panel discussions to giveaways, like back-to-school drives.
What are some of your favorite/most significant achievements at NuevaYorkinos?
Every time we receive yet another photograph and story, it feels like an immense achievement. That our community, five years later, still chooses to keep this project alive is a testament to the importance of our cultures and remaining committed to telling our stories. Aside from the daily workings of the project, to date, some of the most significant moments have been our exhibitions, like all the iterations of ‘Aquí Me Quedo’ with Mellány Sánchez, our ‘Nuevayorkinos: Essential & Excluded’ show at MoMA PS1, and our citywide Hispanic Heritage Month takeover of the 1,000+ LinkNYC kiosks. Anytime we’re able to put forth our work outside of social media, it feels incredibly impactful.
What is the 200% campaign, and what does it mean to you as a Latino creative? How did that saying come to be?
The ‘We Are the Spirit of the 200%’ Campaign is an effort led by Buchanan’s Whisky celebrating the multitude of identities we are hyphenated peoples of this land hold. It celebrates those who are proud to be Honduran and from LA, proud to be Cuban and from Miami, proud to be Mexican and from Texas. As New Yorkers, we’re proud to be from our city, from our boroughs, and proud to be Caribbean and Latin American. Being from this microcosm of the world, New York fosters a sense of belonging to all parts of our identity. You don’t have to choose here, and that’s what makes all of us special. We’ve always lived our lives, respectively, and together, with a sense of pride for all of it.
How is Buchanan’s helping NuevaYorkinos celebrate different cultural identities?
By investing in Hispanic, Latino, and Caribbean creatives across the country who serve their community through our respective mediums, Buchanan’s has shown a commitment to the further support of all of our works. It’s rare that Latino creatives and our voices are given such an opportunity to take center stage in a nation that, for generations, sees you as the perpetual foreigner (despite the majority of these 50 states once being Mexico in recent history and despite the arbitrariness of borders on Native land).
Photo by Sono
What are you most excited about regarding Buchanan’s partnership?
It’s exciting to continue having the support to get our message across to more and more people that Latino and Caribbean New York is here to stay. No matter how sanitized the architecture becomes, how expensive our once-affordable neighborhoods are, and how unrecognizable certain corners may be, the truth remains: that our culture has existed in these five boroughs for generations, and we’re still here. No matter what, you cannot erase our identity from these streets, from this city.
What can people expect from you and the future of NuevaYorkinos to continue the progression of NYC Latino and Caribbean cultures? (collaborations, events, campaigns, etc.)
People can expect consistency, in that we’ll forever remain committed to documenting stories and showing up for community in all the ways that are possible.
What are some of your goals in the near future?
To continue preserving our cultures and histories, in as many forms as possible.
