4 Latin American Beauty Secrets

September 13, 2016

Latina mamas have the best beauty knowledge! Often passed down from their own mothers and grandmothers, their get-gorgeous secretos are easy, cheap, and (best part!) you don’t need a passport to try them. Here, four women reveal the beauty secrets they learned while growing up:

1. Refreshing face mist

“My abuela used to make her own rose water face mist by steeping rose petals in water and mixing with witch hazel,” says Robyn Moreno, who is of Mexican descent. “The rose water hydrates and refreshes skin — and for many tejanas, like me, it was Godsend because it’s so damn HOT in Texas!”

How to: Boil 2 cups of water and pour the hot water over the rose petals in a bowl, allowing the rose petals to steep for 30 minutes. Then, transfer the water to a spray bottle and add witch hazel (about 2 ounces) and refrigerate.

2. Natural nail strengthener

“Coming from a woman who never needed acrylics to lengthen her nails, my mother taught me to use garlic to make my nails super strong,” says Maribel Rodriguez. Her family originates from the Dominican Republic.

How to: Chop up fresh garlic, add it to a bottle of a clear nail polish, and let it sit for several days. Don’t worry about the smell. The nail polish will mask the garlic-y scent after a few days.

3. Simple sugar scrub

“For soft, smooth skin, Puerto Rican women blend olive or coconut oil and brown sugar to create a face scrub that leaves your skin glowy—not greasy,” says Blanca Peñagaricano.

How to: Add 1 tsp of sugar to 2 tbsp of olive or coconut oil then gently rub the mixture on your skin for about 30 seconds, avoiding the eye area. Rinse face with warm water, making sure to get all the sugar off.

4. Clever lash curler

“To curl their lashes, Chilean women use the spoon-as-curler trick,” says Belén Aranda-Alvarado. “It’s the same principle as using the edge of scissors to curl the ribbon that goes on gift wrapping.”

How to: Use the edge of the spoon (facing outward on upper lashline) and gently run it from the root to the tip to create a bend. To hold the curl, apply mascara immediately after.

Photo: Getty

Yesenia Almonte is an experienced Editorial Beauty Director in New York City. She is widely recognized for her expertise in developing unique beauty content for a variety of top—selling publications that span a broad range of multi-media platforms. Yesenia has the ability to conceive, construct and transform beauty trends into personalized creative recommendations for diverse markets. She has comprehensive knowledge of the teen and Hispanic markets and has created a number of revenue-generating editorial packages across different mediums. Throughout her career, she has initiated collaborations with some of the foremost innovators in the creative industry, including Pat McGrath, Kenneth Willardt, Ondrea Barbe, Sarah Silver, Serge Normant, Orlando Pita and Gucci Westman.
Yesenia was most recently the Beauty Director of Seventeen. During her tenure at the magazine, she entirely redeveloped the magazine’s beauty editorial and direction by expanding and diversifying its content through creative and innovative features and looks, while also providing increased visibility to a broad range of beauty brands. In addition to overseeing the beauty content across all of Seventeen’s platforms, including seventeen.com and misquincemag.com, she created the massive multi—platform beauty franchise Seventeen’s Beauty Smarties, an initiative whereby real girl YouTube beauty vloggers create exclusive looks for the magazine and online videos. Since it’s inception, the Beauty Smarties franchise became a successful YouTube show, The Seventeen Beauty Smarties Showdown and became the backbone to the launch of Seventeen’s multichannel network on YouTube in partnership with AwesomenessTV. Yesenia edited Seventeen’s Ultimate Guide to Beauty, an in-depth how-to guide, and helped develop Seventeen’s extensive digital tool, the Seventeen Shopping Insider app. In an effort to reach readers everywhere, Yesenia also created customized beauty specials targeting the Latina and African American teen market, which have resulted in record-breaking advertising revenue for the magazine.
Prior to joining Seventeen, Yesenia served as Beauty Director of Latina Magazine, where she curated the beauty content for the Hispanic woman via the magazine and website. At Latina, she also developed Latina Beauty, a Walmart-only special interest publication for the Hispanic woman.