Cadena Collective

Black Friday is here, and with it comes a plethora of shoppers seeking out the best deals for their holiday shopping. While we all love landing a good discount on goods, we’re here to set the record straight on the most popular shopping day of the year and explain its negative effect  on small business owners. While some might attribute Black Friday to merchants going from negative sales (or operating in the red) to making profits (operating in black, or having their accounting books balance out), this is not the actual origin of the day but rather the modern explanation...

It feels as though 2022 flew by but the year is not over and for those who are looking forward to recharging during their holiday vacation, we wanted to give you a list of book recommendations to pick from. Cadena Collective reached out to Adrian (BookPapi), the owner of Golden Lab Bookshop, a Queens-based bookstore focused on diversity and inclusivity in literature, to get a list of his favorite 2022 reads by Latine authors. Check out Adrian’s recommendations as well as his thoughts, and don’t forget to support Golden Lab when making your purchases! You Sound Like A White Girl...

Like many others, you may have stumbled across Cadena Collective's page and asked yourself: "how do I wear any of these products if I don't identify as Mexican or Latine?" As a Puerto Rican who also wondered if I could purchase an item from Cadena's marketplace, I realized there are ways to pay homage to skilled artists without appropriating their culture. First things first, what is cultural appropriation? Cultural appropriation is defined as the act of taking ownership of all or some parts of a group's identity or culture. These are then manipulated, disrespected, or exploited without acknowledgment of the...

I read somewhere that women are the most visible servicemembers and the most invisible veterans. I joined the military in 2008 and closed that chapter ten years later. And I have to be honest with you; it wasn't an easy transition. In the military, we constantly get reminded we are the 1% who chose to serve, and I always wondered, of that 1% who are Latinas, and who among them are first-gen? When I joined, it was like assimilating all over again while holding on to unresolved trauma and then piling on more of it while trying to function. Since...