Maria Hinojosa

Like I said, you know, maybe I'll get you to be able to do season two of Suave. I don't know. I mean, since Kevin is now your best friend and he's the only one you want to hang out with and do podcasts with, you know, I'll just take a step back, bro.

I never get walked up the stage like that by anybody. Thank you, Suave. What's up? How you doing? What's up? Oh, my God. Well, I'm going to tell you my story with Suave.

Yeah, well, you know. No, no, I'm congratulating you, Suave. I'm very happy for you. But I don't know about this Kevin dude. If you were my best friend and all of a sudden he wants to do all podcasts with you, I'm a little bit like, what up? But whatever.

I know that you're uncomfortable. I understand that. But, you know, part of what we're doing is we're documenting it all. Yeah. Suave is bien cabezadura. Do you know that saying? You know that saying. He's hard-headed. Hard-headed. Bien stubborn. And so are you a little bit. I mean, I think I am too. That's what I was going to say, and so am I. We both are, you know, very emotional and...

When you say so, no, I have not. I mean, I don't talk to my friends like this. It's, it's not my favorite moment. Right. But also I did really feel that way. I did really feel like, wow, Suave. Okay. All these years. And then like, Some other person suddenly just becomes a family member just like that. Suave is somebody who I am connected to through all of these decades. Suave is also work.

He's part of my work. He's part of my job. He's part of my journalistic endeavor. As a journalist, I can tell you I am very competitive and also very protective and also very territorial.

Well, actually, if you have a relationship with a source and this source has an exclusive relationship with you, then as a journalist, I would say to the source, hey, we have what's called an exclusive. And now you're out talking to another journalist and So there's that.

Yeah, I know. And that's what's uncomfortable about the whole thing. So, do it again? Again? maybe dial it back, maybe realize that that emotional reaction maybe needed to be tabled because Suave himself is going through a whole other series of things. It is Monday, October 23rd. Can't believe we're already in October. The year's almost over and I'm about to call Suave.

So let's see what he has to say. I'm calling the day before Thanksgiving because I just now have decided that every time he pops into my mind, I'm just going to call him. So let's hopefully, here we go.

You know, and I started to get pissed off because like whenever I'm with Suave, he's on the phone all the time. So he's picking up other people's calls. Why isn't he picking up my calls?

Suave, look, I really don't understand when I'm texting you like, hey, I need to talk to you. Like, this is important. It's about work. And you don't respond. Thank you. Oh, OK. All right. That's why you can't even say, hey, I hear you calling. I know you're worried. Don't worry. But not even that. You're going to tell me that for three weeks you're too busy to answer the text of mine?

What kind of an asshole would I have been if I didn't answer your calls from prison?

And then I hear about those arguments after, hearing each of you complain about the other to me.

Thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you so much for everything you've done for me, for your friendship.

In ningún momento was he ever apologetic or humble. He was just like, well, this had nothing to do with you, and I don't know why you're getting so upset. Bueno, terminó mal la conversación.

Mal. You guys haven't talked since then, or you have?

Okay, so we're down in Philly and we're doing trips now pretty regularly at this point, checking in on him, recording, that kind of thing. And honestly, you know, things have been going okay, but they're not great. And I was really feeling again like Suave was dodging my calls and

And when he did talk to me, it started to feel like it was almost like a chore, almost like, you know, oh, mom's calling and she's gonna scold me. And I didn't like how that felt. And so at dinner our first night, he makes a little joke. I mean, I don't really remember it anymore, but he said something like, oh, I can't tell Maria that because she's not, you know, mom's not gonna like it.

And I was like, it kept me up all night. And the next morning, I mean, as I am with Suave, I was just perfectly honest. How is it that I became the mother figure in your fucking life? Because that's not what I want to be. I don't know where you're getting at with that either. You said it yesterday, too. You were like, and then I don't want to call.

I don't want to pick up the phone because I know Maria is going to have something to say about it. And I don't want to hear about it from her. And I'm just like, so I became a mother. I think I got it wrong.

What I know is that when I'm with you and you have two phones and you are getting calls from all kinds of people because you know a lot of people now, it's not like it was six years ago when I was your main point of contact and that is not the way it is anymore. Y de nuevo, it's for me to process. There is a friendship now. Different than when we did Suave season one. Very different.

And I can be overbearing, by the way.

Friends are basically someone who you would be prepared to take a bullet for. A friend is somebody who you have deep communication with on multiple layers of your life. and where there is deep love and respect?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was important for me to hear from Suave that part of what he needs to do in his life is to prove to himself and everyone around him that he can do things on his own, that he's not depending on me. And I mean, we're human like everyone else. And so I think there was a part of me that was like expecting him to depend on me.

And it was okay for me to have that role in his life. But that's changed now, right? Years have passed. And even if that was hard for me to kind of accept and see it, you know, when I step back, it's good change. Like it's a really good kind of change for Suave.

Yes, it's true, Suave, you and I, over these past four years, there has been, you know, and we have been working through ego and jealousy and other people getting involved. But at the same time, I'm reading that as we're working through a friendship.

I think I'm your family.

From PRX.

So, on Suave's first day out of prison, seven years ago, he showed me his bucket list.

And one of the things that was on it was getting married. Be a good man.

Not his studio apartment. His other home. The one that he shares with a special someone.

And so we get to the home and honestly, it's adorable. It's a two-story Philadelphia row house. And it just feels like a really nicely kept home with like pretty pillows, scented candles. You know, it was like, wow, this is like a home, like a real home for Suave. I end up actually going to the second floor to use the washroom.

And that's where I see Suave's bedroom, you know, like the king size bed with the like little hearts, you know, on each side of the bed where he and his compañera share a room. And I really was, I was like, oh my God, I've never seen like this part of Suave, real like kind of home life.

How would they put this there? But the issue of romance, sex, intimacy, like that was very different when Suave was in prison.

Being accountable to somebody else like that, it was uncomfortable.

Season two of Suave was made possible by the Mellon Foundation. Mellon makes grants to support visionaries and communities that unlock the power of the arts and humanities to help connect us all. More at Mellon.org.

Yeah. So this whole scene was very scary. Let me set it up for you. It was a few years back. I'm getting home from the Dominican Republic and I get this text from Suave and it says, I'm in the hospital. And then he goes like radio silent. So, you know, I'm calling Julieta, I'm calling his brother, I'm calling any contact that I have close to Suave, just like, where is he?

And of course, my biggest fear is that nobody knows where he is. Finally, my phone rings and I take it immediately and it's Suave, but he doesn't sound like himself.

Hello? Oh my God, Suave, por favor, just tell me, first of all, are you going to be okay?

Oh, my God, Suave. And now is when you're calling me? A day and a half? Why didn't anybody call me?

I mean, you can hear it in the tape. I was weeping. I was terrified.

But Suavez says that wasn't the worst part.

So what happens at that moment is that I'm on the phone, freaking out, trying to get details, and then the doctor comes in. I absolutely was like, I have to take care of this person. The mother in me was just like, I have to take care of this person. I know how to manage hospitals. I know how to talk to doctors. My dad was a doctor. I was like, honestly, I'm going to fucking save the day here.

I'm going to help figure out what the fuck is happening so we can get Suave out of there.

Because they love you.

So, so I have to say, I find this whole thing really interesting, Julieta, because until I heard this tape, you know, like I had no idea that Suave was pissed off at me about the hospital stuff, because like, I'm just trying to help the guy, right? I mean, that's what a friend does. And, you know, when I jump in, I jump in. And for some people, that can be a lot.

We're not physically close and we're not like that emotionally close either.

What makes you think you can try me and I'm not going to react? Because if I get triggered, somebody's going to get hurt. Not fake hurts, real hurts. You know, I just want out of your fucking body, Dylan.

He's got a box of White Castle, 20 White Castle burgers that he's taken to his love. And he really looks like I'm a tourist. And we're walking into 125th Street Station right now.

Shit. That might be it. Shit. This is it? Yeah. Hold that train, babe. Are you sure? Yeah. Bye, babe! Bye! Bye! Bye! Oh my god. Literally, the doors were closing on his back and off he goes on the A train. Off he goes.

What happened? Yeah.

So these motherfuckers, they made a big thing out of it, and they tried to detain me. They pulled off a really big thing.

Oh my God, Suave.

Holy shit, Suave.

That's what I'm saying, Suave.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Ah! Ah! That shit, that fucking broke me. And I can't, I just, I can't, I don't want to, I don't want to be in that place again.

I just had to say, si algo le pasa suave, you'll be there for him. You're going to be there for him.

But look at me when you say that.

Okay, so... On Sunday morning, like 4.30 in the morning, I got a text from him. And he basically was like, I've decided that I'm no longer going to follow through with my part of the contract.

It feels like self-sabotage, right? He's kind of blowing everything up right now.

So, Suave, you are certain then that you will be taking action to come public on this in the next 24 hours?

So what do you think it's going to look like when you go public?

So when I was a little girl, I used to watch the evening news every single night with my family.

We would all be getting ready to have dinner. It was six of us on the south side of Chicago. Mom was always making a meal for us. And I loved watching the news, the television news.

So I did stick with this notion of becoming a journalist. And I got to some pretty incredible networks. I worked with NPR. I worked with CBS. I worked with CNN, WNYC, WNBC. And when I was in those newsrooms, I got a chance to see what they operated like. But I also got a chance to think about what kind of newsroom that I would have if I had my own newsroom.

And I wanted to have a newsroom where it was like the journalism was 100% researched, fact-checked. But I wanted to create storytelling and journalism that touched people's hearts, right? I wanted to make people feel something. Now, when I reported at many of these networks, I was very clear about the fact that part of my responsibility was to bring these stories into the newsroom.

And what was interesting was that even though I was bringing this kind of new perspective, remember I was the first Latina in these newsrooms, oftentimes what it felt like was fellow journalists saying, oh, you're coming into our newsroom and you have a bias. Because you care about these stories. And I was like, no, I'm just telling you these stories because these are communities that I know.

And you're seeing this as a bias. OK, I pushed ahead and the show Latino USA, which was founded by the founding executive producer, Maria Martin. She tapped me to become the founding anchor of Latino USA. Wow. What a moment.

The message to the country is, free yourself by freeing us.

Well, you fast forward from there to the year 2010. And that's the year when I decided to create Futuro Media. I wanted to... Get Futuro Media to be a place where a show like Latino USA could be housed and grow. Make this into a newsroom for other journalists of conscience like me.

I wanted to create a newsroom with journalism that had a heart, that wasn't afraid to show emotion or actually care for the people that we were covering. It was a journalism with radical transparency, a journalism of conscience, a journalism that was transparent about who we are, where we come from.

So much was happening.

And that really stood in the face of this kind of faux objectivity of a lot of traditional newsrooms. It was a journalism where we understood our role in the question of power in the United States of America. So here we are, 15 years later. Oh, my God. The vision of Futuro has absolutely grown.

You know, Latino USA has been on the air for more than 30 years, and it has launched the careers of so many amazing journalists and storytellers. And then... Futuro Media, we created Futuro Studios, right, to grow. We wanted to create a space for beautiful podcast series and audio documentaries, unlike anything else out there. So we created anything for Selena.

And we watched all the time. But the thing is, is that I never saw anyone who looked like me or my family. I never saw people like us in all of the television news that I was consuming. And of course, that made me think, like, how many other people are out there whose stories aren't being told, right? That kind of planted a seed in my head.

We created Loud, the history of reggaeton. Oh my God, La Brega.

We love you, Puerto Rico. And of course, the podcast Suave, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022.

So, what's the point, Maria? Well, today we are taking a really big step and we're launching a membership and subscription program. It's a huge step and we're calling it Futuro Plus. Futuro Plus. It's full of exclusive episodes, lots of events and other amazing stuff that we're going to talk about in a second. But first, here's the reason why we're doing it.

I have said often that running an independent journalism nonprofit is not for the faint of heart. This is not easy. And in a lot of ways, it's becoming more difficult now than ever. For one, after a mega podcast boom during the pandemic that we all lived through. I mean, right now, the podcast industry has been in recession, right? It's shrinking.

The big companies that poured money into the industry have dramatically been cutting back their podcast budgets. And that means less shows are getting greenlit. And the ones that are getting greenlit have much smaller budgets. And also, there's more competition than ever for the nonprofit dollars that are out there.

Now, we are incredibly grateful to have the support of some pretty powerful and wonderful foundations and really fabulous individuals. But We have to prepare for the future. You know, funding priorities can change. And so with all of the federal funding that's getting pulled from all across the country, there's more pressure now on those funders to fill those gaps. So we're feeling it.

And because of the rules of public media, actually, Futuro cannot run our own pledge drives on the radio, right? Only the public radio stations themselves can do that. I don't know if you knew this, but Futuro does not get one single dollar, not one penny from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or any other federal sources or public sources.

But it is something that we are proud of because it means that we are truly independent when it comes to reporting on the government. Now, on the other side of things, what we do at Futuro Media, it's not cheap, right? And with all due respect to people who do chatcasts, You know, we don't generally just put two people and sit them in front of a mic and just have them have at it, right?

Our weekly, deeply reported journalism and immersive podcast series cost money to make. And we have to pay our producers, our story editors, our sound designers, our audio engineers. Now, it is important for you to know that we use independent fact checkers for every series because we want to guarantee that you are getting factual, accurate information, right?

And of course, we also have all the normal business expenses required to operate. Legal, accounting, IT, rent. I like to say that we are lean and mean. Of course, the vast majority of our budget goes to creating the stories themselves. But there's no way around it. Making great journalism costs money.

So we are launching our subscription service because we want to be able to continue bringing you the kinds of podcasts that you aren't getting anywhere else. There is no other Futuro Media. And we think that actually being funded by our listeners is really healthy for an organization like ours. It means that we're accountable to our listeners, not to the government, not to corporations.

So fast forward from that to getting to New York, going to Barnard College, and becoming a part of the college radio station, creating my own show called Nueva Canción y Demás. Esta canción del pueblo... pretende hacer un recorrido a través de la historia de nuestro país. We would play Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes, all the protest music de la nueva canción from Latin America.

OK, so what will Futuro Plus look like? Oh, my God, it's going to be great. Basically, you're going to sign up on our website and you're going to get access to members only subscription feeds for all of our shows. I kind of think of it as like OnlyFans, but we keep our clothes on and everybody's skin is in the game. Get it? OK.

Now, on those feeds, first of all, you're going to get completely ad-free listening. Yes! And there will be extended interviews and special exclusive episodes filled with juicy, behind-the-scenes chisme and how we make this all happen. Also, we're going to send members-only newsletters with notes from the field, great recommendations. There's going to be special subscriber-only playlists.

and virtual events. And that's where you'll get to find me and other futuro journalists joining you in conversation. And all right, this is really cool because whenever we launch a new show, members are going to be able to listen to the whole season right away.

So while everybody else has to wait every week for a new episode to drop, you're going to be able to listen to it all in one sitting as some of us are known to do. And we are launching our subscription service with the Suave Podcast Season 2, which is available for members right now in its entirety.

Right now, at this moment in this life, I am not happy. I'm glad I'm home. But if you say describe happy, I should be able to describe happy. And I can't. I can't, I won't even know how to start to describe happy. Ay, Dios. Even with a pulitzer, even with, I can't describe it because I'm not. I'm just surviving like I was in prison.

Ooh, Suave Podcast Season 2 is a roller coaster. It's deeply reported journalism, and you get to be right there on the front lines of this story. It's really amazing. And we're going to be releasing more new podcasts later this year, and we're bringing back new seasons of shows that you love.

We have an ambitious and pretty exciting slate of new shows we're going to be releasing totally on our own. For all those shows, Futuro Plus members will get to hear them first. Okay, yeah, there are a lot of perks and we're working really hard on that. But, you know, there are other reasons to subscribe.

The real reason to support Futuro is because of what we stand for as journalism of conscience. Now, I know I'm going to call you out a little bit. I bet you have a subscription to Netflix or to Max or to Hulu. And yeah, they do offer hundreds of movies and TV shows to watch.

But how about if you think about taking just a little bit of that money that you give every month to those mega corporations and and instead support a small organization, a nonprofit that is fighting literally every day to bring you stories that you love, stories that like, oh my God, they touch your heart, they make you cry, they make you learn about the world and your community.

And you know that Futuro Media is a nonprofit that was founded and is run predominantly by women of color. And it centers the lives of Latinos, Latinas, immigrants, black and indigenous people, queer people, Muslim people, trans people. You know, we see ourselves as practicing excellence in journalism because our newsroom reflects our country. And you know what?

If you sign up for this membership program, you're going to be joining a community of people who care about news and storytelling forever. the same way that you do. We believe the most interesting work in podcasting and the most rigorous journalism is still happening in public media. We want to keep investing our time and energy into building the future of that work with you.

We want Futuro to be around for another 15 years and another 15 years after that. It's an invitation for you to take on a bigger role in our future, in our Futuro. Today, our country's leaders are trying to silence journalism that's inconvenient to them. They're suing newspapers, threatening to go after the nonprofit status of many organizations. But you know what? We're not gonna be silenced.

We talked Latin American politics. And I was a kid behind a microphone right here in New York City, and I was reaching into people's homes with my voice on the radio. And it always made me think, like, am I reaching a little kid just like me? Like, is that little kid going to hear me on the radio? and say, wow, she sounds like me. She's telling stories about people that I know.

We are invested in creating journalism long-term that is accountable to you, to our listeners. That's why we maintain relationship with sources for decades,

like in terms of suave it's why we don't just parachute in some place and then leave we go back again and again and we keep following the story whether it's the ice raids in mississippi or our series which is looking at how the border is moving we believe in telling the truth in telling it like it is and telling it to you directly Now, the thing we need right now most is each other, is community.

And as the news media around us crumbles, there aren't a lot of organizations like us to take up the mantle. If Futuro falls, there probably won't be another one to take its place. So this is the ask. We want you to join us, to join us en nuestra comunidad, to be a part of this all. So visit our website, futuromediagroup.org slash join plus. That's my invitation.

Become a futurista and let's see what we can grow together. Because ya tú sabes, para siempre no te vayas. Y gracias.