After America witnessed the murder, or more appropriately, the lynching of George Floyd, conversations about the treatment of Blacks in America have dominated the national dialogue, and for good reason. However, last week, Andres Guardado, an eighteen-year-old Latino student in Los Angeles, moonlighting as a security guard, was shot in the back and killed by police officers. Guardado is not an anomaly; he is the latest in a long list of Latinos who have also been unjustly killed by law enforcement officers. The event received only modest media coverage, but raises a brewing question: “When is it appropriate to also talk about discrimination against Latinos in America?”
I believe there is a time and place for everything, and the plight of Black Americans is THE issue at hand, and needs to be allowed the time and space to play out. This is not to say that police brutality and other forms of discrimination against Latinos, should take a back seat. They shouldn’t…but it would be stupid and wrong to position this as a competition. The Latino agenda will be better served if we avoid being viewed as akin to the “All Lives Matter” movement, which was obviously a calculated effort to invalidate the Black Lives Matter declaration. We don’t want to fall into that trap. Latinos can, and frankly should, support Black Lives Matter, while simultaneously advocating, raising awareness and freely sharing compelling stories about discrimination against Latinos.
I also believe the subject of discrimination should not be limited to conversations about police behavior. Some of the most devasting discrimination in America is done from an economic standpoint. Discrimination has plagued housing for centuries and remains prevalent in Silicon Valley as well as the boardrooms and C-suites of America’s largest corporations. Economic strength drives political strength in America, not the other way around – or as Tony Montana more eloquently put it “First you get the money, THEN you get the power…”. In my humble opinion, the Black and Latino communities need to acquire a better understanding of this concept, and in the process work more closely together to rid our nation of a four-century long pandemic: Racism.
I was watching a podcast recently, and something about it rubbed me the wrong way — but it also got my wheels turning. In this episode, I talk about what I love most about being American, why the system that built this country deserves more appreciation than it gets, and why some of the loudest “love it or leave it” voices go strangely quiet when powerful billionaires openly criticize the very system that made their success possible. This is a conversation about America, double standards, and what real patriotism should actually look like.
This April, the Hispanic Wealth Project is launching its High Net Worth Boot Camp, a 10-week intensive built around some of the most valuable wealth-building education I’ve seen. In this episode, I talk about why so many of us need to shift from a worker’s mentality to an owner’s mentality, why economic success has to move from consumption to wealth building, and why building wealth takes knowledge, work, and discipline. The High Net Worth Boot Camp is designed to help close that knowledge gap with modules on securities investing, real estate investments, buying and selling businesses, asset protection, and tax strategies. If building real wealth has ever felt out of reach or unclear, this is the kind of education that can change how we think and what we build.
The data tells a powerful story: Latinos are driving economic growth in America. If Latino Americans were a standalone country, we’d be the fifth-largest economy in the world, and without Latino homebuyers, the number of homeowners in America would have declined in 2025. So why doesn’t it feel like we’re winning? In this episode, I talk about the gap between growth and perception, why we still don’t have enough strong voices shaping the national conversation, and why purchasing power alone is not enough. Growth matters, but wealth matters more. This is a conversation about leadership, visibility, and what it will really take for our community to turn momentum into lasting power.