I grew up in South Florida, where the lush palm trees are almost as vibrant as the immigrant communities who planted them. Miami has been considered a Latino oasis since the early ’60s and has become a sanctuary for political refugees and those seeking a better life. The city is filled with tiny cups of Cuban coffee, garage hair salons, and butter-cookie tin cans (usually filled with sewing supplies). My family’s suburb has the highest concentration of Venezuelans living outside their native country, and it’s one of the few places cable providers service Spanish-speaking-only TV stations, one of which used to host the apex of early-aughts daytime talk shows: El Gordo y La Flaca.
Every afternoon by the time I got home from grade school, my mother and grandmother would have it playing in the background while cooking. It’s akin to Live With Kelly and Ryan, although more pointed in delivery. Nestled between discourse about politics and world affairs, questions like “Are they really dating?” and “Did you see how her panza looked in that dress?” were treated with as much journalistic rigor as anything else on air. I ate up cohost Lili Estefan’s colorful minidresses, subliminal digs, and sly jokes just like I did my arroz y caraotas. Chisme—Spanish for “gossip”—can be a fulfilling meal, as it were, to a little girl who wanted to be a big-shot reporter. Chisme wasn’t just normalized where I was from; it was validated.
Chisme is a cornerstone in most Latin households. Chismeando is practically a national sport, with unmarried tías regularly coming in first place. Hair salons, dominoes tables, and family cookouts are our safe spaces and often where you’ll find the juiciest bits of information as to what’s going on in the community: where to go, whom to trust, and especially whom not to date.
Engaging in chisme is a natural gut reaction for the majority of Latinos and Latinas I know. The feminine urge to open WhatsApp (the messaging platform of choice for abuelitos who earnestly send misinformation) and voice-note my friends is stronger than ever when I hear something particularly noteworthy. Throughout college, a Dominican friend and I would grab coffee before class once a week and spill the best chisme in person. Usually, bombshells came at the beginning, flying so fast out of our mouths only to be met with wide eyes and a simple “Girl…” Does that make me a bad person? Maybe, if you don’t understand the nuances of chisme within Latin communities. As the saying from YouTuber Antonio Garzia goes, I didn’t ask to be born Latina. No más tuve suerte.
Unlike American gossip culture hell-bent on talking trash about those who have wronged you with a viciously sharp tongue, chisme is never that serious. More likely than not, you’ll find little old ladies talking about alimony payments or a cousin who mysteriously died rather than tearing down someone for the way they look simply out of boredom. You don’t have to look far to see how tabloids and celebrity blogger websites have personified American gossip into a big, bad, money-hungry machine. On the other hand, chisme, as Mario Abad, the fashion editor at Paper magazine and self-proclaimed chismoso, explains, is embedded in who Latinos are.
“It’s never really dark—we’re always just having a good laugh,” Abad says. “Honestly, it’s not even looked at as gossip. It’s just the way we talk.” Some of his followers, many of whom act as some of the highest gatekeepers in the editorial world, are anonymous sources in publicly posted direct messages that serve to enlighten an already buzzy online fashion community.
“My social media is an extension of what I already do, which is talking with my friends in the DMs and texts—but I also like sharing it with other people,” he says. “So, if that makes me chismoso, I embrace it.” A swipe through his Instagram Stories will explain it all—blind-item-worthy news and front-row gossip are what’s given the editor the clout he has for being a go-to source. At the end of our interview, I cut the recording and the chisme session began just as a natural addendum to our conversation. Once our mouths opened, there wasn’t any chance we were going to let the good gossip go to waste.
While it’s easy to simply chalk up chisme to the most straightforward definition if you’re unfamiliar, it’s more than just shit-talking with close confidants. Since the beginning of time, chisme has been a form of oral communication and storytelling. Within ancient societies in Latin America, Indigenous people would come together to share information about what was happening within their communities. Leyendas, epic legends and tales of gods and spirits, were traded alongside coffee beans and cacao pods as careful warnings about what could happen if you didn’t respect your ancestors. Years later, chisme as oral tradition still serves as warning—instead of your crops burning down because you didn’t pray enough, it’s your only child not getting into the best and brightest academic program.
“It’s the way we communicate in different settings, from the church, to school, to our work environments and on coffee breaks,” says Magdalena Mieri, director of Latino programming and history at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “Women like chitchatting and chismeando if there’s a new person coming into town or a new neighbor. It builds community and trust.”
Women are notorious for chisme, and the long line of loose-lipped Latinas who come before me are a testament to that. It’s practically in our blood, bonding over shared secrets and tidbits of information that’ll make you raise your eyebrows and purse your lips. All that matters, though, is that you have something to say back.
“Chisme is aided by power,” Mieri says. “I have this information I want to share with you, but maybe you have another chisme you can share back with me.” The sentiment rings true: In order to stay in the gossip gods’ good graces, the law of equal exchange usually takes place. If this writer slyly tells you about someone calling off a wedding because they found out their partner was cheating on them with their cousin, she expects something even juicier back. (True story.)
While chisme has come a long way from informing women in ancient civilizations about looming danger, it’s still a necessary way of life for Latina women in predominantly white spaces. When Julliana Hernandez, a content creator and stylist based out of Puerto Rico, did a two-year exchange program at a predominantly white school in southern Alabama, chisme wasn’t just entertainment. It’s a way to survive.
“I would try to chismear with the only other Latina person around me, and she would obviously understand what I was getting at, but the other people around us were like, ‘Oh, are you talking about Sofia Vergara?’ because we were speaking in Spanish,” she says. “[Americans] either didn’t get it at all, or they just made it very toxic.”
The toxicity Hernandez refers to is the brutal, unfiltered way she believes gringos (or non-Latino white people) gossip in. In her experience it’s a bit more personal, with painful insults being thrown around in the blink of an eye—most of which is delivered by the people who called out Hernandez’s gossip for being considered sinful in the first place. It’s yet another reminder of how gossip culture in America is the subject of ridicule, rather than resistance, in the Bible-thumping Deep South. In Puerto Rico, though, the back of small white-painted church buildings after Mass was where the little girls used to exchange chisme like pieces of candy.
Hernandez’s experience isn’t a one-off: Time and time again the “spicy Latina” trope has been used to objectify and vilify women who love a good chisme here and there. While certainly being a loudmouth isn’t something to brag about in any culture, there are more and more young Latinos giving in to their ingrained urges to shit-talk. In full transparency, I’m one of them—and so is TikTok creator Jesus Acevedo, who’s made a living off owning the label: “It’s like Princess Diaries, but make it Hispanic and low-income,” he jokes.
Acevedo, a 22-year-old Mexican American who grew up in the scorching San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, has a text thread dedicated to it called “chismosas” with flaming heart emoji. It’s a group chat with a Mexican friend and a gringa friend. By this point Acevado has perfected the cardinal rule of chismeando: making sure you get all the best information by seeming as unassuming as possible.
“When I found out through chisme that my uncle went to jail, they didn’t tell me per se,” he says. “I just found out because I was sitting there. That’s my biggest hidden talent—yo me hago pendejo—and I use it to my advantage. People just spill everything.”
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If you check the comments section in any of his videos about chismeando, you’ll probably find hundreds of people who agree with him. He affectionately calls them comadres—a regional slang term for friends and people you’re tied to by religion. Most of his content comes from a hyper-niche awareness that comes with being a part of the wide-scale diaspora. It’s not necessarily for everyone—and certainly not for those who chalk up chisme to something as frivolous as idle talk. Over the last few months, he’s seen more and more positive responses to his content, with most of his followers affirming that they, too, can’t keep their mouths shut, no matter how hard they try.
“Everyone just validates chismeando as an art form,” Acevedo says. “Y’all can say you don’t do it, pero we’re all a little bit chismoso on the inside, whether you like it or not. People look down upon chismosos, but y’all live for it too. Don’t play.”
So next time, when you’re drafting that snarky, shady text with information you heard about so-and-so, pause to think: Would my ancestors who escaped political turmoil, colonization, and religious persecution be proud? By all accounts, they would be right there, lined up with bated breath, to see what hot gossip is coming out of your mouth next.
Ana Escalante is a Glamour editorial assistant. You can follow her on Instagram @balencianas.
