Untangling the Many Meanings Behind 'La Brega' and Its Ubiquity Among Puerto Ricans
Latino USA
My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we celebrate the release of season three of Futuro Studios’ hit-show La Brega, we take you back to where it all first started: Season 1, Episode 1.
Host Alana Casanova-Burgess sets out to define the many meanings of “la brega”—one of them being the struggle—and its ubiquity among Boricuas.
Alana takes us from potholes, to protests and metaphors, to compile all of the possible meanings that lie within “la brega”, she looks at how it sometimes asks too much of Puerto Ricans and how, at the same time, the word itself has an innate sense of hope.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Futuro |
| 0:02.0 | 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. |
| 0:10.1 | America is in crisis. |
| 0:11.8 | And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. |
| 0:14.6 | These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, |
| 0:17.7 | locked up the members of the board of trustees, |
| 0:20.2 | including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's |
| 0:22.1 | senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never |
| 0:27.2 | forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in a lick Lamouba. Listen to the A building on the IHeart |
| 0:32.4 | radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules. |
| 0:43.4 | Segregation and the day integration at night. |
| 0:46.5 | It was like stepping on another world. |
| 0:49.0 | Was he a businessman? A criminal. A hero. |
| 0:53.1 | Charlie was an example of power. |
| 0:56.0 | They had to crush him. |
| 0:57.7 | Charlie's Place, from Atlas Obscura and visit Myrtle Beach. |
| 1:01.3 | Listen to Charlie's Place on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:07.6 | Dear Latino USA listener, before we start, you should know that if you want to listen to this episode, add free. |
| 1:15.0 | Just join Futuro Plus. And you can join for as little as $7 a month. |
| 1:20.5 | Joining also gets you behind the scenes access and yes, some chiseme. So click the link in the episode description, |
| 1:29.5 | and after you do that, then click play. |
| 1:32.3 | Let's go to the show. |
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