NUESTRO NORTE

Martín Blanco is a Venezuelan-born, Minnesota-raised filmmaker and creative director whose work moves between documentary, narrative, and branded collaborations.

Shaped by his experience as a first-generation immigrant who came of age in the American North, his work explores memory, migration, and belonging through sensorial and poetic visual storytelling. Across independent and branded projects alike, Martín is drawn to individuals navigating cultural borderlands and the quiet tension between past and future, home and horizon.

His films have been recognized by the Student Academy Awards, Telly Awards, Shorty Impact Awards, and the Upper Midwest Emmys, and has screened at festivals including the Austin Film Festival, New York Latino Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival, NewFest, Frameline, and the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Film Festival. His branded collaborations include projects with Columbia Records, Elektra Entertainment, PBS, Yahoo!, and Meta.

Blanco is the founder of CATATUMBO, an artist-led creative studio dedicated to developing cinematic stories that explore diaspora, cultural memory, and the evolving identities of the Americas. He is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Patricia Tototzintle is a nationally recognized Latina leader, cultural connector, and longtime advocate for immigrant and survivor justice. Born and raised in St. Paul’s Westside neighborhood, Patti was shaped by her parents’ sacrifices, cultural traditions, and the belief that leadership begins with listening. After leaving a senior corporate role, she transitioned to the nonprofit sector and joined Casa de Esperanza (now Esperanza United) in 2002. During her more than two decades in organizational leadership, she advanced transformational growth by strengthening Latina-based advocacy, expanding community leadership and engagement action for youth and adults, and supporting public policy and research priorities. She believes this work must be rooted in community listening, healing, leadership, and partnership. Now retired, Patti continues to carry forward her parents’ legacy, guided by her mother’s words that Patti was here not only for family, but for community as well. She currently lives in the family home and looks forward to her granddaughter spending more time there to experience family and community history. Patti is a foundational voice in Nuestro Norte, offering a living archive of Minnesota’s Latine evolution and bridging past and present through matriarchal wisdom, organizational leadership, and a fierce commitment to justice. Her story reminds us that leadership is not about standing above others, but about planting roots so others can rise.

Tahiel Jimenez Medina is a first-generation Colombian queer immigrant, filmmaker, and founder of Mamá Papaya, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that nurtures emerging QTBIPOC storytellers. His deeply poetic films explore the liminal space between memory and migration, crafting intimate narratives that revisit familial wounds, ancestral dreams, and the beauty of becoming. Inspired by his undocumented mother, whose childhood nickname “Papaya” lends the organization its name, Tahiel’s work reframes filmmaking as a tool for healing, preservation, and radical imagination. Raised in the metro suburbs and now rooted in Southside Minneapolis, Tahiel brings a singular lens to what it means to build cultural legacy in the Midwest. Through Mamá Papaya’s labs, film fellowships, and community screenings, he’s creating a cinematic ecosystem that resists erasure and centers care, creativity, and kinship. Tahiel is a powerful fit for Nuestro Norte. His narrative brings forth themes of diasporic identity, futurism, and intergenerational tribute, all rendered with the quiet urgency of someone reshaping the cultural architecture of Minnesota from the inside out.

Aiyana Sol Machado is an Indigenous Boricua multidisciplinary community organizer, birthworker, educator, and cultural worker whose life bridges the rhythms of bomba with the grounded wisdom of land stewardship. Born to Nuyorican parents within a lineage of liberation theology and farmworker activism, she was raised between the Twin Cities, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico, and Native communities throughout Minnesota. She grew up rooted in ceremony, resistance, collective care, and the belief that healing is both ancestral and necessary.

Aiyana is a resident of Philadelphia Community Farm, where she serves as Board Chair, supporting the organization’s vision for regenerative agriculture, conservation, education, and community led governance. She is also the CEO and co-owner of Kumbé Healing & Wellness, a national consultant with E3: Education, Excellence & Equity, and a collective artist member of Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center.

Her work weaves together cultural organizing, youth engagement, birthwork, food sovereignty, embodiment, and ancestral practices that reconnect people to themselves, each other, and the land. Whether facilitating a circle, tending land, supporting families, or dancing bomba, Aiyana leads through relational practices that center joy, cultural memory, collective care, and belonging. Aiyana’s story threads together land, language, movement, and memory, offering a deeply rooted perspective on what it means to build home and community in Minnesota while carrying the echoes of many homelands. Through her story, we witness how Latinidad lives in ceremony, relationship, resilience, and the ongoing practice of remembering who we are.

Dr. Otto Sánchez is a Venezuelan-born medical researcher, father, mentor, and advocate for immigrant representation in science. Now a Senior Scientist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, Otto’s journey traces back to his childhood on the ice rinks of University housing, where his father, a geneticist, was earning his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. After practicing medicine in Venezuela, Otto returned to Minnesota to pursue his own doctoral work in exercise physiology, inspired by a belief that movement is medicine. His research spans cardiovascular prevention, epidemiology, and the science of healthy aging, but his true passion lies in mentorship: quietly guiding Latine and immigrant professionals toward careers in medicine, often with little more than a bus fare and an open door. Otto’s story is both deeply Minnesotan and profoundly diasporic, anchored in multigenerational learning, cultural continuity, and a belief in persistence over brilliance. Whether building nativity scenes for his grandchildren or translating MRI data into public health insight, Otto represents a kind of everyday heroism. He brings to Nuestro Norte the emotional weight of legacy, the poetry of scientific rigor, and a narrative lens that bridges immigrant sacrifice with future-forward belonging.

Jessica Lee Velasco is a third-generation Chicana organizer and cultural strategist rooted in Worthington, MN. Raised by farmworkers and frontline laborers, she carries forward a legacy of resistance that spans generations: from her grandmother’s underground union organizing to her own mission of creating safe, identity-affirming spaces for Latine and Indigenous youth across rural Minnesota. Jessica leads community programs through UNIDOS MN and La Red, cultivating the next generation of changemakers through mentorship, storytelling, and grassroots organizing. Whether she’s co-hosting food justice events or holding one-on-one healing spaces, her work blends cultural pride with radical care. She believes that visibility is power, and that rural communities deserve to be seen in their full complexity, joy, and resilience. Jessica brings to Nuestro Norte grounded clarity, a deep connection to place, and a vision for what it means to build power across community. Her story expands our map of Latinidad, reminding us that leadership often looks like walking softly while carrying the strength of those who came before you.