Latinos Doing Their Thing Presents…
His mom used to say he was a shy boy and a precocious child as he started Elementary at three and graduated from High School at 15 in Bogotá, Colombia. Born to a working-class, fabric merchant, leftist idealistic family, revolución, política + cultura has always run through his mestizo veins. At the age of 17, dad “shipped” him to NYC where his struggle and early independent adulthood started. Putting himself through Engineering school while working full-time, he graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree (Minor: Administration & Management) from The City University of NY; he is currently completing his Pharmaceutical Law Master’s degree at Northeastern University, and his day job is in the Medicine/Device Research field just blocks away from Manhattan’s Empire State Building.
Mastering the language of Mark Twain and García Márquez never felt so good in NYC. One achieved through college and the other by being educated in Colombian schools and pursuing Superior Proficiency Certification by the Education Ministry of Spain via Instituto Cervantes located in middle of New York City.
His additional part-time job started three years ago when the business bug bit him and his brother and they opened up a space in the form of the first South American Wine + Arepa + Espresso Bar in vanguard Brooklyn, where fine food + wine + politics + culture are served daily. The business razón de ser, is to ground and promote Latin American history and culture though the Colombian lens, in the world’s most culturally-influential city as a way to counter negative stereotypes of Latinos and their businesses, as well as a way to inspire fellow Latinos to create and take advantage of spaces to learn, debate, discern and share contemporary issues and revolutionary ideas over great food+drink crafted with the finest produce, coffee, grapes + barley that come directly from our own ancestral lands. Their ultimate goal is to create some form of local think tank where Latin American and American Latino issues can be connected, explored and addressed.
He doesn’t believe the “American Dream” exists as materialism can be obtained with hard work and dedication in most capitalistic societies. If it were to exist however, it would probably be in the form of education.
Cafecito Bogotá pays homage to the social struggle of all Latinos in the Western Hemisphere and all their independant leaders who, by challenging the status quo, have contributed to build more just and peaceful societies.
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