New Women New Yorkers

Tagged: colombian immigrant

Portraits & interviews

Home is where the heart is: how sharing Colombian culture helped Karla Florez Albor start a new life in New York

Written by Tatiana Spiegel In New York City, the weekend of July 20 is filled with performances, parades, and street food celebrating the spirit of Colombian culture worldwide. To mark Colombian Independence Day, people dance to the Latin sounds of Cumbia, and are hypnotized by the smells of melting cheese on arepas and sizzling chorizo on the grill.   Like many Colombian immigrants, Karla Florez Albor joins every year the Colombian Day Parade in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens....

Portraits & interviews

Navigating the difficulties of immigration with Colombian immigrant Scarlett Freyre

  Written by Divya Ramesh Scarlett Freyre immigrated to North Carolina in 1992 from Bogotá, Colombia — she was 20. Colombia’s long tryst with political instability prompted her father’s decision to send his daughter to the US. The decision was a difficult one for many reasons, especially considering that Freyre had to drop out of Bogotá’s Los Andes University where she was studying Marketing and Merchandising Textiles, and put her education on hold. More than a decade after she arrived...