🙋🏽👨🏻👱🏾👩🏾👱🏻♀️The Latinx Collective - Issue 41: the "four times better" edition
THIS WEEK'S SIX:
Puerto Rican chef Roberto Pérez is the founder of Urban Pilón, a culinary business that offers catering, private dinners, and cooking classes. The main goals of his classes are to teach people how to make Puerto Rican food with fresher, more natural ingredients while also expanding their ideas about what Puerto Rican food can be. If you're in Chicago, check them out here.
Pérez sees the classes as a tool for upending predominating stereotypes of Puerto Rican food. He says his classes actively work to “break that stigma about our food being simple or being unhealthy or being the same 10 f**king dishes over and over again. The educational part is so important. Pérez believes the lack of cooking classes that teach people how to make Puerto Rican food without relying on the same old recipes that call for processed, packaged ingredients as a serious void. A void he is trying to fill.
If there’s a common ingredient in Leguizamo’s achievements, it’s his drive and a refusal to take “no” for an answer. And this, as it turns out, forms the thematic core of the Pepsi commercial that aired last Thursday night during the Billboard Latin Music Awards. Go watch the ad here.
“You know, I’m an overachiever,” Leguizamo told Adweek on a call Thursday afternoon. If you’re a Latino, he added, “you have to be four times better than the next guy to make it—it’s just a fact of life.” The 60-second Pepsi spot shows Leguizamo, seriously late for a curtain call, dashing across Mexico City to get to the theater. He bolts from his hotel bed, dashes down an escalator and even commandeers a pedicab to reach the stage door just in time.
Appreciate you checking out this week’s issue. Forward this to friends or family so they can join you in celebrating the every day contributions the Latinx community is making. You can also:
View the archive here
Don’t forget we built this directory of Latinx business owners. Email your info if you’d like to be added. If you’re looking to hire or purchase products or services of any kind, browse the directory and buy directly from the businesses.
Here’s a tweet you can post about us.
If you share any of the articles from the newsletter on social media, tag us! We’re on Twitter as @latinxcollectiv & Facebook as @thelatinxcollective.