The invisible cost of leaving home
Jasmine Garsd examines Lionel Messi and belonging in the NPR/Futuro Media podcast
The NPR/Futuro Media podcast La última copa/The Last Cup tells a story that many of us know well.
The English/Spanish series dives into the life of a soccer icon, Lionel Messi. It also focuses on the challenges of playing for a home country that wants a home-born player of his caliber. However, it is also unsure what to make of a superstar whose formative years were spent far from Argentina.
Such an experience is one many Hispanics have tussled with. Going ‘home,’ either years or generations later, can lead to many feelings. Who we are in the eyes of people who live there may be similarly tangled. For this podcast, the World Cup – and Argentina’s improbable tournament thus far – are the backdrop, but who am I, a question that has haunted many Latinos over the years, is at the center.
In this podcast, Jasmine Garsd explores her own life through this lens. The former co-host of Alt.Latino was born in Argentina and now resides in New York. Throughout her reporting career, Garsd has brought an awareness of such experiences as she covered immigrant communities in America. And the emotions she captures tell what it is a universal tale.
Garsd was kind enough to discuss La última copa/The Last Cup this OIGO. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Could talk about the editorial process for the podcast - from the concept to what people are hearing now?
I really knew that I wanted to do something about the World Cup and Messi. I was really fascinated by his story, but not so much of this European success story. We have heard about Lionel Messi as this superstar forever. He's beloved. He's broken records. He's one of the best players, if not the best player in the world. I was more interested in his relationship with his home country, our home country since I’m from Argentina as well. How has that process been for him? I was really interested in that and how he had navigated his relationship with back home. So, I was toying a lot with that idea.
I'm a national desk reporter and so I would hear different stories. Different immigrant communities that reminded me a lot about this contentious and sometimes very complicated relationship with back home. I started talking to people over at Futuro Media and at NPR. We started putting together what it looks like now. There was a whole evolution initially. I had wanted it as a single chapter with its own story. Then we decided to tell the narrative arc of the Lionel Messi story.
I got inspired a lot by The Odyssey. I picked up my aunt's old copy of Ulysses, as this very ancient story about a guy who leaves home and becomes the hero abroad. And in the story it's like ‘I can't wait to get back,’ but then he goes back and it doesn't look the way it was when he left it. It’s one of the oldest stories in time, and it replays all the time when you think about it with different immigrant communities.
There's always a complication there.
Absolutely. You know, Lionel Messi was born and raised in Argentina. Around 2001, there was a severe economic crisis. When I left, unemployment was hovering around 20 percent, so It was very bad. And he had a health problem, a hormonal deficiency. He needed treatment and his family couldn't afford it. Him and his dad decided to leave. They leave his family behind, essentially, at age 12. What ends up happening is that when he comes back as an adult, he yearns to play for his home team. Yet he plays really differently. He plays like a European kid because he's been raised in Europe. He doesn't quite fit in with the style of the players and he's changed. He had to change.
That story, and the questions, ‘are you really from here?’ ‘Maybe you're a foreigner because you've been gone for a very long time,’ to different degrees really resonates. It's like the relationship between Chicanos and Mexicans, Boricuas and Nuyoricans. I mean every single Latin American community I've gone to, there's some kind of tension where you go back home and you've been dreaming of it, or maybe it's your parents' home. You've been yearning. You've been building it up in your melancholy. And then you go back home and suddenly you're a tourist in your own home.
I identified with that so much, and that's why I wanted to tell the story.
What exactly did this production bring up for you personally?
I left the country during the collapse a few months after Lionel Messi, and was very difficult. My parents were teachers so it wasn't like we left with like a lot of resources. That first year was very hard.
What I also wanted to do with this podcast was talk about the invisible cost of leaving home. Not just what we always hear about like remittances and economics. I wanted to talk about the invisible cost people pay when they leave – like not being able to go back home.
One really personal story we touch upon is that, for me, it was not being able to say goodbye to loved ones when they pass away. It is a story I saw play out in many immigrant communities. It’s a loss of these really important connections, and family bonds really broken apart, especially when we're talking about undocumented communities. I've seen undocumented people who cannot go back and bury their loved ones. I really wanted to explore that.
Doing this podcast in a way was kind of like writing a letter to my teenage self and saying to my teenage self, who had just arrived in the U.S. and was living in a motel with her family, ‘hey, you're gonna be okay. It's gonna be fine.’
One of the things I often times hear from producers is that getting a story like this told is hard -- getting editors to be accepting, trying to talk people into understanding the value of this kind of a conversation. You were able to bring together a wide variety of stakeholders, and that's an art form in itself. What advice might you have for anybody looking to try to get our stories told in that way?
Partner with people who you believe in the idea and who believe in you. The first people I actually reached out to were with Futuro Media because I love what they've done. I think Futuro Media truly has understood the value of a well-told Latino story. Whether it's Selena, which is beautiful, or Loud, which treats the history of reggaeton with reverence. I wanted to partner with them, and NPR has a tradition of excellent storytelling. There was a desire to tell thought-out Latino stories.
What's wonderful about the media landscape right now is that there's a lot more players and there's a lot of people doing a lot of interesting things. And so just choose the people who you love what they're doing and you love the value they bring and people who also believe in your value. 🟢
La próxima ⌛
The next OIGO is in your inbox December 16. It’s the last OIGO of 2022, as we all wind down for the year (and ramp up for year-end fundraising). We’ll end the year with a question I commonly get: change management and how to see it through. Let’s talk tips on how to move the needle in your organizations in 2023.
-- Ernesto
Cafecito: stories to discuss ☕
Latino newsroom staff in radio have increased 29 percent from last year… though the figures seem to need more review. This comes from the latest RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University survey here.
The operator of noncommercial classical music stations KUSC and KDFC in California has added a new bilingual stream focused on Latinx-influenced classical sonidos. Current shares more.
Mexico has recognized the contributions of Radio Bilingue’s Hugo Morales with an award for service.
After its president was arrested and charged by the government with extortion, Guatemala’s crusading newspaper El Periodico announced this week that it will cease printing.
Rebecca Luna has been tapped to replace the late Art Laboe, a longtime DJ loved by the Mexican-American community.
El radar: try this 📡
Memorialize last moments. Inspired by The Last Cup, Iowa Public Radio asked local immigrants about their final memories of leaving their home countries.
See who’s retooling. The Philadelphia Inquirer piece on Al Dia made the rounds, and it got me wondering if public media should be asking about this transformation locally. Many Spanish-language newspapers are facing similar issues.
Or see who’s expanded. My hometown in Texas had a similar tale as this NBC story from California: Mexican immigrants start a restaurant; restaurant becomes wildly successful; and the brand gains a life of its own. Is there something similar near you? It’s a nice way to tell a Latino story beyond the hard-work narrative, but one of community success.
Explore death on the job. Carolina Public Press just covered the issue of Hispanics who die from occupational injuries in North Carolina. What is the situation in your state?
Speak with Brazilians in your area. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is returning to power in South America Jan. 1, after a pitched presidential race. He’s committed to many reforms. Weeks after the results, how are Brazilians in your region feeling?
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