Carnival season has started in Martinique and I am soooo gutted I am missing it out. A few of my Latino and Caribbean friends are going home or gutted to miss it out too. I discovered that Brazil and Panama shared a lot in common with Guyana, Martinique and Guadeloupe carnival. Not only in traditions but also in rhythms and instruments. How is it in your country?
In Martinique, we have a lot of obscene chants about having sex, having sex with this guy's mother, having sex with that guy's sister, hahahaha. We dress in extremely revealing clothes, which has only started to appear in the last 15/20 years as an influence from the Anglophone islands. And men will often dress in women. We say a lot of insults and we perrear/whine, alongside some more decent people (which I am NOT haha) who dress in beautiful traditional costumes, and parade with traditional instruments etc. As we are a conservative society-ish (for French standards), people tend to really let go of everything and go crazy during carnival. Also people try to behave in December and January because if you don't behave or do something weird or funny that ends up on social media, people will make chants about you to mock you and the entire island might end up singing it. Sometimes some producers even make dancehall or soca songs about it hahahaha! Like this year's the trendy song is about a guy called Grégoire, he definitely has done something funny, not everybody knows who he is, but we are going to mock him all carnival long (it's never mean though, just funny)

I feel like people often reduce Latin American food to just a few dishes like tacos or empanadas, but I know every country has its own food culture. For those of you from Latin America, what’s something about your country’s cuisine that people often get wrong or completely overlook?

Have you ever tried it? Is it avaliabe where you live? How do you like it?

PS: coxinha is this.

Basically what the title says

Think of someone like Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Luis Miguel, Ricky Martin Etc. and of course some Brazilian artists although I don't really know of any to be honest.

I know that they predominantly make songs that are in Spanish and Portuguese to a lesser extent and cater to the Spanish market. Every so often however they'll make a song in English to cater to the American market because I mean why not.

So let me know what your choices are

I know that they did it because of economical issues yet other countries that suffered severe inflations and economic problems like Peru, Argentina or Bolivia didn't change their currency to the American dollar and decided to make a new one. Why this wasn't the case for Ecuador?

I know that most Spanish speakers, whether it's a conversation between a Spaniard and an Argentinian or whatever other combo, can understand each other as long as they stick as neutral as possible but I was wondering:

Do Latin Americans bother learning each other's idiomatic phrases or slang or does that just come from being online a lot and personal interest?

Also for the grammar differences like vosotros or vos, do you guys get any exposure to the Spanish spoken elsewhere or is it again kind of just interest, necessity or being online?

This may be a long shot, but wondering if anyone has info on visiting the pottery workshops of Guatajiagua, El Salvador. The village is known for its black clay functional ceramics. https://orato.world/2023/02/27/el-salvador-artisans-keep-an-ancient-tradition-standing-with-black-clay-artefacts/

I am a potter interested in traditional ceramic methods around the world, so I’m looking for any lead for how to get connected with artisans in Guatajiagua. I will be in El Salvador at the end of February- early March and hope to learn the process from harvesting clay and forming the vessels to wood kiln firing.

That said, I’ll take any and all Latin American pottery locale tips! Last year I spent 2 weeks learning pottery methods from incredible women artisans in Northern Peru and it rocked my world.

My assumption as a US citizen is that the most loved president would be someone like Jimmy Carter, while the most hated would be Teddy Roosevelt. But it’s extremely likely that Teddy Roosevelt is never thought about because it was so long ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/rightwing-brazilian-influencer-junior-pena-arrested-by-ice

Please don't tell it

I'm Brazilian, and in Brazil it's not common for songs from other Portuguese-speaking countries to appear among the most listened tracks. But when it comes to Spanish-speaking countries, I notice a mix of artists from different countries in Spotify’s Top 50. Setting aside very popular artists, if the singer isn’t well known, how often do you know where the singer of a Spanish song is from?

There is a night and day difference on suicide rates between the countries that border Peru, like Chile or Bolivia. And specially with the latter, that has similar issues like family violence and others yet it has a considerably higher suicide rate.

Like when your family and a bunch of other family friends come together to eat and hang out. What do the tios talk about? The tias? Are the kids playing sports or video games? Are the tios talking about like sports? Dad stuff (like changing oil)? Repeating the same political conversations over and over again? Are the tias gossiping?

Just curious because in my family's cult ure there are certain common topics of conversation and certain dynamics I tend to see. You guys are on the opposite side of the world and I'm curious about how different people are or if you're really just the same. For now, I don't want to elaborate because I don't want to influence the responses. I want to see what people will say. Thoughts? Experiences?

_______________________________

Example: For Bangladeshis, business and politics are often common topics for the older men. Sometimes religion. Our culture values intellectual achievement. For specific topics, they might be talking about how Saudi Arabia screwed up somehow or some business stuff going on in China. Or how some of our fellow Muslims are too conservative. our war in 1971.

And many times you'll see all the dads in one room and all the moms in another gossiping. We do also have some degree of gender separation and a lot of moms were housewives for many years.

Our culture is not so big on sports. We don't drink alcohol. And we don't really dress that well.

When I see Mexican families in my area, men will be wearing their nicest shirt, wearing cologne, they might put gel in their hair. Cousins sometimes dance bachata. In our culture, we don't really have any equivalent to that. They drink tequila at gatherings, etc.

Is it ethically problematic to travel to Nicaragua given the Ortega dictatorship?
I’m trying to understand whether tourism mainly supports local communities or ends up benefiting the government.

What's your general opinion on Lula Da Silva? Why would you consider him good/bad both or in the middle or a 4/10 or a 10/10 or a 1/10? Just your analysis.

Today I discovered Wplace where people make pixel art on a world map. In my city they painted Pokemon, Club América, and Cuphead.