Courtesy/Alicia Civita
MIAMI — Latina artist Sofia Carson raised her glass to a room of Latino artists, executives, and advocates with words she credited to Eva Longoria: “We are leaders, period.”
At TIME’s celebration of its fourth annual Latino Leaders list, to which this reporter was invited, the Colombian American actor and singer’s toast echoed a message that ran through the evening in a balmy and rainy Miami night: Latino achievement shapes the United States, and the opportunities created today carry a responsibility to the generations coming next.
For Julián Castro, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation, that relationship has become inseparable from the country’s future. Acknowledging what he described as “cruelty” directed at immigrant and Latino families, he argued that their success is essential to America’s own.
“The destiny of the United States and the destiny of Latinos is more intertwined than it ever has been before,” Castro said. “Only if Latinos succeed can America succeed in the years to come, and vice versa.”
The Miami cocktail reception, presented by premier partner PepsiCo, brought together honorees working across entertainment, literature, business, health care and immigrant advocacy. Their remarks connected influence in those fields to experiences that began long before professional recognition: searching for a familiar surname in movie credits, hiding a home language to fit in, or watching a mother make a life for her children.
Castro remembered scanning film credits for names such as Garcia, Hernandez, and Rodriguez while growing up in San Antonio. At the library, he looked for books by Latino authors. He was, he recalled, “always on the lookout for Latinas and Latinos doing great things.”
His own story began with women whose work made his opportunities possible. His grandmother Victoria arrived from northern Mexico in 1922 after losing her parents and raised his mother alone. His mother also raised Castro and his brother as a single parent.
“Our families … have always been strivers and hard workers and people of love, of faith, and of family,” he said. “And we’ve always driven progress in the United States of America, and that’s true today.”
For chef, restaurateur, and author Nelson German, embracing that inheritance meant recovering parts of himself he once tried to set aside.
Courtesy/ Alicia Civita
Raised in a Dominican immigrant family in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, German recalled shying away from his language and culture as a child.
“We wanted to fit in so badly to reach that American dream,” he said. “But now things have changed … We now are embracing those parts of ourselves more fully. We are embracing our cultures, our heritage, our motherlands.”
Food became his way of keeping that connection alive. Passing down recipes and stories, he said, gives younger generations access to the lives and sacrifices that preceded their own. “The parents and grandparents who work two, three jobs … They gave us a chance to really stand in these kinds of rooms together, so never forget about that.”
Carson’s tribute also returned to her mother Laura Char Carson, who introduced her to the work of Frida Kahlo, Isabel Allende and Celia Cruz. Yet the woman sharing those artists with her became the person she most wanted to understand.
“But little did she know, the life I would spend my life studying and admiring was hers,” Carson said.
She described Latina identity as “a kaleidoscope of colors, of cultures, of thoughts” and paid tribute to the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters who had given the people in the room both life and hope. “To my mother, the light of my life. My sister, the fire in my soul,” she said.
Other honorees attending included author Xochitl Gonzalez; advocates Ronaldo Salgado and Lorenzo Salgado Jr.; AltaMed President and CEO Cástulo de la Rocha; Justice for Migrant Women founder and President Mónica Ramírez; and Latino Donor Collaborative President and CEO Ana Valdez. TIME CEO Jessica Sibley delivered remarks.
Recalling Longoria’s message from the event three years earlier, Carson extended her toast beyond the celebration.
“In this room and in every other, in this country and across every border, you are leaders,” she said. “You are hope.”
Alicia Civita
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