Mayor Suarez On Miami Becoming A Tech Hub, Cuba's COVID-19 Vaccine, The Chonga Contribution To Art & Culture wlrn.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wlrn.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On a summer day in 2007, Jillian Hernandez made her way to North Miami City Hall to grab her weekly copy of
New Times. Laura Di Lorenzo and Mimi Davila, the two Miami girls behind the viral Chongalicious YouTube video, graced the cover wearing oversized hoops, dramatically gelled hair, long white acrylic nails, and heavily applied brown lip liner. Splashed across their bodies was the headline: Chongas! There was just something really powerful for me in that image, Hernandez says. It was very much this moment of bringing the chonga into the sphere of Miami popular culture, but very clearly through a kind of parody. It wasn t necessarily mean-spirited. But it wasn t taking chongas seriously as cultural innovators.