At precisely 9 o'clock most Sunday mornings, 87-year-old Antonia Garza switches on the small television in her bedroom to attend Sunday Mass in Spanish. She and millions of Spanish speakers, many of them shut-ins like herself, tune in to La Misa, broadcast from San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. From the pulpit, the cathedral rector, Father Virgilio Elizondo, touches on countless themes and introduces visitors. These sometimes include presidential candidates and their families, showing the power of the broadcast.
Many U.S. Hispanics have been English-language television watchers as well. Garza's favorite entertainers have been the same as those of her Anglo contemporaries: Lawrence Welk, Jimmy Dean, Jane Wyman, and Dinah Shore, to name a few.
However, in addition to the Mass, Antonia watches novelas (soap operas) and news on the Spanish-language networks. Like Antonia, who could choose to tune in to English-speaking TV evangelists, other Hispanics seek comfort in the familiar.
Spanish-language communications media--radio, television, and newspaper--play an important part in the lives of Hispanics as a way to connect within the community. The media make it possible to gain greater understanding of the larger society's values and social mores. And they also provide a window through which to see how the rest of America sees the Hispanic community, if it sees it at all.
But these days there hasn't been much on the English-language networks in the way of family viewing, so Antonia's tuned into Univision or Telemundo, two Spanish-language networks with local affiliates.
And she is not alone. Many U.S. Hispanics, a population estimated to grow to 30 million by the year 2000, turn to the Spanish-language media to get information about laws that impact their community and other vital issues. Whether newly arrived or native born, they want their news from sources they can trust, from people who speak their language--in a figurative sense--with an understanding of Hispanic values and concerns.
Father Elizondo says the demand for La Misa has grown beyond its humble origins, which was to provide a Spanish-language Mass for Spanish-speaking shut-ins in the local area. The Mass now has viewers in Mexico and Central America, Canada and Europe, and parts of Asia and the Caribbean. Now the number of non-Spanish speakers watching is large enough that about 5 to 10 percent of the Mass is in English to accommodate them.
What is important and appealing to Hispanics seems to be appealing to non-Hispanics as well.
THE RECENT PURCHASE OF Miami-based Univision by a group of investors--including Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, a staunch supporter of Mexico's Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) conservatives and already one of the most powerful media moguls in Mexico--sent chills through the more liberal factions of Univision and media watchers. Although Univision held promise for offering alternative news on issues of importance to Hispanics, Azcarraga could change Univision simply to a Spanish-language version of mainstream U.S. television news and programming.
But there is hope in radio for Antonia and others like her.
Independent stations and radio outlets like the Radio Bilingue network offer an alternative to the vast void in information for Hispanics. Its founder, Hugo Morales, a Mixtec Indian from Oaxaca, explains that he wants to serve his people by empowering them with information through radio. While a student at Harvard in 1970, he established a radio show to serve the Latino community in Boston.
Morales, who came to the United States when he was 9 years old and worked as a campesino in California, is now executive director of a network that reaches approximately 100,000 U.S. Hispanics and one million others in Mexico.
In the very early hours of the morning, when the campesinos start their day, they can switch on their radios and receive the news, as well as listen to old-time Ranchera music, and later mariachi music. Throughout the morning Radio Bilingue listeners get folk music from Mexico. Then in the afternoon the most popular block of programming, Tejano music, is heard. From 4 to 6 p.m., the show is in English and features salsa, reggae, and Latin jazz.
During the early evening, each individual station in the network splits into a different format, which includes a mix of Mexican traditional and Mexican pop music with public service announcements geared for at-risk youth. Other stations play mainstream jazz or programs for Hmong Southeast Asians.
At this time Radio Bilingue also offers the English-speaking growers tips on labor regulations and policy; how to improve their crop yield; and information on how to treat their workers better.
Operating out of Fresno, California, Radio Bilingue was established with a grant of $164,000 from the Campaign for Human Development. The network operates three stations in the San Joaquin Valley and one in the Imperial Valley near San Diego.
Funding is still difficult for independent stations such as these. Radio Bilingue must scramble to find the dollars. Morales does not accept donations from any company that is boycotted by the AFL-CIO or from liquor or cigarette companies. The station must make do on individual donations, foundation grants, and production contracts such as those awarded by state agencies.
Morales has also established Noticiero Latino, a news service which offers 10 minutes of daily news in 40 U.S. markets and 40 markets in Mexico. It focuses on news in the United States and Mexico that impacts the Latino community in the United States, covering issues of health, immigration, civil rights, and human rights.
Such an independent community radio station as Radio Bilingue has not yet come to San Antonio. Until it does, Antonia Garza must make do with less progressive Spanish-language radio. When it is available, she will have found a medium she can trust.
Sidebar: The Role of Hispanic Journalists
MEMBERS of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists discussed the role of the Hispanic journalist in the mainstream media at a recent conference in Albuquerque. Caught between editors who don't understand the Hispanic community and a Hispanic community that is not used to having access to the media, Hispanic journalists run the risk of frustration, exhaustion, and burnout.
These journalists are acutely aware of the perspective with which Hispanics view issues such as immigration, the environment, the North American Free Trade agreement, and education. They agreed that the mainstream media cover free trade issues from the point of view of U.S. labor, the U.S. government, and/or Mexican officials. "Most news is about U.S. citizens' fear of losing jobs; we don't hear about entire Mexican families losing jobs," said one reporter.
"People come in and they think they have the whole story," another said, referring to reporters who may speak some Spanish but do not understand the people living on the border. National news, they charge, suffers from a Northeastern mentality. There is "woeful ignorance" among U.S. mainstream media about Hispanic community issues.
Five years ago there were only two issues covered along the border region: immigration and drugs. But there has been some improvement regarding border coverage; it is in vogue because the United States has a vested interest. But the challenge is to make this a continuing trend instead of a fad, journalists said.
Whether issues of style (the National Association of Hispanic Journalists does not use the term "illegal aliens" when referring to undocumented residents) or substance (the attitude of the mainstream media is "our readers are not interested in that"), there was loud agreement that "there is a mental wall that has to be bridged somehow" between Anglo editors and Hispanic reporters.
Lillie Rodulfo was a journalist with The San Antonio Light and lived in San Antonio, Texas, when this article appeared.
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