Photographs by Hope Mora for The New Yorker
By Graciela Mochkofsky
March 30, 2026
How Carlos Eduardo Espina reaches millions of followers.
At twenty-seven, Espina bears a slight resemblance to Gael García Bernal and likes to wear embroidered Mexican guayaberas. The minute-long commentaries, in Spanish, on breaking news are his trademark broadcasts, and he has posted as many as sixty a day. In tight closeup, he practically shouts his messages to his audience, whom he addresses as “mi gente,” in the manner of old-style radio bulletins. With nearly twenty-two and a half million followers—a figure that represents roughly a third of the American Latino population—across platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, Espina has become one of the most recognizable faces of the news-influencer phenomenon in Spanish or English, and a rare progressive voice in a space dominated by right-wing provocateurs.
