De Nosotros, Con Amor

The issue is, the Spanish-language
television seen in the United States is
produced mostly in Mexico, meaning,
most of the content being consumed is
catered to a Mexican audience. Due to
this centrism, the social advancements
of other countries have unfortunately
been unable to be seen within the media.
Nonetheless, novelas in Mexico have
begun to make strides towards better
representation such as, the 2019 novela
“Juntos, el corazon nunca se equivoca”,
which was one of the first to include a
gay couple front and center. Another
example is with the telenovela Amar a
Muerte, released in 2018, which featured
a lesbian couple in its subplot. However,
this process pales in comparison to
other television companies who’ve been
advancing faster socially than the wellestablished
production companies.
Netflix is producing more content with
better representation of non-white and
Mestizo Latinx actors and queer stories
that novelas hadn’t bothered to cover
before. An example of a series that does
this is, La Casa de las Flores by Netflix,
which contains multiple queer stories
and went into deeper themes that many
have been wanting to see from Spanishlanguage
content. Telemundo, a Spanishlanguage
content producer, has recently
been making more progressive strides
than the Mexico-based Televisa, most
recently with La Suerte de Loli. This
telenovela grants visibility to traditionally
underrepresented Latinos, notably
Asian-Latinx, Afro-Latinx, Plus-Size, and
Queer Latinx people.
Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing, it
brings us back to better times and makes
us feel good. It comes in various different
forms and telenovelas are no exception.
We feel happy and nostalgic when we
see novelas such as Rebelde, Teresa,
Rubí, and Cuidado con el Ángel but
unfortunately, in retrospect, they have
many painfully obvious flaws that we
have to take into consideration. You can
and should continue to enjoy this content
but always make sure that you do not
let nostalgia blind you to the issues that
plague telenovelas and Spanish-language
content.
Telenovelas have united us through
good memories and are still enjoyable
to watch but we need to keep in mind
what telenovelas lack and demand
improvement from our media. We
deserve better, our community and
people deserve to see themselves in the
media we consume.
ostalgia
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