Hurricane Maria Archives - Chicago Reader

Buscabulla’s tropical soul vignettes distill the mixed blessings of returning home

by Catalina Maria Johnson May 15, 2020August 18, 2021

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, at least 130,000 people left Puerto Rico to live elsewhere. Yet in February 2018, Puerto Rican musicians Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo del Valle, aka experimental dream-pop duo Buscabulla (“Troublemaker” in English), returned to the island after nearly a decade in New York City. During those years, they’d become […]

Music

iLe creates new old school sounds from the island of enchantment

by Catalina Maria Johnson January 31, 2020August 18, 2021

As a member of Calle 13—the politically conscious Puerto Rican hip-hop band formed by her brothers René Pérez Joglar and Eduardo Cabra Martínez—Ileana Mercedes Cabra Joglar began performing onstage when she was a teenager. By her late 20s, she was stepping out on her own under the name iLe. On her debut solo album, 2016’s […]

Arts & Culture

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr pulls back the curtain on American imperialism.

by Rachel Hawley May 2, 2019August 18, 2021

“The history of the United States,” says the Northwestern prof, “is the history of empire.”

News & Politics

Is a Puerto Rican native running for Chicago alderman the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

by Ryan Smith July 19, 2018August 18, 2021

Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, who is taking on Deb Mell, closely resembles the 28-year-old socialist from the Bronx who upset a powerful congressman in New York.

Blogs

Y No Había Luz brings the voices of post-Maria Puerto Rico to Chicago

by Martha Bayne July 9, 2018August 18, 2021

“People keep sewing their eyes together to stop seeing things. . . . If we don’t open our eyes we are blind, and we can’t do anything to help Puerto Rico.”