Latin American Storytelling on Radio Ambulante

In this one-hour special, Radio Ambulante presents the best English-language stories from its first season with reporting from North Carolina, Chile and Mexico.

Tune in for Radio Ambulante, with host Martina Castro, Thursday night May 8, at 9 p.m. on West Virginia Public Radio.

Featured stories:

• The Forbidden Word – This story takes place in Durham, North Carolina. In 2000, after an itinerant life with his mother in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Argentina, Reza Salazar landed in the Carolinas. As he struggled to adapt and learn the customs of his new home, there was one word his new friends told him he could never, ever say.

• Phantom Team – Back in 1973, the Chilean coup cast a pall over the entire country, as the Chilean military detained anybody suspected of opposing the dictatorship. Thousands were disappeared and tortured and killed. Yet in the middle of all that, life went on in some bizarre ways. A few weeks after the coup, Chile’s national soccer team faced a play-off game in Santiago against the Soviet Union. The winner would go to the 1974 World Cup, in Germany. The loser would stay home. The game would take place in the very stadium where prisoners were detainted and tortured.

• Delfín Vigil on growing up in the Mission – The son of a Jehovah’s Witness, who abruptly renounced the faith, moved the family to the suburbs and changed their lives completely.

• Felipe Montes – Felipe Montes had lived in the US illegally for almost a decade when he got deported back to Mexico. The deportation separated him from his wife and kids still in the US, and landed the children in foster care.