Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy 9780814760369

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Sounds of Belonging

CRITICAL CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

General Editors: Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kent A. Ono Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media Isabel Molina-Guzmán

Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture Sarah Banet-Weiser

The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet Thomas Streeter

Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones Cara Wallis

Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance Kelly A. Gates

Love and Money: Queers, Class, and Cultural Production Lisa Henderson

Critical Rhetorics of Race Edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono

Cached: Decoding the Internet in Global Popular Culture Stephanie Ricker Schulte

Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures Edited by Radha S. Hegde Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times Edited by Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 Evelyn Alsultany Visualizing Atrocity: Arendt, Evil, and the Optics of Thoughtlessness Valerie Hartouni The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences Katherine Sender

Black Television Travels: African American Media around the Globe Timothy Havens Citizenship Excess: Latino/ as, Media, and the Nation Hector Amaya Feeling Mediated: A History of Communication Technology and Emotion in America Brenton J. Malin Suiting Up: Cultures of Management in the Media Industries Edited by Derek Johnson, Derek Kompare, and Avi Santo Sounds of Belonging: U.S. SpanishLanguage Radio and Public Advocacy Dolores Inés Casillas

Sounds of Belonging U.S. Spanish-Language Radio and Public Advocacy

Dolores Inés Casillas

a NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2014 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Casillas, Dolores Inés. Sounds of belonging : U.S. Spanish-language radio and public advocacy / Dolores Inés Casillas. pages cm --  (Critical cultural communication) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8147-7065-8 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-8147-7024-5 (pb) 1.  Radio broadcasting--United States. 2.  Radio broadcasting--Social aspects--United States. 3.  Hispanic Americans and mass media. 4.  Radio broadcasting--Political aspects--United States. 5.  Mass media and immigrants--United States. 6.  Hispanic Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.--United States.  I. Title. PN1991.3.U6C365 2014 791.440973--dc23 2014020799 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook

Para Dolores

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

A Note on Language

xiii

Introduction: Public Advocacy on U.S. Spanish-Language Radio

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1. Acoustic Allies: Early Latin-Themed and Spanish-Language Radio Broadcasts, 1920s–1940s

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2. Mixed Signals: Developing Bilingual Chicano Radio, 1960s–1980s

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3. Sounds of Surveillance: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio Patrols La Migra

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4. Pun Intended: Listening to Gendered Politics on Morning Radio Shows

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5. Desperately Seeking Dinero: Calculating Language and Race 127 within Radio Ratings Afterword

147

Notes

153

Bibliography

183

Index

207

About the Author

221

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Acknowledgments

I spent many mornings revising this manuscript at coffee shops located in busy strip malls. The early morning radio played by Latino workers at nearby eateries inspired me to see this project to fruition. I thank them for their soulful gritos and for turning the volume up. This project began years ago at the University of Michigan almost immediately after I read Susan J. Douglas’s Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination and Frances R. Aparicio’s Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures. Their insights on sound, race, and the politics of listening remain present throughout these pages. I owe this project’s ambitious mixed methods and attention to early radio to Catherine Benamou. Throughout my professional development, Adaljiza Sosa Riddell, Rosa Linda Fregoso, and Aída Hurtado have all served in some capacity as nurturing academic madrinas. For their feminist mentorship and frequent reminders to always craft and own my voice, I cannot thank them enough. I also owe a great deal of thanks to friends and colleagues who joined me in writing sessions or generously commented on previous renditions of these chapters. I thank Mary Bucholtz, Pat Zavella, Yeidy Rivero, Josh Kun, Arlene Dávila, Angharad Valdivia, Robin Li, Jess Rigelhaupt, and Sergio de la Mora. My dearest friend Nicholas Syrett read every word of this manuscript more than once and used his trademark wit to cajole me through revisions. I am grateful to have someone so generous, smart, and humorous be my writing partner of nearly ten years. Of course, all errors and omissions in these pages are mine. I have also been fortunate to be a part of a group of feminist professors who consistently renew my love for researching and writing on Latina/o studies: Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Deborah Paredez, Deborah R. Vargas, and María Elena Cepeda. At the same time, Elena Gutiérrez, Erica Rios, Lisa Lapeyrouse-Edmonds, Élida Bautista, and Ana Christina Ramon have provided timely doses of Chicana love whenever >> ix 

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George Lipsitz, John S. W. Park, Howie Winant, Juan Vicente Palerm, Jim Lee, the late Clyde Woods, Sonya Baker, Joann Erving, Barbara Walker, and the institutional support of Dean Melvin Oliver. It takes a village of fellow moms to talk away the occasional mommy guilt. Annie Yasko, Justina Pham, Sherry Hikita, Meghan Henry, Katy Pearce, Holly Angel, Monica Eckert, Kimberly Rockwell, Lovita Liboso, and Kat Jacobs have consoled me throughout my attempts to achieve a work-family “balance.” My heartfelt thanks to Carmen, Magda, and Herendida, three women who have taken major roles in raising our children and have helped keep our household chugging. It is largely because of their emotional labor as child care providers that my husband Andrew and I are able to pursue our own career goals. Several family members have offered much needed distractions and support throughout the years. My in-laws, Dr. George and Beverly Csordás, provided child care near deadlines and made sure our visits to their home served as vacations. I thank them as well as Lorelei Vargas, Edward Fergus, Leslie Kirkland, Eric Almanza, Greg Shaw, José Yuri Casillas, and Ceasar Ortiz for rarely asking me about the progress of this book. My father, José Gonzalo Casillas, accompanied me to remote radio stations, relayed feedback on my ideas, and, as he does with each of his children, reminded me at every conversation to “dale ganas.” His death both inspired yet made it difficult to bring this book to a close. Last, friends have often commented on the unique sisterhood I share with my two sisters, Larisa Casillas and Juliana Almanza. We are each other’s greatest confidante and cheerleader; and we worry about each other much more than we do about ourselves. Larisa, eight years my senior, raised Juliana and me to be passionate and tireless advocates for those most disenfranchised. These pages are a testimony to her spirit. I thank Eric Zinner, Alicia Nadkarni, and the editorial team from NYU Press for their encouragement and patience as I toiled through revisions alongside maternity leaves and bereavement. The series editors, Kent Ono and Sarah Banet-Weiser, as well as two anonymous readers provided astute comments and made “advocacy” a much more central theme. Of course, words can’t capture how much I owe my husband, Andrew T. Csordás. Not only has he made great sacrifices for my career, he has selflessly made sure that my accomplishments are owned by

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and collectively turned their microphones into public podiums to rally support and attendance. Los Angeles Times writer Joel Stein titled his column “500,000 and No One Called Me?,” capturing his surprise at the segregated existence between Spanish- and English-language U.S. media.3 Despite the glossy mainstream press coverage of Spanish-language radio hosts—many of whom were male—these historic marches were orchestrated by a national coalition of community members, labor unions, religious groups, and nonprofit organizations, many of which were headed by women who were largely left out of the credits. These radio activities testify to the mounting significance of Spanish-language radio—its tendency to rely upon the male voice and its unique, interactive, real-time application in Latino immigrant communities that remain, despite booming population numbers, largely excluded from English-language political conversations as full-fledged legal or even consumer citizens. Over the Spanish-language airwaves, U.S. and Mexican politics are heard as two different forms of broadcasts. In the more traditional (Anglo-U.S.) vein, Spanish-language radio invites politicians to join them over the airwaves in interactive formats that encourage listener dialogue. Spanish-language programming facilitates on-air discussions by using English-to-Spanish translators and by playing the role of on-air linguistic and cultural translator between political institutions and listenerships. But Spanish-language radio has also redressed conventional notions of politics by assigning local resources and service agencies prominent positions within on-air broadcasts with listeners. The latter assists listeners in advocacy and grassroots organizing actions, which are considered of paramount importance to legally vulnerable listeners who are trying to keep abreast of changes in immigration legislation. This book highlights how U.S. Spanish-language radio, across the twentieth century, has capitalized—quite lucratively—on the conversation around immigration. Debates on citizenship in the legal and cultural contexts have long overwhelmed the bodies and livelihoods of Mexicans. As immigrants and communities of color are excluded from the larger American body politic, media and popular culture offer feelings of belonging or inclusion. Spanish-language radio stations, on both commercial and community bandwidths, organize the majority of their daily programming around the ongoing politics of citizenship,

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format with guest doctors, attorneys, or pop psychologists; and evening shows are dedicated to teary song requests or long-distance saludos (shout-outs) across state and national lines. Within these various show formats, the topic of immigration dominates the on-air conversations. Listeners hear frequent references to la remesa (economic remittances) by morning show hosts, callers ask attorneys about paperwork received from the Department of Homeland Security, guest doctors are asked to “translate” U.S. medical prescriptions into a familiar Mexican context, and female callers seek the support of pop psychologists when dealing with long-distance familial relationships. The public, yet unarchived, nature of Spanish-language radio, together with its anonymity, makes it possible for radio programs to swiftly accommodate fluctuations in immigration law and politics. Often aired live, these dialogues carry elements of an oral tradition long familiar to Mexican and Chicano communities. Thus, Latino listeners are drawn to radio for more than the musical sounds of homelands left behind; from radio they also seek guidance on how to navigate their newfound social and political lives as immigrants. This easy access to immediate legal information, culturally specific health guidance, and local resources is indicative of the political efficacy of talk-centered programming. Specifically, these on-air exchanges broadcast listeners’ migrant sensibilities and highlight their economic and racialized status in the United States. In many ways, onair dialogues between callers and radio hosts have become a hallmark of contemporary Spanish-language radio, fostering station loyalty precisely because the bulk of the conversations rest on national and transnational matters.8 Spanish-language broadcasts along the West Coast have long provided nationalist sustenance for a Mexican-dominant listenership that is yearning for an audible, familiar semblance of “home.” The encasing of home within quotations highlights the oftentimes unsettled, emotional, and physical displacements and renewed place making experienced by immigrants and communities of color. According to David Morley, home does not necessarily “signify a physical entity fixed in a particular place, but rather a mobile symbolic habitat, a performative way of life and of doing things in which one makes one’s home while in movement.”9 Within immigrant-directed broadcasts, listening to

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have become sites for community building, nostalgia, and advocacy across national geographical boundaries.17 From birthright citizenship and access to health care to extending immigration agent duties onto local enforcement, not only do campaigns around immigrant-based issues cast Latino immigrants in negative ways but such stories soon go viral in the English-language news press before they are enacted into law. The bad publicity itself tacitly constructs a racialized climate of suspicion that manifests in anti-immigrant legislation in which, for instance, speaking Spanish is frowned upon (anti–bilingual education initiatives), standing outside Home Depot stores is discouraged (local “loitering” ordinances), or one’s legal status is questioned based on phenotypic features (Arizona SB 1070). Legal efforts have been made to transfer the state’s power of surveillance to citizens, bringing the language, mobility, and bodies of immigrants under renewed scrutiny. The post-9/11 moment, in particular, has ushered in racial and linguistic profiling under the discursive guise of “patriotism” and “national security.” These legislative and public-sanctioned “gazes” are heard and disputed throughout different broadcast segments of Spanish-language radio. Trade magazines credit the astounding growth of Spanish-language radio to the increase in the Latino population, a convenient “cause and effect” rationale.18 Radio industries routinely tout that Latino listeners (Spanish-dominant or not) tune in to radio an average of three hours a week more than the “average” U.S. radio listener, with an impressive 13.5 percent of all U.S. radio shows now broadcasting in Spanish.19 (In fact, when given the option of eliminating either the Internet or radio, 67 percent of Latinos surveyed chose to keep radio and oust the Internet.)20 In 1980 the Federal Communications Commission identified sixty-seven Spanish-oriented radio stations on the air. By 2000, the figure had increased dramatically to nearly six hundred, signifying a near 500 percent increase.21 The latest, 2009 figures list over one thousand radio stations broadcasting exclusively in Spanish.22 Since the 1990s, Spanish-language radio stations have unseated their English-language counterparts from number-one standings in major radio markets, including Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and New York City.23 Even the airwaves of “nontraditional” Latino locales—such as Salt Lake City,

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that counterpublics function as sites of repudiation and regroupment, a parallel space to circulate oppositional interpretations of identities and desires. As an aural stage, Spanish-language radio allows Latinos the opportunity to retreat and deliberate outside the surveillance of dominant society,32 and engage emotionally and economically with more than one national body by also affirming their distinct class and ethnic identities.33 Radio is generally seen as an archaic medium: communication scholars frequently point to its use in postsocialist or developing countries but do not often address its role within immigrant or communities of color here in the United States.34 In Sounds of Belonging, the literature is reterritorialized to highlight Spanish-language radio’s racialized, marginal, yet profitable existence in the United States. I argue that radio’s accessibility to working-class U.S. Latinos, coupled with its assertion of Spanish within an English-only, anti-immigrant environment, merits equal recognition to smartphones, the Internet, and the coveted DVR. At a time when visuality overwhelms most media formats (film, movies, television), sound offers a unique platform for a listenership that is characterized by language, class, mobility, and, for many, legal status. Just as the Internet is credited with collapsing public and private spheres by channeling “public” information into the “private” spheres of homes and bodies via pockets and purses, radio offers a unique and comparable productivity and immediacy for underaccounted-for populations. We can understand the relationship among citizenship, media, and globalization for legally vulnerable listeners through the study of Spanish-language radio. With its predominantly working-class listenership, radio accompanies Latinos to their places of employment. In many ways, globalization’s impact on labor has also influenced Latino listening patterns. Liza Catanzarite directs attention to “brown-collar” occupations or the lowlevel service sectors of work disproportionately filled by immigrants. These positions within the construction, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors are usually those of painters, field hands, and dishwashers.35 For instance, it is not surprising to (over)hear Spanish-language radio from the kitchens of restaurants, outside construction sites, or on hotel housekeeping carts. It is also common to see Spanish-language radio stations cater to a working-class listenership by advertising their call

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number of bilingual employees, charged with inspecting complaints filed against radio programs, means that Big Brother remains largely absent from Spanish-language radio. This book traces how an overwhelmingly Mexican listenership largely characterized by a history of Spanish conquest and colonialism, proletarianization, and political disenfranchisement and, to a great extent, by the language of Spanish has shaped the development of U.S. Spanish-language radio throughout the twentieth century. It joins Félix Gutiérrez and Jorge Reina Schement’s 1979 text Spanish-Language Radio in the Southwestern United States in asserting that Latinos favor listening to radio for more than its portable and cost-efficient capabilities. Focus groups conducted for this book with thirty-three working-class, immigrant Latina radio listeners revealed that for all but two people, their first purchase in the United States was a radio set. Despite the debut of satellite dishes beaming Spanish-language television channels or Internet offerings of Latino-tailored websites (e.g., “iTunes Latino”), Latinos rely much more than their English counterparts on broadcast radio as a source for news and entertainment.40 The discussions in Sounds of Belonging focus on Spanish-language radio on the West Coast and, in doing so, concentrate on the Mexicandominant and growing Central American listenership. Los Angeles represents the number one (and at times number two) radio market in the United States and boasts a 45 percent Latino population. The first widely recognized Spanish-language radio host, Pedro González, began his career in the 1930s with a Los Angelino listenership. Moreover, the first community radio stations in the United States to broadcast in Spanish beamed from California and Washington State. Perhaps most obviously, the proximity to Mexico has led to a dominant number of Mexican-origin Latinos in the region. Thus the orientation in Sounds of Belonging is largely based on the radio culture found along the West Coast. Spanish-language radio does indeed have its own distinct playlists, personalities, and agendas across different Latino communities and regions in the United States. Yet some elements of Puerto Rican and Cuban-led radio in the East and Midwest are similar to those found in radio broadcasting in the West. For instance during the cold winter months, radio hosts in Detroit, Chicago, and New York often provide

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interdisciplinary, multimethodological investigation not only fills an archival absence, but also enables a more informed and broad-based understanding and cultural use of all U.S. radio systems. The majority of radio studies by cultural historians have focused on the famed “Golden Age of Radio” from the 1920s to the 1950s.44 Often these cultural histories depict a rich, and sometimes romanticized, narrative of U.S. radio that tragically ends with the arrival of television. Most of this work centers exclusively on English-language radio with scant attention given to U.S. radio’s ethnic, immigrant, and multilingual listenership.45 In focusing on Spanish-language broadcast, this study opens a new area of inquiry that sidesteps and complicates monolingual and binary black/white cultural approaches to radio studies.46 Ultimately, the discussions in Sounds of Belonging disrupt and complement U.S. radio historiographies that overwhelmingly focus on English-language programming, national programming, and “domestic” audiences. In fact those of us who contribute to radio studies should reconsider calling the earlier half of the last century the “Golden Era” since the contemporaneous era proves that radio is thriving, especially for Spanish-language radio, within the digital era. *

*

*

The discussions in Sounds of Belonging encourage using radio and sound as a point of departure for studying Latino issues of race, gender, and citizenship. They engage the theories and methods used most prominently in the larger fields of media studies, cultural studies, and sound studies to argue that the feat of listening carries provocative value within a visually saturated society. Over the airways, the voice becomes the stand-in for the physical body of listeners. The intimacy entailed in radio listening, coupled with the inherent anonymity made possible through sound with no image, has proved an efficacious condition of radio for many Latino immigrant listeners. With one’s legal status increasingly consequential, sound offers an important site for the vulnerability of listeners. Over the air, radio hosts and listeners make themselves present through their voice and often identify themselves by a first name. Real identities are largely masked by telephone calls, and stories quickly disappear over the ether, important facets of radio

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radio) or within ethnic U.S. neighborhoods (as staunchly argued on Spanish-language radio). The distinction highlighted how Mexicans located afar on the other side of the border were depicted or even envied as “cultured” while Mexicans in the United States were racialized as unruly and yet-to-be-assimilated citizens. This historical imbalance between U.S. attitudes toward Spanish-speaking residents of Mexico and greater Latin America and Spanish-speaking U.S. residents mirrors contemporary immigration debates. For instance, Josh Kun notes that Americans’ perception of Mexicans imagine them living “down there,” across the border in Mexico, and certainly not “up here” or even next door.48 While Pan-American-sponsored programs attracted English-dominant radio listeners, Mexican-led Spanish-language broadcasts courted Mexican communities residing in the United States, gathering momentum in the 1930s. The United States not only reaped more than half of Mexico’s territory in 1848, it also acquired a sizeable Mexican population. Soon after, the turbulent Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) brought an additional nine hundred thousand emigrants north, along with countless others.49 Radio programs such as Las Madrugadores (Early Risers) and Las Mañanitas (Mornings) were relegated to the unfavorable early-morning hours, reflecting Mexicans’ marginalization within U.S. society. In the ensuing decades, Chicanos tried to establish bilingual (Spanish-English) and commercial-free radio. In chapter 2, I analyze how the culture movement of the 1960s and 1970s helped set the stage for bilingual radio programming in the 1970s and 1980s. In English-language mainstream media, discussions of excessive population growth were often coupled with immigration debates to create a heightened perception (and fear) of a browning and increasingly bilingual United States. By 1975, the U.S. Census Bureau tallied 11.2 million Spanish-surname individuals, with a vast majority—7.7 million—of Mexican origin. California in particular doubled its Hispanic population between 1970 and 1980.50 National, racialized discussions on America’s “minority underclass” soon followed. Chicano activists in the West established bilingual and bicultural airwaves as a form of signifying their sociocultural positioning as being from neither here (United States) nor there (Latin

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with their current shoestring budgets. Whereas the 1970s radio operations benefited from foundation funding, Spanish-language community media have increasingly relied on larger public institutions such as the CPB, underwriting fees from corporations, and listener pledges. This three-pronged formula for funding community radio places Spanishlanguage radio at a financial disadvantage, particularly because listeners, as mentioned earlier, earn an average annual salary of twenty-five thousand dollars.52 The energy used to motivate community broadcasts in the 1970s and 1980s has largely waned with both the movement’s demise and the government’s cuts on public broadcast spending. As community radio struggled to maintain its place on the airwaves, the commercial counterpart of Spanish-language radio has experienced unprecedented growth since the 1980s. Although just 67 Spanish-oriented radio stations were on the air in 1980, the number had swelled to 390 by 1990, to nearly 600 by 2000, and, a decade later, to approximately 1,300 FCC-licensed Spanish-language radio stations.53 Newfound corporate interest in the “Hispanic consumer” has provided fresh sources of revenue on commercial stations for Spanish-language programming. The 1980s’ rechristening as the “Decade of the Hispanic” and the late 1990s as the “Latin Media Boom” both helped generate mainstream (English-language, corporate) interest in all things Latin.54 Yet, the loss of more vibrant funding for community radio and the increased ad revenue for commercial radio resulted in less communal and more business-savvy, genre-driven approaches to broadcasting. Both community and commercial radio have capitalized on immigration-themed programming, especially within moments of heightened immigration debates and legislative developments. Programming around the 1986 passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Control Act, the 1990s’ border enforcement policies and subsequent desert deaths, and the post-9/11 moment all reveal the significance and urgency of Spanish-language programming. Chapter 3 analyzes the emergence of Spanish-language radio’s interactive, real-time, talk-based formats and how conversations on immigration have been rendered audibly, and often painfully, since the 1980s. Immigration advocates help Latino listeners navigate increasingly complex immigration laws and provide free access to Spanish-speaking attorneys for Latinos seeking legal residency or dual citizenship. Listeners, a disproportionate

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discussions of U.S. politics and political institutions use radio to form a “disembodied presence,” an audible reminder that the voice and the body are difficult to separate.57 Within this acoustic space, men are not reprimanded for speaking Spanish, being undocumented, or working in feminized labor roles, such as mopping floors or washing dishes. I contend that, confounded by issues of class, race, and citizenship, Latino listeners are refashioned as “anti–girly men” at the expense of Latinas who are relegated to being subjects of linguistic puns through off-color jokes. The popularity of these radio shows is indicative of the troubling gender dynamics of the current transnational moment. Because radio, in any language, has always privileged a male’s voice over the airways, in chapter 4 I deliberately make space for the voices of female listeners. Focus groups of thirty-three immigrant Central American and Mexican women, conducted at a nonprofit adult educational center in San Francisco, California, revealed how women “listen” to broader gender anxieties. Interviews explored focus group participants’ thoughts on the linguistic representation of women in these shows, particularly as callers who pose sexual questions. Participants’ rich responses documented their own struggles for equal representation both off and on the airwaves. Many of these women characterized El Cucuy’s antics as a form of “linguistic violence,” with the capability of producing “real” effects on the self-esteem and bodies of Latinas. Their candid responses speak to Nancy Fraser’s cautions that subaltern counterpublics can also serve as repressive, antiegalitarian, and undemocratic spaces.58 The concluding chapter expands the scope of listening by investigating the institutional practice of “audience surveillance,” whereby the media industries track and categorize listeners. Specifically, chapter 5 examines the “audience-making” process, or the means by which audience measurements reenvision listeners as desirable commodities when considering potential advertising revenue. Inspired by Arlene Dávila’s 2001 ethnographic study of the U.S. Latino advertising industry in Latinos Inc.: The Making and Marketing of a People, this chapter examines how third-party professionals, namely Arbitron, the nation’s dominant radio ratings company, use survey data, statistics, and other “objective” modes to craft and sell Latino listeners in exchange for ad revenue. Public strife as reported in trade magazines and business pages

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A clear disjuncture existed between the friendly on-air imaginings of Latin Americans and the actual legal and social controversies that plagued Mexican bodies, especially those in the United States. American-sponsored programming peddled themes of hemispheric unity, despite the prevailing nativist attitudes, separating domestic and international agendas. American listeners developed imaginary friendships with Mexicans over there, whereas Mexican communities living here were depicted as unruly neighbors. These U.S.-sponsored radio programs produced a cultured and sophisticated image of Latin America for American ears precisely because of the negative perceptions of Mexicans from the 1920s to the 1950s. The discrepancies made between Latin Americans and Latinos in the United States resounded larger unjust anxieties about incorporating Mexicans into the U.S. citizenry. The cooperation of several Mexican consuls in these American-sponsored broadcasts suggests that Mexican politicians chose to participate in this positive projection of Latin America as part of their own efforts to “Mexicanize” their diaspora. Indeed, both Joy Elizabeth Hayes and Sonia Robles argue that the Mexican government used radio as a part of the post–Mexican Revolution 1920s era. Radio, as enlisted by Mexico, not only aimed to rebuild a patriotic citizenry but made sure programming for Mexicans in Mexico promoted literacy and sobriety with the more folkloric and nationalist elements of Mexican culture.10 The U.S. government held a tight reign on radio stations within the United States, yet along the U.S.-Mexico border the powerful transmitters from Mexico boosted Mexican-regulated broadcasts across the border to a growing diaspora. Nearly nine hundred thousand Mexicans migrated to the United States between 1910 and 1920 during the turbulent years of the Mexican Revolution. Both U.S.- and Mexican-sponsored broadcasts strategically used radio to recast Mexico and other Latin American countries as modern, cosmopolitan, and highly cultured. While the first half of this chapter outlines the excessive on-air flirting from U.S.-sponsored radio shows, the latter half argues that U.S.based Spanish-language radio, led by Mexicans living in the United States, best captured the ongoing racialization of Mexicans in the United States, moments of repatriation, and the daily experiences of living as immigrants—agendas not addressed by both U.S.- and Mexicansponsored radio. In the end, these U.S. radio shows did little politically

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U.S. radio, in its commercial infancy, offered a medley of radio programming that included live broadcasts of music, sports, comedy skits, and, eventually, studio recorded music, soaps, and quiz shows. Radio of the 1920s and 1930s also showcased a variety of foreign-language shows that conveyed the belief that learning a second language signified a cultured or modern way of being. The classified sections of newspapers, pointing to the popularity of learning a foreign language, were littered with ads from private companies, advertising their instructional services. The placement of Spanish instruction in English-language newspapers confirmed that potential students were English-dominant and presumably white readers. Letters to the editor showed listeners’ requesting foreign language instruction, specifically Spanish instruction, over the radio. In 1929, a New York Times article reported on the popularity of Spanish among New York high schools, naming Spanish classes as the most “popular modern language in the evening curriculum.” Also, despite the fact that proficiency in German and French was required for those entering the medical profession, the same newspaper reported its surprise at learning that Spanish—an elective course—had higher enrollments at Columbia University. By 1939, the U.S. secretary of state had publicly characterized Spanish as a modern, cultured, language: “Spanish is the language of 18 of the American republics. It is the vehicle of a highly developed, vigorous culture, and literature; it possesses extraordinary vitality and a vigorous tenacity in all those regions in which it has been used.” Spanish was defended as a key language to learn based on U.S. proximity to Latin America. As I later explain, however, this same period witnessed “Americanization” programs geared at stripping Mexicans of their native Spanish in the Southwest. Whereas learning a second language signaled cultural capital, Spanish for Mexicans became a marker of race and incompetence. Spanish, outside the boundaries of the United States, referred to a national body and sometimes cultural sophistication. Once it crossed the border, Spanish invoked unwelcoming racial and ethnic connotations, especially when used by native speakers. During the 1920s, radio sets and listening were limited to Americans who earned “higher-than-average incomes.”13 Compared to going to the movies or buying magazines, purchasing a radio set was more

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to these “native” sounds. The discursive distancing, through the use of “native” much more than the blatancy of “South America,” was both instrumental and pivotal in later imaginings of Mexican-led Spanishlanguage radio broadcasts. Inevitably, it set up demarcations between Latin Americans and U.S. Latinos so that previously conceived perceptions of Latin Americans produced by Americans became the unfair classed and cultural references with which to evaluate all U.S. Latinos. Listings of radio programs published in 1920s and 1930s newspapers described cultural, artistic, and educational programming, which often featured tenor soloists, guitar pieces, and female soprano singers, most notably from Mexico.21 Radio stations from urban California to rural Pennsylvania publicized these shows as “special” programs, suggesting their occasional place on radio’s rotation. Because of the nonsystemic scheduling of American-sponsored broadcasts on Latin America, it is difficult to gauge what percentage of total U.S. radio broadcasts were composed of these shows. There are, however, other indications that gesture to their popularity within early radio. Rather than refer to radio in the traditional usage of “Radioland,” a 1926 article made reference to the on-air success of “Radiolando,” pointing to Latin-theme and Spanish-language broadcasts by adding an “o” and thus giving the illusion of a Spanish word.22 In another instance, a New York Times radio listing for July 20, 1937, profiled ten “outstanding events on all stations” prior to listing detailed radio schedules for the greater radio region. Three of those top ten were Latin-themed shows: A Pan-American Radio Station, The Other Americas, and From Mexico: Festival of Music. By 1942, the Washington Post reported that WRC’s Down Mexico Way “originally slated for an eight-week run has proved so popular that N.B.C. is extending the series to 13-weeks.”23 This reporting indicates that major newspapers considered the programming to be of wide enough interest to warrant signaling additional attention to its presence on the airwaves. The strides taken by the Pan-American Union worked to solidify Latin-themed programming over the airwaves. The Pan-American Union, a coalition of U.S. and Latin American government officials and economic interests, sought to mend hemispheric tensions by fostering cultural exchanges on radio.24 In 1927, the U.S. Federal Radio Commission granted the Pan-American Union two short-wave transmissions for the specific purpose of beaming Washington-based radio programs

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the station debuted a Spanish-language program at the then unfavorable radio time of two thirty in the afternoon. Spanish over the airwaves reflected a language of diplomacy used to verify government relationships between Mexico and the United States. Its tact shifted from international to domestic as radio stations slowly began to turn their attention to Mexican residents in the United States.

Radiolando’s Lexicon Much of these Latin-themed, and occasionally Spanish-language, programs geared toward English-language listeners centered on music. One article commented, “As all Latins are more or less musical, these peoples were certain to excel in this quality.”30 Music itself became associated with Latin Americans, specifically their inherent ability to play music and dance. Not only were few of the songs played translated from Spanish to English, a 1925 article suggested that listeners supply their own imaginative lyrics if they did not speak Spanish. In many instances the words of the [Spanish] songs have been translated into English. [Although] it was found upon translating love songs that the words were all about the same. All lovers apparently use the same terms . . . therefore, it was decided that a translation of the words of love songs was a waste of time. Now the announcer simply says, “This is a love song” and the listener may furnish his own words, if he does not understand the language in which it is sung.31

Through the introduction of Latin America through an overly simplistic context of love, American listeners were encouraged to listen to the “sounds” and less to the actual lyrics. Descriptions of the musicality of language clearly emphasized sound over lyrical meaning.32 Aside from its communicative function, translation creates an interstitial space that informs cultural practices and identities.33 With the indifferent attitude toward translating songs from Spanish to English—considered a “waste of time”—mutual understandings are conspicuously absent and suggest that sounds alone took precedence. Often, programs offered loose English-language descriptions—not translations—of what non-Englishlanguage music and lyrics conveyed, further adding to the problem.

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site of contact with other bodies.”38 In each of these instances above, listeners use Spanish to imagine a particular gendered, classed, and national body. Few of these special Spanish-language programs, however, actually featured native or folkloric songs from the musician’s home countries. Mexican radio singers often complained of singing the same repertoire of songs at the request of radio stations, “a lot of songs with ‘youpee’ and ‘aye yai yai.’”39 A radio review mentioned the pairing of the Mexican national anthem with the Star-Spangled Banner: “The Mexican national anthem was sung by everyone [in attendance], and with his usual delicate sensibility Jose Arias [radio musical guest] did not forget to play the Star Spangled Banner.”40 As a courteous guest on U.S. radio, Arias paid homage by playing both anthems, a gesture worthy of newsprint. An artist’s “foreignness” was often marked by language, but, more specifically, by accent. For instance, in 1934, Sonya Troyano sang a selection of musical pieces in Spanish, Italian, and French for concert attendees and radio listeners with honored guest Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance. After the singing was over, the Washington Post reported on the disappointment felt by both attendees and listeners when Ms. Troyano spoke an “accent-less” English and identified as an American.41 With the headline “Singer an American to Own Detriment,” the article described Ms. Troyano’s less-than-fair reception at events where audiences knew of her American identity. The apparent reference to “Ms. Troyano” and not “Señorita Troyana” was another indication that Ms. Troyano was less than authentic. Ms. Troyano’s acoustic appeal faded when audiences could no longer exoticize her by way of an accent or other trace of “foreignness.” The article noted, “Audiences still demand that ‘foreign-touch’ in artists.” Part of Ms. Troyano’s fame clearly relied on audiences and guests believing she was authentically “non-American.” On the surface, this form of tropicalizing performers indicates how signifiers of accent and language, via musical performance, helped make the performance much more enjoyable. These othering practices, however, reinforced a racially white American identity with its coupling of an “accent-less” English. The most consistently found Spanish-language musician on U.S. radio from approximately 1928 to 1940 with a rather loyal radio following was Tito Guízar, a tenor from Mexico and later a Mexican film

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images of jovial relations between U.S. and Latin America. Geographical boundaries were tightly bound through these terms with assumptions made that people and languages stay put on their side of the fence. In many ways, the same metaphor of “neighbor” later validated increasing anti-immigrant sentiment whose arguments for wanting to restrict immigration were based on Mexicans’ seemingly unruly and not-soneighborly behavior. Radio shows geared toward our southern neighbor also allowed U.S. radio listeners to acoustically visit these foreign regions. These bilingual (Spanish-English) broadcasts served as a window for U.S. audiences intrigued with Spanish-speaking countries. To use Raymond Williams’s formulation, these types of broadcastings were a form of “mobile privatization” where listeners “visit” distant locations through sound without leaving the comfort of their home. “Going places” while staying put enables listeners to “remain in the realm of familiar ontological security and yet to experience the vicarious thrill of exhibited difference.”46 A 1925 radio schedule listing Travelogue: A Trip Through South America implied that the evening’s program featured an acoustic voyage through South America.47 That same year, a review of a radio program featuring Mexican music favorably described the program as dreamy, fascinating waltzes that brought back vivid memories to listeners who have visited the Spanish countries . . . there were spirited [musical pieces] abounding with fire and rim, and a Mexican fox trot which tingled thousands of feet that never trod Spanish soil. A Mexican program that was truly Mexican throughout, bringing from Radioland a storm of approval and answering the new voice from the south with . . . joyous congratulations and assurance of lasting friendship.48

This program, according to the reviewer, had the acoustic effect of taking the listener back to Spanish (language) countries. The effect on the body (“tingled feet”) proved that the program was “truly Mexican throughout.” The music’s capability to take listeners to Mexico—even if they had never crossed the border—made cultural exchanges (“friendships”) possible. Showcasing foreign politicians or citing educational facts about Latin Americans stressed a radio program’s “foreign” appeal. Such programs

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instances of mentioning Mexicans in the United States, the statement emphasized the sojourner state of Mexicans. Although this program showed the inclusiveness of Mexicans in the United States, its business sponsorship highlighted the undercurrent of economic capital at stake. Most important, the inclusion of Mexican consuls and ambassadors, coupled with the cooperation of entrepreneurs like Mauricio Calderón, exemplified how Latin Americans—not just Americans—also financially benefited from constructing a romanticized and cultured projection of Mexico and greater Latin America. Calderón would go on to own the only Spanish-language music and record store in Los Angeles in the late 1920s. His brother-in-law Dioniso Acosta would later form Agencia Radio-difusora Hispanamericana (Spanish American Broadcasting Agency) in an effort to sell radio programs to U.S. radio stations courting Mexican residents in Southern California.54 As this chapter later explains, Acosta and others joined the landscape of Spanish-language radio by focusing on Mexican-centered broadcasts exclusively for Mexicans. While for decades many English-language radio stations projected an affluent and enlightening image of foreign Mexican national artists, the southwestern region of the United States —where the majority of Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans resided—had a more tumultuous presence both off and on the airwaves. Radio and film constructed an aural and visually cultured profile of Spanish-speaking communities in Latin America. English-language listeners were welcomed to visit over the airways and, in turn, imagined themselves as cultured, good Americans. In the popular press, the actual bodily presence of Mexicans communicated a dissimilar image.

Mexican-Led U.S. Radio (1920s–1940s) Physically present within the “real” public sphere yet imagined as largely “foreign” within the landscape of radio, Mexicans in the United States began broadcasting Spanish-language programming as early as the 1920s. Part of the invisibility of Mexicans in the United States, particularly in California, had to do with social perceptions of Mexicans entangled with economic insecurities and national anxieties about race. Mexicans built ethnic enclaves, through Spanish-language broadcasts,

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via Spanish-language programming to join the airwaves while appeasing station owners’ concerns about the high costs of radio and vacant unpopular early morning and late night time slots.60 As opposed to the heavy rotation of Spanish-language musical pieces made by the goodwill efforts of Americans, radio stations such as KELW in Burbank, California, often merged live musical performances with on-air job and community announcements.61 The on-air community bulletin approach engaged listeners to interact with local programming and cultivated more intimate relationships with radio hosts.62 Mexican-led programming did not possess the same national reach as the American-sponsored broadcasts featured prominently on national radio networks. The engagement with local audiences not only distinguished Mexican-led radio from the more canned image of American-sponsored broadcasts but also made certain that local topics, pertinent to Mexican listeners in the United States, prevailed over the airwaves. With dominant Mexican and Mexican American communities segregated in all aspects of U.S. society—from housing, labor, and businesses to radio—their marginal modes of living influenced their status as trivial consumers and unprofitable radio audiences. Reflecting this marginality, Spanish-language programming and its Spanish-speaking constituents had yet to be recognized as an economically viable listenership. Once they were deemed as such, Mexicans would be viewed as worthy of courting by advertisers as well as recognized as making domestic purchases, anchoring Mexican communities within U.S. society. Spanish-language programming catered to an abstract and invisible listenership, despite growing population numbers. Previous efforts to “Americanize” Mexicans beginning in 1909 by way of government-sanctioned “Americanization” programs had failed as funds and public support waned. Largely facilitated through the Departments of Education and Health, these programs were meant to assimilate Mexicans into the body politic.63 Some believed that Mexicans’ allegiance to the United States could be achieved only through systemic efforts to teach English, personal hygiene, and other seemingly American values, directed toward women and children—considered the bearers and future of Mexicans.64 These campaigns enlisted teachers, public health officials, and curches to assimilate Mexican families.

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who two years prior in 1928 kicked off the Latin American “goodwill tour” as yet another gesture toward improving trade relations, named Mexicans as one of the principal causes of the economic depression and publicly declared that “they took jobs away from American citizens.”72 With the arrival of the Great Depression, efforts to assimilate Mexicans as U.S. residents were replaced with campaigns to deport Mexicans back “home.” Mexicans were used as scapegoats by the president himself, and illegal deportations and coerced repatriations continued well into subsequent decades. Mexicans retreated to ethnic havens or immigrant enclaves, or fled the country altogether.73 George Sánchez details the reform efforts in California, for instance, of private Anglo-American groups, public institutions, as well as municipal officials to exclude Mexicans’ civic activities. Specifically, Sánchez maintains that these exclusionary efforts helped construct a Mexican American ethnicity alongside the growth of the Mexican music industry, rise in consumerism, and, to a much lesser extent, the prevailing sounds of Spanish-language radio. In many ways, radio became a familiar and faithful companion, one that permeated the larger prohibited mainstream public. In tune with the pulse of Spanish-speaking listeners, radio programs adopted an advocacy role characteristic of the early 1920s and 1930s journalistic character of immigrant-oriented media. Interviews with prominent community leaders or the Mexican general consular were featured, often advising listeners on their rights as not only immigrants, but also legal residents and citizens.74 A radio survey conducted in 1935 by prominent radio researchers Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport emphasized how radio allowed “listeners to gain access to the outside world without seriously interfering with the demands of the immediate environment.”75 In many ways, the climate of these decades increased the importance of Mexican-led Spanish-language programming, which seemed to serve as an aural link among ethnic enclaves, mainstream public, and social institutions.

Acoustic Allies and Pedro J. González While the on-air tours of Spanish-language musicals allowed Spanishspeaking countries to enter as “guests,” Mexicans used Spanish-language

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and five Spanish-language theatres.84 A successful musician and former telegraph operator for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, González dabbled in Spanish-language radio as a live musician and commercial announcer.85 In 1929, KMPC in Los Angeles leased the six to seven in the morning time slot to González and his radio singing group, later named Los Madrugadores (The Early Birds) for thirty dollars an hour. Three months later he left KMPC over failed negotiations for what he considered a much more attractive time slot, four to five in the morning. Nearby Burbank, home to KELW, gave him the morning shift from four to six for a bargain of sixty dollars a week. González and the Madrugadores became wildly popular with listeners arriving at three thirty to fill the studio, and song requests arrived en masse by mail. The show’s format of music (mainly corridos and rancheras), dedications, and social commentaries continues to be replicated today by major Spanish-language networks. González remarked, “Our music was popular with the workers and their families. I mean the rich people and American families never got up that early to hear our programs anyway. Although after we became so well known, a lot of rich people woke up to listen to our program and then went back to sleep.”86 One of the few historians of early Spanish-language broadcasting, the late Lorena Parlee, notes that white neighbors began complaining of loud radio sets at four in the morning. After six months of extraordinary success, several other Spanish-language broadcasters and Spanish-language music groups joined the airwaves of rival radio stations. While newcomers tried to differentiate themselves by marketing themselves as “high toned,” González’s overt proletarian sentiment garnered much more success. With sponsorships secured, González played less music and used his radio show to air employee opportunities, fund-raise for various local Mexican-based charities, pen corridos about local injustices, and rally support for strikes. By 1931, Pedro González occupied not only the early four to six time slot but also the lucrative slot from one to seven or, sometimes, eight in the evening. By now a well-known figure in Southern California and increasingly more outspoken on behalf of Mexicans in the United States, González was routinely arrested on minor charges. The Great Depression heightened existing racial tensions and jobs became scarce. His on-air advocacy was considered threatening, and he soon gained a

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to own a Spanish-language radio station, KCOR in San Antonio, Texas.92 On his broadcasting license application, drafted earlier during World War II, he indicated that securing a Spanish-language signal would lend more support for the war on behalf of Chicanos.93 Cognizant of the government’s wary response to, and increasingly tight grip on, foreign language radio programming, Cortez’s written objective for establishing a radio station seemed to pacify government and FCC worries that foreign-language programming would undermine American unity. Despite the station’s early patriotic beginnings and later efforts to imitate programming details of their English-language counterparts, América Rodriguez states that eventually “KCOR asked its listeners to send in boxtops and empty containers to prove to potential advertisers that they [Spanish-language listeners] spent money and were actors in the marketplace—in short, that they existed.”94 While KCOR attained the government’s approval to broadcast, it needed the financial blessings of advertisers. After the box-top-measuring proposal, KCOR’s Raúl Cortez commissioned a colleague to design an audience survey on behalf of the station in order to have numbers and evidence of an audience readily available to potential advertisers. Even with a statistically savvy report, the homegrown audience study did not receive the same weight as those conducted by national research firms. After contracting a New York–based national advertiser, KCOR aired its first national radio ad in 1957.95 Despite the negative political sentiment, the commercial sector profited from selling undesirable airtime to immigrant brokers as well as on-the-spot ad translations (from English to Spanish) over the air. América Rodriguez characterizes the early contradiction as a sign of how stations regarded audiences; they were “commercially welcoming, but politically and culturally” dismissive.96 As Mexican-led programming increasingly cultivated Mexican and other U.S. Latino audiences, particularly throughout the 1940s, they became recognized as attending to a “niche” audience.

Listening to “Mexico,” Listening to “Home”? According to George Sánchez, the anti-Spanish-language broadcast climate of the 1930s in the United States helped to develop the

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they were first and foremost, “children of Mexico.” Through the labors of Mexican Consulate Offices, Mexicans in the United States were encouraged to return to Mexico, often through reduced rates for oneway tickets on the Southern Pacific Railroad.100 Mexican-led Spanish-language radio thrived within this context of cultural tugs and economic pulls on both sides of the border. Emilio Azcárraga benefited from Mexico’s relaxed broadcast regulations, which made it possible for him to head a monopoly of Mexican broadcast industries. He began his Spanish-language empire in the 1930s by setting up radio stations in various parts of Mexico. At one point, Azcárraga also “represented more than 90% of Mexico’s performers (musicians and actors) in popular radio novelas.”101 Strategically, he also began building business relationships with North American entertainment companies. By 1938, Azcárraga broadcast from XEW, a radio station in Mexico City, to a station in Los Angeles, California, and subsequently to five other stations along the U.S.-Mexico border. His monopoly also made it possible to garner both national and foreign corporate sponsors, such as Coca-Cola and General Motors, for his XEW station.102 By 1944, a Los Angeles Times article had coined Emilio Azcárraga as the “Radio King of Mexico.”103 Aside from Azcárraga’s actual broadcast investments in radio, his vision of what U.S. Spanish-language radio programming should sound like proved to be most instrumental. Primarily responsible for selling nostalgia to Mexicans and carving a space for the same within Mexican popular culture, Azcárraga’s control over a host of media outlets allowed for a formulaic commercial vision of Mexico by way of both Mexican and U.S. Spanish-language radio. With so many Azcárragacontrolled media outlets, Mexican audiences were “captive” by default due to such early conglomeration. Ultimately, the boost in radio outlets within the United States strengthened the commercialization of Spanish-language music on both sides of the border.104 Azcárraga’s successful broadcasting vision encompassed a “conservative nationalism” built on an “idealized picture of Mexican life.” Based on an autobiography of Emilio Azcárraga, América Rodriguez highlights how his commercial interests dovetailed with his conservative vision: “Sentimental love songs, for example, became a staple of U.S. Spanish-language radio; their teary nostalgia was popular with

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Research (ORR), Rudolph Arnheim and Martha Collins Bayne found Spanish-language programs airing in New York, Arizona, Texas, and California, with a reported 264 hours broadcast each week.107 A mere 17.5 percent of these Spanish-language broadcastings were sponsored by a single business entity; the remaining were financed through the brokerage system or spot advertising, averaging five different businesses per hour. Quite possibly the first radio study conducted by a major research entity on foreign language programming, the report focused on the role of radio within immigrant communities. Although a host of historical accounts as well as population numbers attest that not all those considered bilingual or non-English-dominant during the late 1930s and 1940s were “immigrants” per se, the study nonetheless raised some unique conclusions. At the time the study was published, Spanish was third in broadcastings heard on foreign-language block programming, behind Polish and Italian radio shows.108 Arnheim and Bayne’s attention to advertising unveiled a host of underlying social sentiments active at the time. For instance, the majority of advertising on Spanish-language radio focused on consumer products and services rather than travel and entertainment, popular on other foreign language radio programming. The discrepancy existed because advertisers assumed that Spanish-speaking listeners were positioned differently vis-à-vis fellow immigrants. In particular, Spanish-dominant listeners were not regarded as earning or possessing the wealth for leisure travel and activities. Consumer advertising called attention to the growing segment of the U.S.-based Mexican consumer population and their integration into the domestic market. Arnheim and Bayne also revealed how Spanish-language radio advertising resounded nationalist appeals through discursive practices. For instance, they noted how radio advertisements made deliberate mentions of Spanish-speaking personnel employed at specific stores, frequent references to “home” countries, as well as on-air comments emphasizing ethnic unity. Examples of such popular instances on the airwaves include “They speak perfect Spanish at T. Automobile Company. Many Mexicans have bought their cars at T. Company and have been highly satisfied” and “A Mexican will always get a better value from another Mexican. So get your Chevrolet from a Mexican agent at the Central Chevrolet Company.”109 Emphasizing linguistic and ethnic

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some 234 stations (approximately 4 percent) devoted a minimum of 15 minutes per week of Spanish-language broadcasting.23 Until 1973, nonEnglish broadcasting was segregated into its own separate index.24 This created a convoluted list of radio stations, whose only shared attribute was the decision not to broadcast in English. In 1973, Spanish-language programming was integrated into the “mainstream” index and listed alongside other formats, including Beautiful Music, Christian, and Big Band musical styles.25 From 1970 to 1971, broadcasting in African American populated areas went from being recognized as “Negro programming” to “Black programming.”26 Three years later, Black programming was cross-listed with Soul, signifying the recognition that race and musical styles can be, and are, distinct.27 Until 1998, Spanishlanguage music was listed as simply “Spanish,” thereby ignoring the diversity of formats on Spanish-language radio.28 Besides the umbrella approach given to Spanish-language radio by the Broadcasting Yearbook, the 1970s witnessed a conscious shift from “public” to “community” identified radio. The practice of “community radio” arose in the 1970s and brought attention to an innovative collective form of operating radio “that values independence, irreverence, and creative, risk-taking, [and] volunteer based programming.”29 The term was coined as a third mode of English-language broadcasting, different yet overlapping with commercial and public radio.30 Commercial radio had long aligned itself with the business side of radio, with its scientific use of audience research and focus on financial revenues through the sale of airtime to advertisers.31 Reliance on ratings makes for a market-driven, rather than audience-minded, form of radio programming. Meanwhile, public radio had acquired an affluent musical taste and was seen as catering to middle and highbrow listeners. Unlike either of these formats, community radio became underground, free-form radio and represented a communal and activist approach to reclaiming the “public” in public broadcasting.32 With community radio’s rapid growth in the 1970s and early 1980s, the grassroots-turned-policy organization the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) formed in the late 1970s.33 As a means of maintaining their stake within the increasingly crowded radio waves, the NFCB served as a resource for communities interested in

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furthering the direction of U.S. public media. In both instances, the OCIAA and CPB made financial subsidies available for radio and television personnel who wished to help advance their agendas of democracy over the airwaves. As we have seen in chapter 1, while the OCIAA made explicit gestures toward Latin America in attempts to portray a hemispheric unity, U.S. Latinos were largely unimagined within the OCIAA’s portrayal of Latin America. In much the same way, the CPB was marred by controversy as their portrayal of the U.S. public interest was critiqued for not reflecting more women or communities of color. Both the OCIAA and the CPB are institutional examples of how Chicanos and U.S. Latinos are left out of the equation and broader vision of democracy and the media. In many ways, the establishment of the CPB made it possible for community groups to hold a government-sponsored entity accountable for issues of employment and representation within public broadcasting. Required to answer to its listening and viewing audiences, the CPB routinely produces progress reports on the hiring practices and program development within public broadcasting. Plagued over the years with gender and race-specific lawsuits, the CPB was made responsible for the monitoring of the diversity it preaches. A year after the 1973 establishment of the Advisory Panel on Essentials for Minority Programming, the CPB published findings highlighting a trend that would be echoed for years to come.39 According to James Ledbetter, the task force on gender (1972) as well the task force on minorities (1978) were both chaired by Gloria Anderson, an African American director within the CPB. Ledbetter rightfully points to Ms. Anderson’s double duty as itself indicative of a lack of representation of both women and minorities within the CPB.40 Public broadcasting’s dedication to underserved populations without involving professionals from these communities in production and decision-making positions limited both their audience reach and overall diversity. A 1976 media newsletter cited radio producer María Martin commenting on the state of diversity within public broadcasting: “Public broadcasting needs to reflect what we see on the streets. People who are fat, who are skinny, rich, poor, black, white, young and old. That’s the way public broadcasting should look and sound like– not occasionally—but all the time.”41 Five years later, the task force on minorities in 1978 drafted a report titled “A Formula

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that public broadcasting serves as a public domain or “in the public interest.” The development of rural bilingual community radio with the era’s movement culture also reflected the growing professionalization of public broadcasting. Despite the optimism and aid from the CPB, the process of establishing public media outlets is not as trouble-free as one might hope. For one, CPB explicitly recommends enlisting “legal counsel and broadcast engineering consultants to perform frequency searches and help prepare the legal and technical portions of construction permit applications.”46 Each bilingual community radio station solicited help from those with ties to legal training, radio engineering experience, or nonprofits willing to cosponsor the radio station to offset costs. For instance, with the assistance of Alberto Moreno, an attorney with the California Rural Legal Assistance program, as well as David Lane Josephsen, then a recording engineer at Pacifica’s KPFA-FM in nearby Berkeley, Santa Rosa’s Bilingual Broadcasting went live on May 30, 1973. In the case of Yakima’s Radio Cadena, the Northwest Rural Opportunities (NRO) program, an organization that provides social services for migrant populations, teamed up with Midwest radio producers Daniel Robles and Julio Ceasar Guerrero for Radio Cadena’s launch on December 19, 1979.47 The reliance on attorneys, public funding, and radio engineers highlights the coalition of people and expertise needed to launch public radio. However, even radio stations with polished applications are not guaranteed start-up funds from the CPB. Instead, the CPB requires community organizations wishing to establish radio stations to seek outside funding first before approaching them for development monies.48 These circumstances, coupled with complicated paperwork, limit public radio’s diversity. Groups such as the NFCB assist grassroots groups with dense applications, particularly those most disenfranchised located in rural communities. While the CPB continues to play an instrumental role in funding educational and ethnic-formatted radio, communications scholars have overlooked the role of foundations in funding community-based media projects, particularly during the 1970s. With the CPB in control of primary funds, and the FCC responsible for monitoring station licenses, community organizations interested in establishing a signal had to navigate

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Foundation support, another key source for funding public broadcasting, depends largely on a specific year’s tide of philanthropy and the state of the economy in general. If the market is doing well, more money trickles down to nonprofit organizations and their communications projects. Similar to CPB’s new direction in funding, foundations are also becoming increasingly interested in how their financial backing is affecting communities by requesting costly listening research reports. As with federal funding, evidence of impact is measured through a calculation of numbers.51 Finally, the third prong of public broadcasting funding arrives from listeners themselves. While NPR and Pacifica-affiliated public radio devote up to three weeks a year exclusively to the solicitation of membership dues and listening pledges, these telethons have proven to be counterproductive on Spanish-language community radio. All three radio stations discontinued this practice early on because the amount of energy and funds needed to host such pledge drives resulted in little to no profit. Given the fact that the average Spanish-language radio listener earns less than twenty-five thousand dollars in annual wages, audience pledges came in smaller amounts.52 A review of Bilingual Broadcasting’s listening letters, for instance, revealed donations in money orders and cash over the years to the radio station in increments of five to fifteen dollars.53 Since 1978, the CPB has allocated a number of station-building grants to Spanish-language and bilingual community radio, including the Women’s Training Grant, Minority Training Grant, and a Community Services Grant. Such institutional gestures were used to train inexperienced women, youth, and farmworkers to operate radio equipment. However, a closer look at these grants reveals how they represent “onetime” disbursements. While they serve as critical financial interventions in recruiting, training, and establishing new positions, issues of retention, not recruitment, seem most critical within bilingual community radio. With all three funding sources considered unstable, Spanishlanguage and bilingual community radio stations are in a constant state of financial vulnerability. Citing the unreliability and general unavailability of federal funding, Bilingual Broadcasting originally sought individual donors and concentrated on Chicano-friendly foundations and organizations interested

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Humble Beginnings and Creative Financial Risks We may have the best ideas, the best programs, but if the equipment is not the best or if the sound quality is not what we desire and if the personnel are not rewarded for their work in the way they deserve, then it is devastating and for 20 years it has always been a challenge. —Ricardo García, station manager, Radio Cadena What happens in economics in the end is really important, the money concern, you can’t just dream of doing a radio program and not think of money. I think all along we’ve had great ideas, but at first, we didn’t know how to make it happen or how to make a profit. —Hugo Morales, executive director, Radio Bilingüe

While the development of bilingual community radio required an enormous amount of community support, driven individuals, and extraordinary visions, funding such endeavors proved to be the most difficult task. Despite how the creative visionaries behind these radio stations imagined their roles within their respective Latino communities, issues of funding have often circumscribed their political goals. Operating at a frequency of 89.1 MHz, the broadcasting reach for Bilingual Broadcasting casts considerably far although its thirty-mile proximity to San Francisco accounts for traffic-ridden airwaves. Its signal reaches adequately in not only Sonoma County but nearby rural counties, including Napa, south Mendocino, and northern Marin. An application submitted in 1971 by a group of Sonoma State University students to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) for surplus land yielded a four-acre plot of property for the station site. The original radio station, located three miles west of downtown Santa Rosa, had been housed in two mobile homes. The physical station housing the radio signal was made possible by donations and volunteer services—for instance, a retired architect contributed his services in designing and constructing the studio, someone donated a car to the station for on-location reporting, and donors gave furniture for staff use.58 Because of the size of the station property, Bilingual Broadcasting envisioned profit-making subsidiaries, such as a Chicano cultural center or Chicano community clinic, to be housed on the same

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mailing list, and gave them discounts at Bilingual Broadcasting–sponsored events.61 Memos drafted among Bilingual Broadcasting’s early planners emphasized the need to appoint a board of directors reflective of the community.62 An interview with then station manager Felipe Ramírez reflects his commitment to the station: Besides organizing the shows, volunteer schedule, equipment mishaps . . . we frequently see people come in from the street asking questions. Just last week, this guy came in and told us his electricity had been out for an entire week. He had been calling PG&E every day with no response. I called them [clears throat], identified myself as the station manager at KBBF-FM, la voz del pueblo—I said that in Spanish too so they’d take me seriously—I told them if they didn’t want me to broadcast this situation and receive hundreds of more calls a day, they’d look into this matter right away. Why is it that this guy’s neighbors have electricity and he doesn’t, huh? And I don’t know how our listeners find us way out here, but they do. So, they not only write and call-in, they just show up!63

Ramírez’s story reflects the varied service requests listeners make to the station. Because it can pose the threat to broadcast a client’s grievances over the airwaves, the radio station is viewed by the Latino community as having enough leverage to assist listeners with problems. As much as Ramírez takes prides in Bilingual Broadcasting’s prominent role among Latino listeners, these tasks do take up time beyond the usual station operation schedule. The second community station of this kind was born out of a nonprofit organization that was convinced that disseminating health information to migrant communities would be done most effectively through linguistically and culturally competent radio. Broadcasting on a frequency of 91.9 MHz with a radiated power of twenty thousand watts from studios located in Washington’s Yakima Valley, Radio Cadena is owned by, and licensed to, the Northwest Communities Education Center, a nonprofit corporation.64 Ricardo García of Yakima’s Northwest Rural Opportunity (NRO) program was instrumental in establishing Radio Cadena and linking NRO with the development of Radio Cadena’s programming. With an NRO grant, Radio Cadena

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if Chávez’s visit in some way legitimized the efforts of Radio Cadena and their commitment in the eyes of Yakima’s campesino community, Ricardo García remarked, At that time, having César Chávez come up to visit our station was the biggest deal ever. Everyone in the valley was talking about it, with so many gente campesina (farmworkers) here and all. We knew we were good, but when César Chávez says “hey, this is an amazing and important service to campesinos (farmworkers)”—well, you know you’re real good. We think so highly of ourselves . . . we think we legitimized their efforts! We didn’t hesitate handing our second station to the UFW. We figured, we were the same community. Our hearts broke when we heard of the UFW’s decision—it wasn’t César’s—to go commercial.72

Radio Cadena’s trajectory from subcarrier to radio station exemplifies its organizers’ dedication to broadcast a bilingual radio signal in the Yakima Valley. Those at Radio Cadena, as Ricardo García explains, did not see their efforts as validated by César Chávez but felt this was additional praise for their organizing success. This distinction makes it possible for Radio Cadena to invert the dynamics traditionally associated with key events and individuals. García described the Chávez visit as one not simply to the Yakima Valley, but one to the Yakima Valley owing to Radio Cadena. The radio station’s role as an organizing tool placed Yakima’s farmworker circles within the sights of the UFW. Years later, Radio Cadena distinguishes itself from the UFW by maintaining its commitment to community radio. Radio Cadena producer Julio Caesar Guerrero later moved to Visalia, California, in an effort to lead the UFW into developing bilingual news and advocacy radio shows.

Access to Capital [O]ne of the reasons for building this station was also a result of the Chicano Movement and . . . the reason why all of us came around. . . . We wanted to affirm our identity, we also wanted to be in control of an institution [and] we know the media impacts our lives. . . . We wanted to be empowered by taking full control . . . we wanted to affirm our right to exercise our freedom of speech right as stated in the Constitution, so

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in the city of Modesto, which still operates today, as well as placing a translator to reach three hours south to the Bakersfield region.74 Soon, local sources such as Bank of America, the Gannett Foundation, and the Fresno Bee allocated money for Radio Bilingüe’s development of public affairs programming. The California Arts Council provided a small grant for volunteer training, and the Women’s Training Grant from the CPB went to support the positions of business manager and public affairs coordinator.75 In 1983, after three short years of broadcasting, Arbitron—the premiere radio ratings service—ranked Radio Bilingüe (KSJV-FM) fifth out of thirty broadcasters in their area. Not only did Radio Bilingüe rival two Spanish-language commercial stations within its broadcasting zone, but it also surpassed a host of English-language ones. With an Arbitron stamp of approval and “official” measure of success, securing grants became much easier. For commercial broadcasters, Arbitron ratings translated into consumer dollars and for public broadcasting stations, Arbitron numbers boosted foundation support as well as corporate underwriting. With a successful early run, Radio Bilingüe had garnered enough funds to begin acquiring other public radio stations. With Fresno as the flagship station, Radio Bilingüe operates KMPO-FM in Modesto via a repeater signal, KTQX-FM in Bakersfield, KUBO-FM in Calexico, and KHDC-FM in Chualar. Maintaining its commitment to community radio, each except Modesto’s KMPO-FM has local autonomy over their employee hires, volunteer training, and overall character of the station.76 With regional offices in Salinas and El Centro, and national production studios in San Francisco, Radio Bilingüe operates on a twomillion-dollar budget with a combination of support from the CPB, endowments, and foundations. Depending on the fiscal year, Radio Bilingüe employs between twenty-five and thirty-four employees, far more than Radio Cadena and Bilingual Broadcasting’s CPB-compliant five. With two to three individuals hired solely for grant writing and assessment, Radio Bilingüe places a priority on generating income outside audience pledges. As another indication of Radio Bilingüe’s profitable run, the CPB granted Radio Bilingüe a $725,000 grant in 2002 to “further develop its fundraising model to strengthen relationships with foundations and other

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together for a panel discussion with time allotted for phone calls and a question-and-answer period. The educational component to Bilingual Broadcasting’s radio included on-air ESL classes, naturalization programs, and even driver’s education.81 Once foundational support decreased, thereby increasing the need for additional monetary pledges from the audience, Spanish classes were added in order to attract nonSpanish speakers, and their checkbooks.82 An original program still aired today is the 5:00 PM Bulletin Board, which offers a daily list of announcements concerning job openings, items for sale, and upcoming community events. News reports consisted of English-language newspaper clippings translated into Spanish.83 One of Bilingual Broadcasting’s early station managers, José Mireles, recounts how they came to their programming decisions: “We were young. We were college educated or semi–college educated, and I think we felt like we had to educate everyone, there was such an emphasis on education. That’s why we chose to sponsor a citizenship class and ESL courses on the air. We even teamed up with a professor at Sonoma State and had him agree to teach a class over the air, students were registered and everything, they just tuned in for lectures.”84 Since radio shows designed around callers or guests can prove more laborious in preparation, today Bilingual Broadcasting hosts only one daily and one weekly call-in show. The latter features a Chicano Highway Patrol officer who answers legal and civil rights questions posed by callers. In asking an officer, as opposed to an attorney, who conducted a similar show in the 1970s, to answer questions, then station manager Felipe Ramírez remarked that the objective was to dispel any myths about law enforcement. Reflecting the civil rights sentiments of the 1970s, the show Chicano Youth and the Law focused, for instance, on how to cruise without getting pulled over, whereas a recent show with the Highway Patrol officer discussed the importance of buckling up children five years or younger in the backseat of a vehicle.85 Reflecting more of its nonprofit organizational roots, Yakima’s Radio Cadena showcased a variety of gender- and children-focused radio shows early on. The first to host a women-centered show and to appoint a female as station manager, Radio Cadena has long been attentive to the differences among female and male campesino audiences. Aptly titled Mujeres, one of their most popular radio shows functioned as a

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I work part-time but get full health benefits. Sweetie, that’s hard to find. Once Hugo told me I’d be getting full health and dental, I’ll do whatever he asks of me. Of course, I love hosting my show. I never miss a shift, not even Christmas if it lands on a Saturday. I know I have some loyal listeners out there and what would they do without their dose of Tejano?”88 Alma López’s comments best illustrate how Radio Bilingüe has been able to avoid the erratic rotation of radio show hosts characteristic of most public radio stations. With the funds to do so, as of 2005, Radio Bilingüe maintained five paid radio hosts with the same part-time hours and full benefits described by López above. In recent years Radio Bilingüe has become a multilingual station. Changes in the economy, coupled with population shifts, have introduced new migrant communities to Fresno. Today, California’s Central Valley sees as many as one hundred thousand Indigenous Mixtecs who have traveled from their homelands in western Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla México.89 Guided by their commitment to bilingual programming, Radio Bilingüe hosts a weekly show titled La Hora Mixteca, a show hosted by farmworker veteran and community organizer Filemón López. Filemón broadcasts native songs from Oaxaca and offers information concerning health and immigration to his listeners, mostly Mixtec with Spanish as the secondary language spoken.90 Each of these three bilingual community radio stations debuted with an earnest dedication to both Spanish and English spoken on the air, in homage to their Mexican immigrant listenership and largely Chicano operators. Yet, nearly all three of them today broadcast within a Spanish-dominant format or, in the case of Radio Bilingüe, more non-English-dominant. The shift in language over the decades is testimony to each station’s change in demographics. As the Central Valley had diversified linguistically, the rural Santa Rosa and Yakima regions have seen much more of an influx of Spanish-dominant communities. In comparison, commercial radio stations located in urban centers have become more bilingual, a sign of commercial interests catering to sought after inner-city Latino youth.

A Binational Community In 1992 Radio Bilingüe constructed a national public affairs program in Spanish. A year prior, a coalition of broadcasters of color, led by Hugo

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broadcast live in Spanish, the first production of this kind, according to Hugo Morales, on U.S. presidential elections.93 Collaborative efforts were then made to draft grants, sponsor radio studies, and create profiles on U.S. Latinos in hopes of attaining more funding. In 2003, thirty years after Bilingual Broadcasting began the legacy of bilingual radio, the NFCB sponsored a Latino Summit with the three aforementioned stations as well as various Latino radio hosts and producers, intended to be a week of networking. Various participants expressed resentment at what one termed Radio Bilingüe’s “superstar status” among the ethnic public broadcasting ranks. Several participants shared concerns about how difficult soliciting funds from the CPB had become throughout the years. As one participant bluntly wrote in the summit’s evaluation, “They [i.e., CPB, foundations] look at Radio Bilingüe as the bar, how are we going to compete with that?”94 Radio Bilingüe’s operational expansion from one to five stations, newly forged binational relationships with Puerto Rico and Mexico, and satellite service led to over sixty partnerships with various public radio stations around the United States. In response, Radio Cadena and Bilingual Broadcasting, which both continue to broadcast from their original stations, expressed disconcertion. Radio Cadena is still exploring how to have radio listeners tune in via the Internet while Bilingual Broadcasting revamps an aging website. Though each station continues to embrace their motto of political empowerment by focusing on call-in shows, health shows, and immigration information, most have admitted that fund-raising has prohibited them from further improving the quality of their work.

Conclusion Situating bilingual community radio broadcasting within the political economy of the time, the development of these stations was made possible by the movement culture of the era as well as the formation of the CPB. Despite each station’s humble rural beginnings and early activist visions of bilingual radio, funding has largely been the deciding factor in realizing each station’s goals. Even with the expansion of Radio Bilingüe, community radio continues to compete for listeners in a market saturated with Spanish-language commercial radio.

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telephone and stories quickly disappear over the ether, important facets given the racialized post-9/11 moment. As immigration law and antiimmigrant racism continue to work through visual vocabularies and tactics, Spanish-language radio has responded through novel uses of sound and speech.

Broadcasting Amnesty The U.S. passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on November 6, 1986, attempted to curb the influx of immigrants who had been steadily entering the country since the era of the Bracero Program (1942–1964), which granted temporary work permits to Mexican nationals.5 Overall, IRCA granted amnesty to approximately 3 million undocumented immigrants working and residing in the United States; an overwhelming 2.3 million were Mexican nationals.6 IRCA’s details occupied Spanish-language radio shows for weeks. Not only did radio act as a tool to disseminate information on the particulars of IRCA, but its interactive callin element allowed listeners to air their concerns and detailed questions. Radio stations informed listeners that to qualify for IRCA, they had to prove that they had been residing in the United States since January 1, 1982, without criminal charges and with “some” knowledge of English and U.S. history. But radio also unveiled a much more complicated discussion. Two major newspaper articles from the time elucidated the unique role of Spanish-language radio stations in providing on-air assistance to worried listeners. For instance, a Wall Street Journal frontpage article from November 1, 1986, aptly titled “Alien Process,” called on the double meaning of the word “alien” to refer to both undocumented residents and the widespread confusion with the IRCA process. The article described a Friday night two-hour call-in show based in Houston, Texas, whose guest attorneys answered IRCA-related questions. Callers’ questions included the following: What will happen, for example, to the Mexican man who is the radio show’s first caller? He has saved paycheck stubs dating from 1981, but the checks were issued to the fictitious name on his phony Social Security card. The next caller is a Guatemalan woman who frets over the English language requirement. “Will I need to know Shakespeare?” she wants to

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programming is reduced to accommodate station pleas for public support, Spanish-language radio rattled off hotline numbers, interviewed those entering and leaving the center, and disseminated information from within the walls of legal centers into listeners’ homes.10 On the other hand, the opportunity of amnesty for undocumented immigrants elicited distressed responses as immigration raids in communities became widely publicized.11 Immigration raids, known informally in Spanish as las redadas, occur when immigration officials arrive unannounced at factories, fields, and other workplaces. Several newspaper headlines throughout the 1980s brought attention to immigration raids, in particular to the influx of tips the INS received from disgruntled, unemployed U.S. citizens. An early industrial recession under Ronald Reagan’s presidency saw unemployment rates peak (at 10 percent) in 1982.12 Many (white) U.S. citizens may have correlated the recession with increasing (brown) population changes, making them feel that their livelihoods were being threatened. As the INS monitored workplaces and select public areas (or rather, as displeased citizens made public service calls to the agency), the passage of IRCA generated even more interest in Spanish-language Q&A shows on immigration and migra alerts. Since the 1980s, various radio stations have participated in alerting the listening public to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids or patrols.13 To place the significance in perspective, legally speaking, if an undocumented immigrant already residing in the United States decides to process her or his U.S. lawful permanent residency and has no criminal record, the process continues to be relatively straightforward (even if, as noted earlier, it is costly, lengthy, and involves paperwork plus appointments and perhaps requiring legal counsel). However, if a law enforcement officer or ICE official seizes an undocumented immigrant, the interaction can lead directly to removal proceedings. Depending on the situation and location, many are given the choice of immigrant detention or GPS ankle bracelets, a form of house and work arrest that tracks immigrants’ mileage.14 The ankle bracelet, as an alternative to detention, allows immigrants to live and possibly work in the United States until immigration officials hear their legal appeals. In essence the immigration process is guided by broad administrative discretion, providing avenues for both relief and removal. Being

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expanded its surveillance plans by joining the Spanish-language airwaves through carefully devised and costly radio spots. In turn, Spanish-language radio stations turned to live and on-location broadcasts and amplified their vocal support for more just policies and treatment of immigrant-based issues. In 1993, on discovering that the green card was the number one counterfeited legal document, President Bill Clinton ordered all green-cardcarrying residents to exchange their card for a redesigned one that was more difficult to fake. Setting an eight-year time limit for the exchange, the INS began redocumenting thousands of legal residents. As the April 30, 2001, deadline approached, radio broadcasts began to ceremoniously call attention to the importance of redocumentation. For instance, a radio station in the San Diego area chose to broadcast across the street from San Diego’s INS district building. Listeners were encouraged to comply with the deadline and stop by their booth. Meanwhile, outside Los Angeles, another radio station broadcast outside a neighborhood legal services center and handed out station prizes to listeners who came to the center to inquire about the deadline.17 English-language radio stations typically reserve acts of on-site broadcasting for “grand openings,” festivals, and parades. Spanish-language radio’s decision to set up outside an INS building highlights not only the magnitude of these deadlines but also how listeners deliberate with the INS via radio broadcasts. Known as the “Save Our State” (SOS) initiative, California’s Proposition 187 in 1994 targeted undocumented immigrants by denying them public services such as education and health care. Thanks to the “SOS” acronym, the popular perception of the immigrant-sapping social services returned to the limelight, as California caricatured itself as a shipwrecked state.18 Proposition 187 also affected the larger public sentiment, most apparently in Latino-dominant cities such as Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations reported a “23.5 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos in 1994, and attribute[d] the rise to anti-immigrant sentiment.”19 Anna Pegler-Gordon’s insightful study on immigration highlights the racialized bias during the heated Proposition 187 era in that those without “accents” or “foreign”-sounding names were not required to prove their legal status and were thereby automatically normalized as Americans. Inevitably, the grounds for suspicion relied on racial

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were able to question one’s legal status. “Can I walk my child to school?” asked a father of two. In a move that bolstered radio’s popularity with an already immigrant-based constituency, Spanish-language radio stations in the Los Angeles area aired free ads soliciting donations toward campaigns against Proposition 187.27 On the heels of a reelection victory, in 1997 President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), a piece of legislation responsible for funding the technological “tracking” systems used to more accurately monitor border crossers. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, IIRIRA incorporated the “use of aircraft, helicopters, night-vision equipment, [ground] sensors, computer systems, and four-wheel drive vehicles” to the U.S.Mexico border,28 already reinforced with fences, newly constructed cement walls, hidden cameras, even e-mail and telephone taps, and other forms of data surveillance permitted in an effort to curb the human smuggling market. The enhanced methods of monitoring immigrants invoked military and Orwellian strategies. Several scholars, including Saskia Sassen and Douglas S. Massey, have pointed to the continued patterns of migration despite such border enforcement.29 IIRIRA allocated millions to construct a physical wall along select miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, further reflecting the “keep out” sentiment of the times.30 Together with Proposition 187’s efforts to sanction racial profiling, IIRIRA’s fresh revenues for border enforcement continued to rely on visual-based strategies of surveillance at a time when Spanish-language radio grew exponentially. In many respects, Q&A exchanges and migra alerts decouple the sensory hierarchies where sight trumps sound. Despite their well-funded institutional muscle, ICE’s “high-tech” visualtracking capabilities have been responded to through “low-tech” modes of sound.31 With the use and significance of radio already popular among Latino immigrants, the INS finally came to appreciate its power and importance among this demographic.32 In 1999, with immigrant deaths escalating in the warmer months, the INS produced a series of public service announcements that featured Jackie Gallegos, a twenty-five-year-old woman whose husband died of dehydration while crossing the border. Aired in select border cities, the thirty-second radio ad (in Spanish and English) used the widow’s mourning to warn listeners of the hazards of

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to the ad’s designer, the campaign was directed at two audiences—the “first-time user” considering crossing the border and the “influencers,” or family members in the United States who cajoled relatives and friends to join them. The sound waves became contested ground: callers warned the listening public against the whereabouts of ICE; in turn, ICE cautioned the listeners from border crossings. The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, generated an alarm that the individuals responsible for the attacks were not U.S. citizens. The federal government swiftly revamped most of its immigration policy under the guise of national security or the “global war against terrorism.” In September 2004 legislation before Congress proposed adding an additional ten thousand border agents, four thousand more over the next five years, along the U.S.-Mexico border,34 under the assumption that terrorists would use the southern border as a point of entry. What is more, border patrol agents began implementing “sky raids” with newly acquired helicopters and airplanes as part of an effort to increase aerial surveillance originally proposed in the 1990s.35 In addition to the financial resources allocated to Homeland Security for border surveillance, many civil liberties have also been compromised. Déjà vu moments occurred when offspring legislation such as the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Clean Law Enforcement for Alien Removal Act of 2003 have attempted to make it possible for non-ICE personnel, such as local and state police, to exercise ICE duties by allowing them to investigate and detain undocumented immigrants discovered during normal law enforcement duties.36 Once again, bringing racial profiling to the fore of the immigration debate, such acts criminalize immigrants, assuming terrorist motives for migration, rather than economic incentives or family reunification. The resurgence of immigration raids in the post-9/11 moment has also rekindled migra alerts that had not been heard so vividly since the 1980s. KROM-FM in Texas, for instance, aired an intermittent morning limones verdes, or green lime report.37 The term “green limes” functioned as a code word for la migra. As the station’s program director explained, “Verdes, because they [INS or ICE officials] wear green uniforms, and limones, because if they catch you, they’ll sour your whole day.”38 The idea for the limones verdes radio report came from a listener who phoned in to the show and asked if he could convey an

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through as many as twenty callers per show. Each call is allocated approximately three to four minutes on the air, a difficult feat given that many find themselves surprised to have made it on the air, evident in the tremble in their voices or nervous stutter in their speech. In fact, because of the live nature of the show, listeners are also privy to an unedited soundscape. Papers shuffling, microphone taps, long sighs, awkward pauses, static reception, clearing throats, clattering dishes, and wavering voices are a few of the unstaged sounds that accompany the more structured Q&A exchange. The show’s host, Samuel Orozco, kindly coaches nervous callers through their questions while the attorney limits interjections to clarifying questions before giving a final answer. Listeners can often hear the attorney discern difficult questions with sighs, ums, and pregnant pauses. Out of twenty callers heard during a June 2004 Q&A broadcast soliciting advice from the guest attorney Carlos Spector Calderón, only six asked questions about their own legal dilemmas. Over my twoyear period of listening to Línea Abierta’s Q&A shows, it was painfully apparent that most women called on behalf of grown children, aging parents, and male partners left behind. Callers’ preparedness, shown in their clear crafting of questions, is also indicative of callers’ familiarity with the show’s format: guest attorneys typically ask a series of standard intake questions before answering the caller’s “real” question. Prep questions include the person in question’s length of stay in the United States, age, nationality, mode of petitioning (through an employer or family member), and which specific paperwork they have turned in thus far. As chapter two explained, Radio Bilingüe’s national coverage is limited to Spanish-language community radio stations located in rural areas and select English-language community radio stations. Relegated to rural Latino America, Radio Bilingüe is shut out of “Hispanic markets” such as Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles because of deregulation policies that have hindered the existence of lesser-financed radio stations. In 1995, with the acquisition of a satellite, thanks to a generous grant by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Radio Bilingüe expanded its borders via the Internet. Today it broadcasts its signature public affairs program, the Línea Abierta noon-hour show, to over seventy station affiliates as well as to radio signals in both Mexico and Puerto Rico.

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the paperwork, my brother got married. . .   Well recently, my mother applied for my brother in 2000. He’s now married so my mother is applying for his family. I’d like to know when . . . my mother . . . my mother is waiting for some kind of response from the INS about my brother’s application. When do you think this would be, or? Calderón: ¿Has recibido un recibo? Have you received a receipt? Xiomara: No, bueno, no sé. No le pregunté. Yo solo le dije que iba a llamar porque estaba escuchando la radio en este momento así que le pregunté por la información como fechas, el año de cuando aplicó. No, well, I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. I just told her that I was going to call because I was listening to the radio at this moment so I asked her for the information of dates of when, the year, of when she applied. Calderón: ¿Tu mamá es residente o ciudadana? Is your mother a resident or a citizen? Xiomara: Mi mamá es ciudadana, por eso aplicó por mi hermano en el 2000. [Se puede oir a niños.] My mother is a citizen, that’s why she applied for my brother in 2000. [Children heard in the background.] Calderón: Si el está casado, hijo de una Salvadoreña, ahorrita están [la inmigración] procesando esas aplicaciones con fecha del 15 de octubre, 1997. Si el fuera soltero, las aplicaciones de solteros que se están revisando tienen fecha del 22 de octubre, 2000. If he’s married, son of a Salvadoran, right now they [INS] are processing those applications dated October 15, 1997. If he was single, the singles applications they are reviewing are dated October 22, 2000. Xiomara: OK. Calderón: Así que si no se hubiera casado es posible que ya lo hubieran procesado. So, if he wouldn’t have gotten married he might have already been [legally] processed. Xiomara: Sí. Yes. Calderón: La ventaja es que cuando ya se ha procesado, su esposa también lo es. The advantage is that once he’s [legally] processed, his wife is too.

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her attention to Calderón to make certain she has noted the exact window of her brother’s interview. In real time and in three concise minutes, she lays out her brother’s ten-year wait with the show’s listeners. The INS is processing 1997 paperwork; her brother’s legal journey began in 2000, and his interview will take place in 2008, which means legal permission for him to enter the United States occurred in 2010. These on-air discussions reveal the complicated and inherently emotional process of immigration, evident in Calderón’s slow and loud repetitions of his replies to Xiomara. Her low-hummed “uh-huh” and “sí,” peppered throughout the exchange, confirm her close listening. This excerpt also displays the “real-time” and interactive character of radio, as Xiomara admits that she was “listening to the radio at this moment” and decided to phone in. The fact that she called her mother beforehand to acquire specific dates speaks to Xiomara’s familiarity with the show’s format. Here, Xiomara—the audience—becomes the focus of the show, allowing her to be in conversation with two male professionals, evident in Orozco’s tone of authority and perfect enunciation and Calderón’s offhand legal knowledge. Apart from the actual Q&A exchange, the sound of children playing in the background—heard uniquely when women phone in—indicates that Xiomara is calling an immigration show from the privacy of her home and emphasizes again the responsibility that women take for their own families. Through radio, a larger transnational public listens to those sounds of Xiomara’s home, making evident that struggles over citizenship involve children and women. Each person is participating nationally from three geographically distinct areas—San Francisco (Orozco), Lancaster (Xiomara), and El Paso (Calderón)—made possible because of the urgency of immigration, the radio set itself, and the opportunity afforded through sound. The overwhelming majority of callers ask guest attorneys about time lines.42 Many are anxious and want to know when ICE will contact them for subsequent interviews and question whether in-person visits to ICE offices would help speed their situation. Listeners can ascertain differing routes to legal documentation and track the pace of the ICE process through the airwaves. Listeners familiar with the show know that guest attorneys have access to information concerning the status and schedule of ICE interviews. To listeners, guest attorneys may be seen as

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Poster for El Cucuy’s 25 Pegaditas. Source: Cathy Cole.

money, and goods across geographical and cultural borders. Yet a central component of these radio hosts’ gendered, politicized, on-air posturing relies on a sexist form of speech that scripts political efforts as male and works to further marginalize and silence women. As a result, Spanish-language morning radio has rendered Latinos’ angst over newfound gender roles public, a “transnational makeover” of morning radio. Relying on conversations with thirty-three immigrant Latinas, I explore the gendered politics of morning radio hosts who were both adamantly proimmigrant, but whose rhetoric was also steeped in misogyny and homophobia.

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addresses how changes in the global economy affect not only immigrants’ labor and gender roles but also their media practices. Specifically, I structure my analysis of El Cucuy and his projected relationship with predominantly Mexican and Central American audiences within the post-9/11 political moment.11 El Cucuy provides an arena where men are not scorned for speaking Spanish, for being undocumented, or for working in low-status professions. As José succinctly states in the epigraph, El Cucuy attracts a male listenership wrought with gender anxieties, yearning to “feel like men.”

Listening to Gendered Shifts in Labor Characterized by shifts in the global economy and the mounting emphasis on protecting national borders, the post-9/11 political moment has heralded not only an increased demand for immigrant labor, but also an increase in the legal vulnerability of undocumented peoples. Following the U.S. “war on terror,” public discourse on immigration reform, interlaced with that of national security, has produced a profound antiimmigrant backlash. Sociological studies, particularly those rich with a feminist focus, have documented how increased migration rates, propelled by economic practices of globalization, reconfigure immigrants’ labor and gender roles in newfound residences.12 Given this unsettling political climate, El Cucuy’s consistent early morning encouragement, to an immigrant-based listenership, to “get up, up, up . . . to work” for the almighty dollar reaffirmed the place, labor, and value of Latino immigrants. In many respects, this emerging brand of Spanish-language radio hosts function as transnational actors, a product of globalization’s gendered order. Media scholars have long argued, at times a bit too optimistically, that broadcasting serves as a nostalgic substitute for traditional “town hall” forums, where citizens gathered and deliberated in political discussions. Instead of physically congregating, people flock to media outlets or consume similar news and information, taking part in what Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community” across geographical distances.13 Talk radio’s origins are found in the political disillusionment of the 1960s and 1970s when the public’s waning trust in national institutions helped escalate the popularity of talk radio. The revival of talk

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represented, largely in low-level service, construction, agricultural, and manufacturing jobs, including waiters’ assistants [busboys], and painters.”22 In urban metropolises such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Diego, immigrant Latinos constitute 40 to 70 percent of these workers.23 Indeed, a 2004 policy report released by the Pew Hispanic Center correlated the revitalization of the U.S. economy with Latino employment numbers. Ironically, while Latinos’ bodies are instrumental to the U.S. political economy, they are frequently scorned by U.S. public opinion and isolated from U.S. public life. Transnational and gender studies have effectively argued that a “sense of loss” in gender status, work titles, and at times even family roles are often converted into monetary remittances returned to home countries. A growing number of “hometown associations” or male-composed groups organize to send money to home communities abroad and to decide how these funds are spent. Therefore, sending money home becomes a means of maintaining power and masculine authority via decision making and political processes. Although immigrant women participate in fund-raisers, they are denied the same social capital and enhancement of power afforded to immigrant men, who often work in tandem with male-led government coffers abroad.24 Just as wiring money abroad is seen as a method for securing a sense of masculine order on the transnational plane, I argue that these gender anxieties are manifested through El Cucuy’s morning radio program, in which he and his (male) listeners re-inscribe a sense of hypermasculinity to an invisible and feminized caste of male laborers. With differing gendered experiences in the United States, immigrant men sustain and perpetuate patriarchal ideals through radio programming. Masculinities are nimble and their practices shift across generations and cultural boundaries. Talk theories that engage with wounded white male egos and their disillusionment with U.S. politics are not entirely applicable to immigrant Mexican and Central American men. Struggling to define themselves in relation to both immigrant women’s social advances as well as ideals of white masculinity, listeners can tune into personalities such as El Cucuy to engage in sonic acts of public (heterosexual) male posturing. El Cucuy’s presence on stations that feature “Mexican regional” music highlights the working-class character of his audience. Mexican

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New Yorker, El Cucuy offered a much more poignant example of his English skills. He explained that “yo oprimo el numero dos/I press number two,” a reference to the growing availability of Spanish-spoken instructions by pressing an alternate number, often number two, when contacting businesses and government offices by telephone.29 By broadcasting his personal qualities as an undocumented immigrant and limited English speaker, he validated those of his listeners. His well-known life narrative from undocumented immigrant to celebrity offered his fans “proof ” of the rewards of hard work and frequent prayer; his struggles as an undocumented immigrant were seen as heroic, as he left the beauty of home to toil in the U.S. labor market. In these instances, however, El Cucuy’s affirmation displayed a conservative immigrant work ethic and false notion of the American dream, which claims hard work automatically reaps social and economic rewards. Oddly, his discernment of the American dream lacked the usual considerations he gave to race, class, and linguistic prejudices experienced by Latinos, topics frequently addressed on his show. El Cucuy’s recurrent public praises made over the air to immigrants on the U.S. side of the border joined a larger transnational discourse, with its undercurrents of money and labor, championed by then Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox and echoed by U.S. president George W. Bush. President Fox’s well-documented public thanks to Mexicanorigin laborers in the United States for their monetary remittances sent to Mexico were instrumental in the rebuilding of a viable Mexico that Mexican laborers can, one day, return to. Likewise, President Bush expressed public appreciation toward Mexican laborers for working in positions considered far too unattractive for U.S. (non-Latino) Americans. El Cucuy’s radio persona underscored those larger international sentiments posed by male politicians.

Linguistic and Gendered Puns Intended El Cucuy’s disquieting gender politics are apparent in his on-air references to women. El Cucuy restored a sense of male agency by positioning Latinas in a traditional and voiceless space. Women were used as linguistic props and strategically bore the brunt of the joke, as the object(s) of “funny” silences and misunderstandings. Humor, for El Cucuy, worked

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pecking order. Even sociolinguists, Susan J. Douglas argues, admit “ritual insulting—insults as part of a game, done for laughs—occur most frequently during times of cultural stress.”32 Specifically, “who says what to whom and how speaks volumes about who has power, who doesn’t, and how that power is both challenged and maintained.”33 Armed with over two thousand sound effects, El Cucuy often used electronic sound effects to advance his comedic use of language. El Cucuy’s linguistic slapstick, reinforced by a host of bizarre sound effects, served as audible and often gendered cues for listeners. Reminiscent of the early days of radio comedy, the routine sounds of horns, buzzers, water dripping, zippers, pages flipping, heavy sighs, and applause tracks helped audiences imagine El Cucuy’s aural staging. Water dripping often signified a slow-paced segment of a story or emphasized silence over the air; heavy sighs displayed exasperation; and although the sound of zippers acoustically set up sexually tinged scenes, it implied only when a man is “ready,” not a woman. The sound effect of the zipper communicated a masculine sexuality through the notion of pants in at least two ways. First, women are often fashioned through the gendered ideal of dresses, not the more masculine wear of pants. Second, figuratively speaking, women do not wear the pants in the relationship, meaning they hold limited decision-making power. The absence of a comparable acoustic prompt for women reflected their lack of sexual agency over the air. A carefully inserted laugh track not only disrupts back-and-forth dialogue between host and callers but also signals to the listener the shift from a private to public conversation.34 The host-caller conversation provoked a false sense of intimacy, while the laugh track served as a greater reminder that the private conversation is actually public. It also cued the listener when the moment of “listening” transitioned from being “voyeuristic” to “entertaining.” For El Cucuy, the laugh track validated his pelados and reified the gendered power differentials that characterize the relationship between El Cucuy and his callers and guests, since they do not have the capability to “laugh track” back. On the radio, linguistic slapstick compensated for the absence of the visual as silent films attempted to visually compensate for the voice. As silent actors exaggerated bodily motions to communicate a scene, the voice’s timber, volume, and language—elements of one’s vocal

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willingly participate in his on-air banter through a gendered, bicultural lens. Thirty-three female participants were recruited from a nonprofit educational center in San Francisco, California. The center offered free computing courses for low-income women in Spanish as well as GED preparatory workshops and ESL evening classes. Located in the vibrant, Latino-dominant neighborhood known as the Mission within walking distance to bus stops and an underground transportation system, the center, with its thirty-mile proximity to Silicon Valley, encouraged nearby corporations and dot-coms to hire from their all-female, increasingly bilingual, trained work force.38 Excerpts of El Cucuy’s on-air exchanges with female callers were played during focus group sessions to stimulate discussion. Many of the participants also contributed their own recollections of exchanges recently heard on the morning show. Certainly, listening and discussing El Cucuy within a public setting among fellow female listeners provided an unusual context from many of their usual morning custom of listening at home. Yet the focus group sessions also offered an opportunity to voice, for some, pent-up frustrations at the heroic standings of El Cucuy and his on-air comrades. When discussing gender, and specifically the women who call into El Cucuy’s show, the focus group participants with whom I spoke offered different interpretations. Nine women reacted negatively to the female callers, going as far as to call them “ignorant.” One participant claimed, “I think women called in because they’re one of the same with El Cucuy.” Supporting this comment, Laura remarked, “Since the woman knows what kind of guy [El Cucuy] is, I think she’s worse than him.” These women scorned not only female callers, but male listeners as well, for supporting the show’s existence. This last comment implied that only a lower echelon of man would tune into El Cucuy and affirmed that the participant was clearly culturally above such shows. By concentrating on the individual, these participants partially blamed both the female callers and the male listeners for constructing what they felt were negative representations of Latinas and Latinos. However, seventeen of the thirty-three female focus group participants viewed the involvement of female callers within the larger context of “public space” and were more charitable in their interpretation of the women’s participation. For instance, one participant, Alma, gave the callers “the benefit of the doubt,” stating,

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participate in male-led radio shows as a means of securing the social space afforded to men. Similarly, another participant focused her comments on the lack of communication between men and women as the primary reason why women seek broadcasting spaces for these conversations, claiming that such phone calls indicate a “lack of communication with one’s partner, sometimes we [Latinas] talk to others but we don’t dare do so with our partner or with our husband. One doesn’t dare.” Placing these two points of view in conversation with one another, while Constanza believes that women participate in such shows to obtain the same privilege granted to men in speaking about sex, the latter participant believes that men and women do not communicate directly. Therefore, a less ominous and more anonymous site of broadcasting allows such conversations to take place among men and women. Another less judgmental participant explained, Estas son mujeres, quizás nadie les pone atención, así que ellas piden ponerlo ahí, en público, lo que sienten para que todos lo puedan escuchar, ellas se siente cómodas haciéndolo . . . bueno, pero al final no es buena idea para personas decentes. These are women that perhaps no one listens to them, so they just ask to put it out there in the open, what they feel inside, so everyone can hear, they feel comfortable doing so . . . in the end it’s not a good idea for honest people.

Although the latter participant echoed much of Alma’s sentiment that radio provided some sort of anonymous space for these women to voice their questions and opinions “in the open,” she nonetheless concluded her statement by claiming that “honest” women should not use this public forum. While many participants offered insightful views on the use of broadcasting as a gendered “substitute” of sorts for women seeking advice, many of these same participants did not offer critical responses of El Cucuy himself. On another occasion a woman called complaining about her husband’s impotence. The woman is heard struggling to articulate her problem to El Cucuy. Eventually she states, slowly, “he’s [pause] too [pause] fast.” Well aware of what her comment implies, El Cucuy,

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is much more common than people can or want to imagine. There’s lots of men like this guy in the world. They are sick. They are pathological.

Linking El Cucuy’s on-air belittlement and disrespect toward women with stumbling self-esteem rates among immigrant and/or Latina women, Patricia felt that such open, broadcasted contempt for women served as a beginning point for emotional, verbal, and physical violence.40 Perhaps unwittingly, Patricia engages in the same “medical discourse” often used by El Cucuy. She employs counterterms such as “sick” and “pathological” to combat his self-styled position as the “doctor” who provides a “cure” with his witty “medicine.” Adding to Patricia’s remarks that there are “lots of men like this guy,” Sandra claimed that “even those men who listen to the show. They may seem like they’re just quietly listening, but what do you think is running through his head when he sees a woman walking down the street? It’s violence, like Patricia mentioned.” According to several focus group participants, female callers seek out and tolerate such talk, which in turn propagates similar dynamics in quotidian life. Focus group participants made open connections between what is heard and what can thus be lived. Radio, as a site of cultural reproduction, works to broadcast inequitable discourses of power. Their comments exemplify how such discourse aired on the radio and heard within the public sphere holds the potential to manifest itself on the bodies of Latinas. Critiques of El Cucuy’s show were consistently made in relation to the larger consideration of how Latinos were already viewed within the mainstream media, specifically within the English-language media. For instance, Magdalia argued, Aunque es anónimo para la mujer, ese hombre [El Cucuy] no respeta a las mujeres. El les dice “Cuéntame esto” y ellas se meten más. “¿Quién hace esto?” y “¿Quién hace lo otro?” y vez, el les saca las cosas, algunas veces muy íntimas y mujeres no deben hacer esto porque se dejan . . . hacer eso, y lo peor es que ¡son Latinas! Ellas dan una impresión horrible de las Latinas. Although it’s anonymous for the woman, that man [El Cucuy] disrespects women. He’d say “tell me this” and they’d get in deeper. “Who does this” and “who does that,” so you see, he’d get things out of them,

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their listening and opinions of El Cucuy in relation to Latinas and Latinos and non-Latinos. The majority of listeners articulated their listening from social locations of class, gender, or race, or their invisibility as immigrants, women, and working-class people. Apart from the linguistic objectification of women, the most mentioned body part on El Cucuy’s show was the penis. The topic of the penis, which was mentioned by twelve of seventeen female callers, parallels Manuel Peña’s discussion of working-class machismo. Off-color jokes and riddles that rely on the use of the penis as the “underlying funny” ultimately serve as a means of emasculating others. Men, according to Peña, symbolically “penetrate” other men by interrogating their penises and their routines in bed.41 However, such joking is usually done within the context of other men. Displacing this “private passion” of emasculating others and broadcasting such graphic rhetoric, El Cucuy may be interpreted as either speaking to other men (thereby emasculating many others) or speaking for men (thereby reinscribing a hypermasculinity on their behalf). Both possible subject positions use the female body as a prop or stand-in linguistic penis for this ritual of teasing. While El Cucuy’s on-air statements and personality made him a controversial figure, his candid remarks and consistent alliance with Latino causes reaffirmed the presence of U.S. Latinos on both the radio and national landscape. Spanish-language radio programming reconceptualizes “community” by almost consistently focusing on events occurring both within and outside U.S. borders. Over a six-month period of morning recordings, the only male caller heard was guest speaker and local community member Oscar Reginaldo González. As both male and named (as opposed to the aforementioned unnamed female doctor), González was interviewed in a public relations effort to advertise an upcoming charity event in which El Cucuy would be participating. With the bulk of El Cucuy’s programming formatted to reflect El Cucuy responding to distressed women’s problems, or fellow men highlighting El Cucuy’s efforts, men were positioned as being concerned with larger humanitarian issues. In short, while women were heard airing individual concerns, men were heard inquiring about larger and more socially significant issues. However, as focus group participants elucidated the use of radio (and this show in particular) by female callers, their

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the opportunity to obtain legal permission to drive regardless of their legal status.42 Framed in the media as a Latino-specific issue, the controversial initiative occupied headlines and op-ed pages for weeks.43 In an effort to garner more support for the initiative, two female attorneys appeared on El Cucuy’s then afternoon radio show. The attorneys were introduced once by their first names and thereafter referred as abogadas/lawyers. On El Cucuy’s show female radio guests often remained nameless and were assigned nicknames according to their profession (doctora/doctor) or gender (mujer/woman). Perhaps worse, El Cucuy, in attempts to convey a trusting relationship with women guests, infantalized their first names: “María” became “Mariquita,” “Dolores” was referred to as “Lolita,” and “Teresa” was recast as “Teresita.” Made more apparent by El Cucuy’s consistent naming of male guests, the oversight trivialized the contributions made by women professionals to serious on-air discussions. By choosing their “names” for them, he robbed them of any symbolic agency. In the midst of the attorneys’ legal explanation of where the bill stood in the Senate’s pipeline, El Cucuy injected his own one-liners, loosely asking, “¿y que, piensan que nosotros no manejamos? Nos montamos en un solo carro  .  .  . como si era carpool [What, they don’t think we drive . . . we all pile in like a carpool].” The two attorneys giggled nervously along as El Cucuy took command of the conversation: Mira [baja su voz] que seamos francos aquí, frente frente, dime  .  .  . ¿hay un peligro  .  .  . realmente, en serio, nos van a remandar? ¿Entonces, a quien le toca nuestro lugar en los files, eh? Ellos, pos no. [suspira] [levanta su voz] Pero si necesitan pararse cada hora a aplicarse su bloque del sol [Risas] tú sabes, los blanquitos se queman, se ponen doraditos, colorados [Risas]. . . . Es más, llevan sus botellas de plástico de agua por todos lados [Risas; abogadas se ríen]. Piden su break cada diez minutos [Risas]. . . . Nos morimos de hambre en California [Risas; abogadas se ríen]. Look, [lowering voice] let’s be frank, face-to-face here, tell me . . . are we in danger . . . really, can you see [them] telling us to leave? Who will take our place in the fields then? They can’t [sigh]. [raising voice] They’d have to stop every hour to apply sunblock [laugh track] You know, white people, they burn, they get all red [laugh track] . . . they drag their plastic

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Two years later, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, the political issue of granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants was resurrected. This time, El Cucuy’s show went a step further and sent the “Cucuy-mobile” eight hours north of their Los Angeles studios to report on the anticipated signing of the bill to law by Governor Schwarzenegger. Parked across the street from the steps of California’s capital in Sacramento, the Cucuy-mobile (a van caricatured with El Cucuy’s face and the phrase “raza”) served as the show’s portable eyes and ears, reporting back via phone to El Cucuy. Alma, a female reporter with El Cucuy’s San Francisco affiliate, was dispatched to Sacramento to report on location. Conveying optimism, El Cucuy remarked, Claro que nosotros necesitamos licencias de manejar hombre, para transportar nuestra familias e hijos a la esuela, para llevar nuestros enfermos al hospital, y también para nosotros mismos a llegar al trabajo, esto es porque llegamos a los EE.UU., ¿ayudamos también a ellos, verdad? Hay que ver cuando el Gobernador Schwarzenegger firma el 60, nuestro Cucuy-móvil se va quedar estacionado allí mismo afuera del capital. Of course man, we need [driver’s] licenses to transport our family and children to school, to take sick ones to hospitals, and ourselves to work, that’s why we came to the United States, after all; this benefits them, am I right? Let’s find out when Governor Schwarzenegger is expected to sign it [Senate Bill 60], our Cucuy-mobile will be stationed there outside the California capitol until then.

El Cucuy downplayed the controversy surrounding undocumented immigrant driver’s licenses by reframing the issue as a matter of mutual benefit between undocumented immigrants and “ellos/them,” or nonLatino employers. As political observers had expected, and even with bipartisan support from politicians and the irony of the governor himself (though rich and white) identifying as an immigrant, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. Although many English-language talk-centered radio programs do not leave the confinements of their recording studios, morning radio shows are more accustomed to broadcasting from local grand openings, festivals, and charity-sponsored events. Because morning radio slots attract the largest number of listeners, and hence garner the

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money and awareness to areas of Mexico hit two months later by the lesser known Hurricane Wilma. El Cucuy’s involvement with both U.S. and Latin American charity events propelled a fame that transcended geographical borders, from Central America and Mexico to the United States.

Conclusion El Cucuy’s fame underscored transnational activity and extended beyond the physical movement of bodies to how the airwaves served as another route of mobility. Specifically, El Cucuy’s celebrity status was indicative of the migration of cultural icons and symbols that occur with the migration of people, but perhaps more significant, their money. He represented the exemplar of a transnational masculine image: an immigrant who navigated two borders and now sent money home to Central America, Mexico, and local U.S. Latino communities. Billboard images, publicity photos, and website pictures showcased El Cucuy’s humanitarian acts and “endorsed” his on-air character that worked to “voice over” his patriarchal narrative. They offered a visual perception that superimposed his masculine spoken character. For El Cucuy, notions of masculinity were shaped by the radio banter of women who were either linguistically teased or altogether absent. By relegating women to linguistic puns on male-led programming, their voices were seldom heard or were heard with mocking intentions. El Cucuy’s masculine expressions were those of a larger transnational order, a linguistic mouthpiece of a reconfigured state of gender, labor, and social norms mimicked on Spanish-language radio and validated through his political pandering with presidents and politicians. While El Cucuy championed working-class immigrants, his privileging of men strengthened male-identified forms of political participation. If El Cucuy, a discursive example of the masculinist genre of morning radio, reflected the transnational acoustic moment, women were and continue to be largely left off the air. The next chapter examines how, even with the popularity and continued success of morning talk radio, Spanishlanguage dials do not experience the same financial fortunes of their English-langauge competitors.

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5 Desperately Seeking Dinero Calculating Language and Race within Radio Ratings

In 2001, a puzzled official from Arbitron—the premiere radio ratings service—phoned Radio Nueva Vida station manager Mary Guthrie and asked, “Who are you guys?” Radio Nueva Vida received a debut ranking of thirty-five in popularity among some eighty Los Angeles– based radio stations and held an impressive third place in the category of “listener loyalty.”1 The success of Radio Nueva Vida signaled the rising trend of U.S. Spanish-language radio, particularly within the number one radio market of Los Angeles, joining the then twenty other Spanish-language radio stations courting the region’s 45 percent Latino listenership.2 Arbitron’s bafflement, however, underscores the lack of communication between English-dominant audience industries and Spanish-language radio. Given that Spanish-language radio stations frequently occupy top five standings in the largest radio markets in the United States —New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and the San >> 127 

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media industries. The ill-famed memo from the Katz Radio Group, a company that sells national advertising for radio stations, in 1998 raised even more attention to the damaging ways in which consumers of color are cast. The internal memo later leaked to the public advised its sales representatives to discourage corporations from placing commercials on radio stations directed toward Latinos and African Americans, referring to these listeners as “suspects” not “prospects” with no regard to a station’s standings within the ratings. Language matters compound issues of race and ethnicity among Latinos. Indeed both the larger radio industry as well as Arbitron have long grappled with how to approach, recruit, and then measure Spanish-dominant radio listeners. Yet bilingual and English-dominant radio listeners dispute long-standing correlations between language preference and media choice. Sure, immigrant Latinos are more proficient in Spanish than English; second-generation Latinos adopt more English skills; and third-generation Latinos are largely English-dominant. Yet, according to a Pew Research Center survey, a significant share of these later generations of English-dominant Latinos choose Spanish when, for instance, listening to music and watching television.6 As I later argue, these patterns should push Arbitron to not only reimagine Latinos as exclusively immigrant or Spanish-dominant but also reassess their sampling methodology.

Arbitron Muscle Recognized as objective “third parties,” audience evaluation companies serve as chief financial arbiters among radio stations or networks, potential advertisers, and listeners. Audience measurements and market research claim to identify “when” and “where” listeners tune into radio. This form of audience surveillance, where media industries track and categorize listeners, converts people into desirable commodities and places them within neatly packaged audiences. This process of conversion, from an undefined mass of listeners into institutionally recognized audiences, requires audience measurement techniques. Within this system, the term “audience” represents an economic product or coin of exchange, among advertisers, marketers, audience firms, and other media professionals. Data on the media habits of Latinos are used

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sophisticated. Second, even with the spectacular growth in Spanishlanguage radio—tenfold from 1980 to 20108—Arbitron possesses limited experience tracking Spanish-language radio listeners. With Arbitron subscription fees reported as high as thirty thousand dollars a month in 2006,9 only large-scale radio networks can afford to subscribe to the detailed listening reports offered by Arbitron. Nevertheless, U.S. Spanish-language radio networks find themselves forced to subscribe to Arbitron’s expensive services to bolster their industry reputation. As the go-between, Arbitron receives payments by radio stations to compute and then later showcase audience numbers to advertisers. Joaquín Blaya, a Spanish-language media mogul remarked rather bluntly, “Trade is conducted in our [radio] business on Arbitron’s numbers. The ad agencies and media groups use Arbitron numbers.”10 In fact, unless a radio station subscribes to Arbitron, they are not authorized to reference Arbitron findings or ratings to potential clients. Regardless of their underdeveloped bilingual measures, radio stations are at the mercy of Arbitron to increase ad revenue, placing Spanish-language radio at an inherent financial disadvantage. Since the mid-1990s Spanish-language radio has unseated Englishlanguage radio stations from top standings across dials within each major radio market. Even with such high ratings, several Spanish-language radio networks insist that Arbitron’s tally of audience numbers is dwarfed and not representative of their actual prowess. Network executives insist that they pay high subscription fees for a service that does not accurately gauge their audience’s listening practices. Complicating matters is the fact that advertising time sold on top-rated Spanish-language radio continues to cost less than many English-language radio stations rated lower. Even with the backing of Arbitron, advertisers are wary of investing in a Spanish-language media market or in Latino listeners, evident in the disproportionate amount of revenue earned by English- versus Spanish-language radio stations, a unique situation where racism trumps capitalism.

From Diary to Portable People Meter (PPM) Since its debut in the 1920s, the business of tabulating radio audiences has evolved into a sophisticated and lucrative enterprise. Despite the

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For instance, New York’s WBLS-FM, an African American–oriented radio station, denounced Arbitron for the racial imbalance in listener diaries in 1992. In this case, Arbitron had used just seventeen diaries to determine the listening habits of the area’s 77,500 African American men ages forty-five to forty-nine years of age.14 As a result, WBLSFM’s parent company, Inner-City Broadcasting, rightfully argued that the low sample of middle-aged African American men affected radio ratings and subsequently the value of advertising time on WBLS-FM. Denver’s radio market resounded similar cries when it was revealed that the ratings from summer 2001 were based on just 150 Hispanic (Spanish-dominant) diary responses.15 Issues of participation and accuracy worsened when, ten years later in 2002, Arbitron reported a record low 32.6 percent rate of return for all diary users; for the largest twelve radio markets, response rates had dipped to 27.5 percent.16 As communications scholar Philip Napoli notes, “Any sampling group that overrepresents or underrepresents certain demographic groups will produce data that will provide a distorted picture of the actual media audience.”17 In this case, Arbitron’s 2002 tabulation of radio listeners using critically low rates of responses set off discontent throughout the radio industry. The development of the PPM promised to bring radio research up to date with twentieth-century technology. Yet, even in its early stages, the PPM exhibited many signs that the upgrade may not necessarily secure higher participation rates from listeners of color. Adapted from television’s People Meter (itself a reincarnation from early radio’s audimeter), its launching was a joint venture between Arbitron and Nielsen Media Research, intended to gauge “cross-media” consumption by tracking when and where participants watch television and listen to radio.18 As opposed to television’s People Meter, Arbitron’s vice president Thom Mocarsky explains, “There’s no wiring to rip up, no bugs that have to be implanted inside the TV. It’s a simple set-up that allows for a less cumbersome viewer experience. It’s all passive; nobody has to do anything out of the ordinary to record the data.”19 Rather than rely on human memory to jot down daily radio listening habits, the PPM resembles a pager, a device worn by participants who are randomly selected through phone calls. It functions as an electronic ear, detecting inaudible signals embedded in the audio portion of media and entertainment content delivered by broadcasters, content providers, and distributors. The use

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multiyear contract with Arbitron’s PPM: “We are willing to make this commitment to PPM as the new currency for radio in order to provide our advertisers with the most accountable measures possible of our growing audiences. We are counting on the PPM to enhance the credibility of our programming and the value of these audiences in the eyes of our advertisers.”24 Alarcón committed to future PPM trials because he had hoped to entice mainstream advertisers to give equal recognition to Spanish-language radio listeners, despite already subscribing to Arbitron-approved services. In this case, the PPM is intended to convince advertisers of the “enhanced credibility” of SBS’s Spanish-language listenership. Read as a public relations tactic to improve the perception of Spanish-language listeners to potential advertisers, Alarcón’s comment speaks to ongoing struggles to sell Latinos as a viable consumer base. More problematic is that Alarcón and his peers are forced to rely on “objective” modes of measurement to address much more complicated factors of race and class within consumer (racial) profiling. Arbitron also parades the PPM as the technological solution to low participation problems of Hispanic and African American participants; yet, two key barriers remain with PPM implementation and the inclusion of station formats directed at Hispanic and African American listeners. First, the transition from diary to PPM raised already expensive subscription rates by 40 to 65 percent,25 further limiting smaller radio stations from participating in the PPM process and being “counted” by Arbitron or recognized by pools of advertisers. In fact, throughout the PPM’s development stages, radio groups complained of gradual increases in subscription fees for the diary system. Arbitron explained that the increase in diary fees were meant to offset PPM’s mounting development costs. Second, despite the improved return rate of African American and Hispanic participants in Houston’s PPM trial, Arbitron has not drastically altered its mode of sample recruitment. The recruitment practices of Arbitron, via telephone, are an unrealistic means of enrollment for Latinos. Arbitron recruits diary keepers by calling households using an electronic operator that places calls to a random selection of households. As early as 1980, Arbitron found that in New York nearly 50 percent of Hispanic households did not have a landline.26 In 2005, just 85 percent of all U.S. Hispanic households had telephone service.27 Even with household lines, newfound telephone

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Assimilating to Arbitron The listener diary’s greatest challenge arrived when the “niche” of Spanish-language radio gained mainstream momentum. For instance, in 1986, Telemundo joined the newly rechristened Univisión (formerly the Spanish International Network) as a major purveyor of Spanishlanguage television. That same year, a total of 168 Spanish-oriented stations occupied the radio airwaves, up from 65 a decade earlier.31 By 1990 the figure had jumped to 390 Spanish-language radio stations.32 Yet the changing landscape of Spanish-dominant viewers and listeners did not compel Nielsen or Arbitron to retool their audience techniques even when Spanish-language media industries publicly demanded more accurate measurements. Since then, the dissatisfied rumblings of Spanish-language media industries have appeared on the pages of trade journals, as they express skepticism about the modes of tracking Hispanic-specific listeners and viewers used by Arbitron and Nielsen, respectively.33 On the heels of the “Decade of the Hispanic,” Univisión and Telemundo, in conjunction with AC Nielsen unveiled the “Nielsen Hispanic Ratings System” in 1989 to improve the audience tracking of Spanishlanguage television viewers. The collaboration required Univisión and Telemundo to invest thirty-six million dollars in the installment of Spanish-specific People Meters, in addition to their regular subscription fees.34 At the time, Telemundo and Univisión together garnered just 1 percent of advertising sales, despite having attracted 5 percent of the U.S. viewership.35 The agreement with Nielsen was undoubtedly made to entice advertising agencies toward the Hispanic market. Buoyed by high census numbers, Telemundo argued that although Hispanic households earned 80 percent of the average U.S. household, their larger family size translated into greater purchases.36 Nielsen installed People Meters, devices that attach to television sets to monitor channel surfing, in Spanish-speaking U.S. households in only thirty households located in just two markets. By 1994, Nielsen had expanded to eleven markets with eight hundred People Meters placed in Hispanic households.37 In tandem with Nielsen’s attention toward Spanish-language television viewers, Arbitron implemented “Differential Surveys” for both

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of U.S. Latinos, María’s visits to bilingual upper- to middle-class households seems particularly skewed. Despite the employment of bilingual field researchers, such as María, Arbitron’s reliance on a not-so-random list of participants prevented the creation of a more representative and accurate profile of Spanish-language radio listeners. The use of Differential Surveys and bilingual field researchers exemplify how Arbitron has awkwardly regarded Hispanic and Spanish-language listeners. In particular, the merging of these two distinct ethnic and linguistic categories itself is deemed problematic because, as mentioned earlier, not all Hispanics speak Spanish. These listeners posed, in the words of audience researcher Hugh Malcolm Belville, “special problems” to the audience industry that required what Arbitron calls “special procedures.” David Lykes, senior vice president at then Tichenor Media, offered the following public retort to Arbitron about gauging Latino listeners: “We don’t think they’re [Arbitron] very good at it.” He attributed low Hispanic listener participation to language barriers but also a “cultural reluctance to respond to strangers on the telephone.”42 América Rodriguez, regarding the case of Nielsen and television sampling, refers to this as an “official aura” of which Hispanics are suspicious, thus affecting participation rates.43 Belville’s classic text Audience Ratings goes as far as to cite suspicion, language, and illiteracy levels as impediments to accurate ethnic measurement. Belville’s explanation for Hispanics’ and African Americans’ high rates of unlisted phone numbers is that they “want to feel safe from bill collectors or the authorities who may be checking their welfare or citizenship status.”44 To suggest that Hispanics and African Americans avoid having their phone number listed because of citizenship or welfare concerns falls into age-old tropes linking people of color with lack of government accountability. While I agree that communities of color regard government officials with suspicion for a variety of historical reasons, Belville’s assumption that unlisted phone numbers are meant to deceive government officials is largely unfounded or, at the very least, uncorroborated. Considering the relative simplicity of the diary, issues of compliance may have more to do with those of disenfranchisement or larger sentiments of marginalization within the mass media. In any case, rather than alter audience measurements to account for the popular growth of both Hispanic and African American–oriented radio

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three key questions: (1) What language do you speak most often at home? (2) What language do you speak most often away from home? and (3) Which language do you “prefer” to speak?47 Arbitron’s attempts to quantify a Latino’s preference of language, via three simple questions, assumes that Latinos live in a binary Spanish (private/“home”) and English (public/“away from home”) linguistic existence. Despite favorable radio ratings in many major Hispanic-identified markets, when released in 1997 the survey showed various results for different markets: Albuquerque had a 70 percent English-dominant Hispanic population, South Florida a 42 percent Spanish-dominant Hispanic population, and New York a 40 percent bilingual Hispanic population. Together these figures demonstrate that language and ethnicity are not always intricately related and that not all self-identified Latinos speak Spanish. Despite these symbolic quantifications, terms used in the survey such as “dominant” may also mean that one, to some extent, may still identify as bilingual. The report complicated the issue even further, concluding that “there is no single right way” to classify language preference in relation to Hispanic listening. Hispanics in South Florida, for instance, may very well speak more “Spanish away from home” due to the public nature of Spanish, whereas Hispanics in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state that claims to hail from Spanish descendants, find themselves much more English-dominant. Arbitron’s results were largely inconclusive since it did not consider that English-dominant Hispanics may tune into Spanish-language radio stations or that although Spanish is the language of choice at home, it assumes that radio listening is confined to the home. Over ten years later, the variable of language persisted for Arbitron. The script used during initial phone calls to Hispanic-identified households read as follows: Thinking about the languages (you/he/she) use(s) in the home, would you say (you/he/she) speak(s) . . . •  only spanish in the home, •  mostly Spanish but some English, •  mostly English but some Spanish, •  or only e ng li sh in the home? •  d o not rea d: Both Equally

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populated neighborhoods. The increased industry attention helped build the case made by Spanish-language executives for Arbitron’s hiring of more bilingual interviewers. Doing so, Spanish-language executives argued, would help compensate for Arbitron’s general underestimation of Spanish-language radio listeners since Spanish-dominant or bilingual Hispanics would be more apt to participate in the diary sample if contacted by a bilingual interviewer. After incorporating bilingual interviewers within fifteen Hispanicdesignated markets, Arbitron’s fall 1992 Los Angeles findings crowned Spanish-language KLAX-FM as the market’s new number one radio station. In fact, Los Angeles’s KLAX remained Arbitron-rated number one from fall 1992 to fall 1994—an impressive nine consecutive Arbitron ratings reports—and a record for the market. From 1992 to 1995, Arbitron unveiled Spanish-language radio stations rated number one in several major radio markets: Los Angeles (KLVE-FM), San Antonio (KXTN-FM), Rio Grande Valley (KGBT-AM), Miami (WRMA-FM), and New York (WSKQ-FM).52 Trade and broadcast journals framed Spanish-language radio’s growth as the format’s maturation into mainstream (English-language) U.S. radio. Despite decades of commercial existence, ratings and accompanying press coverage referenced Spanish-language radio as the “format with flavor” and “hot sound of radio.” Titles alone—such as “The Spanish Market Grows Up,” “Radio En Español Makes Strides in U.S.” and “Spanish-language Stations Rise in Respect”—gestured to Spanish-language radio’s adolescent stages from niche to “general-market” status. The progression forced English-language radio to share the top standings and existing sources of revenue. With Los Angeles succeeding New York as the number one U.S. radio market, discontented English-language radio stations formed the “L.A. English Radio Association” coalition. They publicly cried foul, contending that Arbitron had oversampled Spanish-dominant Hispanics by using bilingual interviewers.53 Bill Sommers, general manager of dethroned English-language KLOS-FM, stressed, “We’re not saying Arbitron’s statistics are inferior. We’re saying they’re unreliable, and we live and die by those numbers.” Such public statements suggested that Arbitron’s use of bilingual interviewers was perceived as a sample bias. In publicly questioning the ratings, Bill Sommers stressed

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unseated. For instance, Spanish-language KSCA-FM in Los Angeles dropped from number one to number eight according to ratings in the summer of 2002, and promptly criticized Arbitron’s accuracy accordingly. However, the fall from one to number eight for a Spanish-language radio station carries much more weight. When Spanish-language radio fails to demonstrate consistent ratings media buyers are that much more reluctant to invest dollars in a field that rakes in lower revenues than their English-language peers.

Desperately Seeking Dinero Spanish-language radio represents the fastest “format” on all U.S. radio, garners top ratings in all major radio markets, and caters to “minority audiences” that tune into radio at higher rates than the “average” (read: white, English-dominant speaking) U.S. radio listener. Non-Hispanics reportedly listen to radio an average of sixteen hours a week; Hispanics tune to radio—Spanish-language specifically—an average of nearly twenty-two hours a week.58 For these reasons, there is a compelling case to be made for Spanish-language radio gaining equal revenue to its English-language peers. Yet, in 2006, even with mainstream recognition and Arbitron-approved numbers, Spanish-language executives continued to raise concerns regarding disproportionate sales, collecting an astonishing average of 40 percent less in revenue than their Englishlanguage counterparts.59 The disparity in revenue, between English- and Spanish-language radio, clearly reveals entrenched racial and linguistic bias. Philip Napoli argues that fixed perceptions of income and race may very well influence advertisers’ views of minority consumers. His work finds a troubling and significant relationship between audience ethnicity and audience value.60 Despite claims that “Spanish niche formats” have found a “gold mine,” Spanish-language executives know that the riches lie in achieving mainstream status and parity, not niche. Even with Arbitron-approved ratings, favorable standings given to Spanish-language radio are regarded with suspicion. Raúl Alarcón Jr., president of SBS, expressed his dismay in advertising discrepancies, commenting in 1993, “I’ve got the No. 1 station in L.A., but I’m not getting anywhere near the revenues the No. 2 or 3 or 4 stations get.”61 SBS’s

146  147 

148  149

Several English-language newspaper and television news programs momentarily focused on the critical role Spanish-language radio held in rallying listeners to participate in the marches.5 The underlying story centered on the “surprise” felt by the English-language press corps, city officials, and general American public that the marches even took place. Police officers and city personnel were caught off guard and unequipped to handle crowd control. English-language media, even their most liberal arms, expressed bafflement at the success and organization of the marches.6 The press’s bewilderment only confirmed the separate and parallel worlds of Spanish- and English-language media and their respective constituents. Even bilingual Latinos who get their news from English-language sources commented on being surprised in learning about the historic marches after the fact. For instance, a post from a Chicago-based Latino blog read, “I live in the Chicago area, which is why I am appalled at myself. I dropped in at my parent’s home yesterday and only then [saw] it on the Spanish news. I feel horrible as I haven’t been as up to date as I should be. I’ve decided I need to start watching the Spanish news daily since they seem to have more guest speakers and proactive information.”7 The blogger conveyed disappointment in his routine English-language channels of information. His decision to (re)turn to Spanish-language media for their “up to date” and “proactive information” largely stems from the realization that the Englishlanguage media do not play a comparable role of advocacy on behalf of Latinos. This blogger’s experience stands in stark contrast to that of Latinos accustomed to receiving political updates via Spanish-language radio, who had been primed for weeks as to the brewing unsettlement between politicians and immigrant advocates. Years after the historic proimmigrant marches, Spanish-language radio continues to be the primary source covering critical issues for U.S. Latinos. Although the contemporary figure of the radio host as political and community advocate is not new, the growth of Spanish-language radio has catapulted Latino interlocutors to sophisticated transnational platforms. On May 19, National Lobby Day, El Cucuy donned suit and tie to travel to Washington, D.C., to speak on behalf of his legion of listeners in lobbying for a more humane means of immigration reform. El Cucuy commented, “In general, the media’s role is to announce the news . . . I do that, too. But I also get to participate in the news when

150  151

The social and institutional marginalization of U.S. Latinos also signals the importance and necessity for more population-sensitive research methods. Given the apprehensiveness experienced by U.S. Latinos to government and research entities, surveys and statistical samples are often statistically weighted to account for disproportionate samples. In examining the relationship among commercial interests, state entities, and U.S. Latinos, I used radio and its unique public and private nature as a lens to explore a historical aspect of American broadcasting. This project benefited from focus groups conducted with female participants made possible only through repeated assurances to participants that their voices would remain both confidential and anonymous. Much like the immigration-themed shows I analyze—where/ when callers make themselves invisibly present through their voice via phone calls—my participants play an instrumental and comparable role in my analysis of talk shows. The language of Spanish, itself a racialized and classed construct, characterizes Spanish-language radio’s transgressive place within the U.S. airwaves. Vulnerable to public attacks, English-only endeavors and anti-bilingual initiatives have tried to police the public use of Spanish. These campaigns, often laced within a discourse of patriotism, are tactics of intimidation used against bilingual and Spanish-dominant communities. The flourishing growth of Spanish-language radio in the face of routine efforts to suppress Spanish marks it as politically significant. The disproportionate employment of Latinos within “browncollar” occupations, such as agriculture, construction, and the service sector, means that many Spanish-language radio listeners take their radios to work with them. Largely considered invisible laborers within these manual and service-oriented sectors of labor, Spanish-language broadcasters permeate the public from the back of restaurants, from housekeeping carts, and from outside construction sites. Considering the policing of Spanish and racialized division of labor, I consider these public forms of radio listening a symbolic form of defiance. The cultural history of Spanish-language programming and its complex, but persistently growing presence on U.S. airwaves serves as a critical cultural lens toward examining the struggles of U.S. Latinos of Mexican origin. It disrupts traditional understandings of U.S. radio as both English-dominant and catering to an exclusive “domestic”

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154  155 16. For instance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition reported the consistent (over)use of salsa and mariachi music as backgrounds in English-language news, regardless of the tone of the story (see www.nhmc.org). Communication scholars have also begun to document how Latinos are framed as inherently deviant in the media. See Travis L. Dixon and Daniel Linz, “Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News,” Journal of Communication 50, no. 2 (2000): 131–154; and Dana Mastro, Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, and Maria Kopacz, “Exposure to TV Portrayals of Latinos: The Implications of Aversive Racism and Social Identity Theory,” Human Communication Research 34 (2008): 1–27. 17. For two exemplar texts, see Hamid Nacify, The Making of Exile Culture: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and Nhi Lieu, The American Dream in Vietnamese (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 18. Rosemary Scott and Reed Bunzel, “Muy Caliente,” Radio Ink, May 27, 2002. 19. Arbitron, “Hispanic Radio Today: How America Listens to Radio” (2009), http://www.arbitron.com/radio_stations/reference_hispanic.htm. 20. Arbitron, “Internet and Multimedia Research 2005: The On-Demand Media Consumer” (2005), http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/IM2005Study.pdf. 21. Arbitron, “Hispanic Radio Today: How America Listens to Radio” (2004), http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/hispanicradiotoday04.pdf; and “The Power of Hispanic Consumers (2004–05),” http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/hisp_consumer_study_2004.pdf. 22. Arbitron, “Hispanic Radio Today: How America Listens to Radio” (2010). 23. For an example of mainstream coverage of Spanish-language radio’s growth and success, see Susan Warren, “Stations Change Tune to Woo Hispanics,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1995; Donna Petrozzello, “Audience Share Swells for Spanish Formats,” Broadcasting & Cable, January 22, 1996, 122; Kathy Haley, “Radio Rides Hispanic Population Boom,” Broadcasting & Cable, October 6, 1997, 45; and Alonso Alfredo, “Spanish Niche Formats: A Radio Gold Mine,” Billboard, April 29, 2006, 4. 24. Mari Castañeda Paredes, “The Transformation of Spanish-Language Radio in the United States,” Journal of Radio Studies 10, no. 1 (June 2003): 5–15. 25. Curtis Marez offers an alternative discussion on the possibility of nostalgia in “Brown: The Politics of Working-Class Chicano Style,” Social Text 48 (Autumn 1996): 109–132. 26. Ari Y. Kelman, Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 27. See, for instance, the provocative arguments of Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); and Leo Chávez, Covering Immigration: Popular

156  157 32. Unlike the work of other communications scholars who have extracted from Fraser’s work, Catherine Squires’s article on the role of black talk radio uniquely emphasizes “surveillance,” a concept central for communities of color, rather than simply the production of an alternative space. See her “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity,” Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics 5 (Spring 2000): 73–96. 33. Certainly there are limitations to this; see Amaya, Citizenship Excess. The tally of Spanish-language media in the United States, not just in radio ratings but also in the sheer number of Spanish-language newspapers and television giant Univisión’s fame of being the fifth most watched network, sadly makes clear that access to media systems does not neatly translate into increased doses of formal political power. 34. Eliyahu Katz, Broadcasting in the Third World: Promise and Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 35. Liza Catanzarite, “Wage Penalties in Brown-Collar Occupations” (Latino Policy and Issues Brief no. 8) (Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles Chicano Research Center, September 2003). 36. For population numbers, see the Pew Research Center, http://www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2014/02/26/the-u-s-hispanic-population-has-increased-sixfoldsince-1970/. For ratings information, see Arbitron, “Más alla de los ratings,” no. 1 (Winter 2004) and “Hispanic Radio Today: How America Listens to Radio” (2000, 2002, 2003), http://www.arbitron.com. 37. Ron Rodrigues, ed., “Hispanic Radio Today 2010: How America Listens to Radio” (Arbitron, February 4, 2011), http://www.arbitron.com/study/hisprt.asp1 38. Arlene Dávila, Latinos Inc.: The Making and Marketing of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 39. Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Hamar Martinez, and Gabriel Velasco, “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity” (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2012), http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/ iv-language-use-among-latinos/. 40. Paredes, “Transformation of Spanish-Language Radio.” 41. Zavella, I’m Neither Here nor There. 42. Gina M. Pérez, The Near Northwest Side Story: Migration, Displacement, and Puerto Rican Families (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 43. Cited in Douglas, Listening In, 7. 44. Some of these “Golden Age” or “Radio Republic” studies include Hilmes, Radio Voices; Douglas, Listening In; Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio, eds., Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (New York: Routledge, 2002); Kathy Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935–1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda (Berkeley: University of California, 2003); Loviglio, Radio’s Intimate Public; Kathleen Battles, Calling All Cars: Radio

158  159 56. Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000). 57. Michele Hilmes, “The Disembodied Woman,” in Radio Voices, 130–150. 58. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 109–142. 59. Jonathan Xavier Inda, Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

Notes to Chapter 1 N otes to Chapter 1. Acoustic Allies

1. Epigraphs: Frederic J. Haskins, “Latin Melodies Charm America,” Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1925; Lorena M. Parlee, “Pedro J. Gonzalez and the Origins of Spanish-language Broadcasting in Los Angeles, 1928–1934” (unpublished paper, Pedro J. González Papers, 60, box 18, folder 12, Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles). For such foreign-language musical enlightenments, see “All-Spanish Radio Bill from KHJ This Afternoon,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1922, II2; “Spanish Program Given, Noted Latin Artists Heard in Concert Series,” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1922, II3; “Notes from Radio Broadcastings,” New York Times, June 29, 1924, XX15; and “Popular Stars to Broadcast,” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1927, C4. Similar efforts of radio enlightenment took place in Mexico’s radio landscape; see “Mexico Radios Cultures,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1926, F11. 2. I am using Ana M. López’s designation of dates (1933–1949) in regard to the Good Neighbor Policy and its media efforts revived under President Roosevelt. See her article “Are All Latins From Manhattan? Hollywood, Ethnography, and Cultural Colonialism,” in Film and Nationalism, ed. Alan Williams (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 195–205. 3. For a selection of newspaper coverage that candidly portrays this sentiment, see “Growth of Radio Industry Rapid in Past Four Years,” New York Times, September 21, 1924, XX14; “Pan-American Radio and Wire Regulation Proposed,” New York Times, September 28, 1924, X7; “Hughes Upholds Monroe,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1925, 1; “Harbord Makes Hit with Spanish Talk,” Washington Post, May 8, 1927, F7; “Hispanic Culture Stressed by Group,” New York Times, April 21, 1935, N3; and “Radio Course Inspires Interest in Other Lands,” Christian Science Monitor, February 12, 1938, 5. 4. Delpar, Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican. 5. Benamou, It’s All True. 6. Ibid. 7. Two compelling pieces include López, “Are All Latins from Manhattan?” and Julianne Burton, “Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal Unconscious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbor Policy, and the Packaging of Latin America,” in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger (New York: Routledge, 1992), 21–41. 8. López, “Are All Latins from Manhattan?” 198. 9. Delpar, Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican, 58.

160  161 an institutional perspective, The American Radio Industry and Latin American Activities, 1900–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990) and the commendable portrayal of Mexican-specific broadcasts in Mexico by Hayes, Radio Nation. For two compelling primary sources, see “The Peace of the Americas,” Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1906, I14; and Florence V. Kaiser, “21 Nations May Use Pan-American Radio,” Washington Post, March 24, 1929, A5. 25. Elsie Weil, “New York a Centre of Pan-American Life,” New York Times, September 15, 1929. 26. An early optimistic piece includes “Link All America By Radio,” New York Times, January 30, 1916, 18. Articles that listed or reviewed Pan-Americansponsored programming include “Hughes Upholds Monroe,” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1925; “Radio Programs,” Washington Post, March 12, 1925, 18; Haskins, “Latin Melodies Charm America”; Kaiser, “21 Nations May Use PanAmerican Radio”; “Latins Hear President,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1927, 1; “People Dance and Sing,” New York Times, April 14, 1932, 3; “Bill Asks PanAmerican Radio,” New York Times, April 28, 1939, 38; “Form Spanish Classes,” Washington Post, February 1, 1941, 11; and “U.S. and Latin America in Exchange of Radio Scripts,” Christian Science Monitor, July 11, 1941, 10. 27. Sponsors of radio shows also included Pacific States Electric Company and the F. B. Miller Company, Hudson, and Essex Dealers, see Paul Sheedy, “Radio Observes Mexico Holiday,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1925, A3. For a selection of articles and notices that offered a print preview or review of these shows, see “Link All America by Radio,” New York Times, January 20, 1916, 18; “WJY Introduces New Radio Show,” New York Times, June 15, 1924, XX19; “Hughes Upholds Monroe,” Los Angeles Times; “Pan-American Radio and Wire Regulation Proposed,” New York Times, September 28, 1928, X7; Kaiser, “21 Nations May Use Pan-American Radio”; “Aerial Pan-Americanism,” Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 1929, 16; “Pan-American Concert Is Set for Thursday,” Washington Post, June 29, 1936, X13; “People Dance and Sing,” New York Times, April 14, 1932, 3; “Today on the Radio, Tuesday July 20, 1937,” New York Times, July 20, 1937, 21; “On the Air Today,” Washington Post, June 17, 1937, 30; and “U.S. and Latin America in Exchange of Radio Scripts,” Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 1941, 10. 28. Leah Brenner, “Memo from South of the Border,” New York Times, January 17, 1943, X12. For another cross-border example, see “Hear U.S. Spanish Radio Program in Peru,” Washington Post, June 1, 1924, 21. 29. Ralph Power, “Radio Activities,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1927, A8. 30. Haskins, “Latin Melodies Charm America.” 31. Brenner, “Memo from South of the Border.” 32. Roshanak Kheshti, “Touching Listening: The Aural Imaginary in the World Music Culture Industry,” American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2011): 711–731. 33. Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here (New York: Routledge, 1995). 34. “Radio Concert Honors Mexico,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1922, II8. 35. “Rafael Villa Stars at KHJ,” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1926, A3.

162  163 63. Mario T. García, “Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant, 1880–1930,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 6, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 19–34; and John McKiernanGonzález, “Bodies of Evidence: Vaccination and the Body Politics of Transnational Mexican Citizenship, 1910–1920,” in Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848–1942 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 198–236. 64. George Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Vicki Ruíz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 65. “Arizona Wants Mexican Labor,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1920, 17. 66. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Immigration and the Making of Modern America (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 67. “Less Immigration Favored,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1929. 68. “Quota’s Application to Mexico Demanded by American Official,” Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 1927, 8; and “The Immigration Problem,” Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 1927, 16. 69. Mae M. Ngai, “The Strange Career of Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy, 1921–1965,” Journal of American History 21, no. 1 (2003): 69–108. 70. “New Aid Urged for Mexicans,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1932, C9. 71. “Few Mexicans Ask Citizenship,” Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 1930, 5. 72. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 213. 73. Ibid., 212. 74. Rodriguez, Making Latino News, 30. 75. Quoted in Douglas, Listening In, 135. 76. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 233. 77. Ibid., 184. 78. Texas-specific incidents are discussed by Rodriguez, Making Latino News. 79. Ibid., 29–30. 80. A&A Research, “License Responsibility to Exercise Adequate Control Over Foreign Language Programs,” Federal Communications Commission Reports 39 FCC 2d (1972): 1037–1042. 81. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (1987; repr., Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). This text concentrates on English-language personalities and how U.S. radio trampled on Mexican broadcasting space with no mention of how dominant English-language broadcastings overlooked local Mexican radio audiences. 82. Gerd Horten discusses the decrease in foreign language radio in his study Radio Goes to War. 83. Parlee, “Pedro J. Gonzalez.”

164  165 110. Ibid. 111. Gutiérrez and Schement, Spanish-Language Radio. 112. Rudolph Arnheim and Martha Collins Bayne, “Foreign Language Broadcasts over Local Stations: A Study of a Special Program,” in Radio Research, ed. Paul Lazarsfeld and Frank Stanton (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1941). 113. Dávila, Latinos Inc.. 114. The politics of census counting and labeling also reflected the growing dilemma of how and where to place Mexicans. Clara Rodriguez notes that in the 1930 U.S. census, Mexicans were recognized as a “race” yet “not before or after then” (42). A decade later, not only were those of Hispanic origin determined so by a linguistic criterion, whether or not Spanish was their “mother tongue,” but racially they were counted as white “unless they were determined by the census interviewer to be ‘definitely Indian or of other Nonwhite races’” (42). In both the 1950 and 1960 censuses, the linguistic criterion was replaced with that of having a Spanish surname (102). See her insightful text, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 115. Quoted in Morley, Home Territories, 120.

Notes to Chapter 2 N otes to Chapter 2. Mixed Signals

1. Radio interview with Guido del Prado, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ shiftshapers/2011/10/28/guido-del-prado-kbbf--1st-bilingual-radio-in-the-usa. 2. With no existing secondary sources related to these radio stations, I utilize a combination of ethnographic and archival data from two California-based stations—KBBF in Santa Rosa and KSJV in Fresno. The ethnographic research included interviews with station managers, radio hosts, and radio producers at these two stations as well as at KDNA in Yakima, Washington. I observed radio station operations during two 2-day stints at KBBF in Santa Rosa, California, over a six-month period (September–January 2003) and four 3-day trips to KSJV in Fresno, California, that spanned nearly a year and a half (January 2003–July 2004). In addition to station visits, I became an intermittent KBBF listener and frequently accessed KSJV via the Internet. I also volunteered at two KSJV-sponsored Mariachi Festivals, critically acclaimed events that allowed me to talk firsthand with attendees and radio station supporters. My archive contains station materials from Fresno’s KSJV and Santa Rosa’s KBBF that include initial applications to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), programming schedules, funding reports, grant proposals, and listener letters. Although Visalia’s KUFW finds its community origins during this era, many of its sister stations operate as commercial radio stations. This is a controversial and sticky situation not unnoticed by its community station comrades. Because I am focusing on community organizations directing community radio stations, I decided to not pursue KUFW due to its unique union affiliation.

166  167 20. Personal interview with Ricardo García, February 22, 2005, San Francisco. 21. The UFW’s engagement with El Malcriado, their community newsletter/newspaper, has received more attention. See, for instance, Randy Shaw, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 22. Broadcasting Yearbook, 1967 (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1967). 23. Broadcasting Yearbook, 1972 (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1972). 24. Broadcasting Yearbook, 1973 (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1973). 25. Ibid. 26. Broadcasting Yearbook, 1970 (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1970); and Broadcasting Yearbook, 1971 (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1971). 27. Broadcasting Yearbook, 1973. 28. Broadcasting Cable Yearbook, 2003 (New Providence, NJ: R.R. Bowker, 2003). 29. Jesse Walker, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 70. 30. Ibid. 31. Thomas Streeter, Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). 32. Walker, Rebels on the Air, 70. 33. Personal interview with Carol Pierson, October 5, 2003, Oakland, CA; and National Federation of Community Broadcasters, www.nfcb.org. 34. Pierson, interview; and personal interview with Marc Hand, October 30, 2003, Santa Cruz, CA. Closely aligned with the CPB, National Public Radio (NPR) has been charged with being too liberal, being too biased, or catering to privileged and/or formally educated audiences; see James Ledbetter, Made Possible By . . . : The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States (New York: Verso, 1997). 35. Full speech accessed October 7, 2003, from www.cpb.org. 36. Ralph Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996) and McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy. 37. An earlier policy—the Educational Television Facilities Act of 1962—allocated funds toward the hardware of noncommercial radio, while the 1967 act concentrates on the actual quality of programming. See John Edward Burke, An Historical-Analytical Study of the Legislative and Political Origins of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 (New York: Arno Press, 1979). 38. Ibid. 39. Sergio Osvaldo Silva, “Bilingual Public Broadcasting in Northern California: A History of Radio Station KBBF-FM” (master’s thesis, San Francisco State University, 1986), 5.

168  169 61. Silva, “Bilingual Public Broadcasting in Northern California.” 62. The first board consisted of Chicano educators, an attorney, farmworkers, a Head Start mother, a student, community representatives, and a production manager of a local TV station. 63. Personal interview with Felipe Ramírez, September 23, 2003, Santa Rosa, CA. 64. Their website proudly features such partnerships: www.kdna.org. 65. The inroads made in Texas on public radio certainly merit their own historical record. During this time the Longhorn Radio Network in Texas began producing a popular Chicano public news service. As a distribution service and production center of public service content for radio stations across Texas and the greater Southwest, the Longhorn Radio Network helped produce over two hundred episodes of “The Mexican American Experience,” first aired in October 1976, and “A esta hora conversamos,” joined soon after in October 1981. See John McKiernan-González, “The Mexican American Experience,” Not Even Past (February 16, 2011), www.notevenpast.org/listen/radio-community. 66. Guerrero, interview; and García, telephone interview, August 10, 2003. 67. Zavaleta and Sanchez, “Radio KDNA.” 68. Ibid.; Guerrero, interview; and García, telephone interview, August 10, 2003. 69. U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov. 70. Western Community Bilingual Radio, “Report 1.” 71. García, telephone interview, August 10, 2003; and Pierson, interview. 72. García, telephone interview, August 10, 2003. 73. Personal interview with Hugo Morales, January 23, 2003, Fresno, CA. 74. Western Community Bilingual Radio, “Report 1,” 63. 75. CPB, “Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Response,” 59, 60. 76. Personal interview with Lupe Carrasco, January 23, 2003, Fresno, CA. 77. Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Service to All Americans, 2002 Annual Report (Washington, DC: CPB, 2002), 14. 78. In 1999, Hugo Morales was the recipient of public broadcasting’s highest honor, the Edward Murrow Award, for his dedication to public broadcasting. 79. Aimee Deeken, “Fresno/Visalia Market,” Marketing y Medios, May 1, 2006, http://www.adweek.com/contributor/aimee-deeken. 80. “Grant Proposal from Bilingual Broadcasting to the Ford Foundation.” 81. Ibid., 16. 82. Telephone interview with José Mireles, March 10, 2003. 83. Silva, “Bilingual Public Broadcasting in Northern California,” 16. 84. Mireles, telephone interview. 85. Participant observation at KBBF-FM, August 19, 2003, Santa Rosa, CA. 86. Telephone interview with Rosa Ramon, March 17, 2003. 87. Ibid. 88. Personal interview with Alma López, August 29, 2003, Fresno, CA. 89. Stephen Magagnini, “Struggling in El Norte: Mixtec Indians Seek Better Life in the U.S.,” Sacramento Bee, October 20, 2002; and John Hubner, “California

170  171 9. Ibid. 10. Annette Kondo, “Radio Station Spreads the Word on Green Cards; Immigration: A Legal Aid Agency in Pacoima Is Swamped after a Spanish-language Outlet Helps Publicize a Special Amnesty Program. Deadline to Apply Is Apr. 30,” Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2001, B8; and Karin Brulliard, “Spanish Radio Tunes into Immigration Quandaries,” Washington Post, April 3, 2006, B1. 11. A few newspaper selections include “Labor Leaders Call Immigration Roundup ‘Union Busting’ Scheme,” Houston Chronicle, January 25, 1986; “Aliens Arrested at Fort Worth Camp,” Dallas Morning News, September 30, 1986; “LAX Raid Praised, INS Praised,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1986; and “Hard Times Intensify Debate,” Houston Chronicle, November 16, 1986. 12. For primary coverage see “Unemployment, Hard Times in America,” Boston Globe, November 7, 1981; “Reagan Abandons Pledge to Balance Budget by 1984,” Washington Post, November 7, 1981; “Joblessness Expected to Climb,” Washington Post, November 16, 1981; “Jobless Rate Hits 9.5 percent,” Boston Globe, June 4, 1982; and “The Depression in Rural America,” Washington Post, July 10, 1982. 13. “National News Brief: Radio Alerts Immigrants to Roving Border Patrols,” New York Times, October 16, 2000, A20. 14. David Manuel Hernández, “Pursuant to Deportation: Latinos and Immigrant Detention.” Latino Studies 6 (2008): 35–63. Ankle bracelets, initially said to be introduced in 2004 in select areas, are now commonplace in thirty cities. See the blog riff of Sarah Phelan, “Who Profits from ICE’s Electronic Monitoring?,” San Francisco Chronicle Political Blog, March 16, 2010, http://www.sfbg.com/ politics/2010/03/16/who-profits-ices-electronic-monitoring-anklets-0. 15. Moreover, in the past decade the increasing collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement has necessitated what David Manuel Hernández refers to as a “no contact zone” between immigrants and ICE, law enforcement, and other government entities. See Hernández, “‘My Fellow Citizens . . . ’: Barack Obama and Immigration Policy,” Journal of Race and Policy 6, no. 1 (Spring/ Summer 2010): 24–44. 16. Telephone interview with Ricardo García, February 22, 2005. 17. Elena Shore, “Immigration Raids in California Test Spanish Language Media,” Pacific News Service, June 17, 2004, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/ view_article.html?article_id=96ec947efd059e05acd9c716f64e3f0e. 18. For a concise and critical analysis of the Proposition 187 campaign, see Kent Ono and John Sloop, Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002). 19. Anna Pegler-Gordon, “In Sight of America: Photography and U.S. Immigration Policy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2002), 346. 20. Ibid., 345. 21. Ibid., 342. 22. Ibid., 348.

172  173 33. “Widow Warns about Dangers of Border-Crossing,” Dallas Morning News, June 26, 1999, A35. 34. Edward Epstein, “Intelligence Overhaul Bill Called Bad for Immigrants,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2004, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article. cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/30/MNGOU9185I1.DTL. 35. Inda, Targeting Immigrants. 36. Anny Bakalian and Medhi Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 37. “Coded Radio Broadcasts Used to Tip Off Illegal Immigrants,” Houston Chronicle, October 16, 2000, A17. 38. Scott Baldauf, “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” Christian Science Monitor, November 3, 2000. 39. Ibid. 40. Josh Kun, “Immigrant Sage: How a 70-Year-Old Curmudgeon, Played by a 28-Year-Old, Became One of the Most Popular Personalities on L.A. Radio,” Los Angeles Magazine, December 2008. 41. Ibid. 42. Personal interviews with Samuel Orozco, August 22, 2004, and March 20, 2005.

Notes to Chapter 4 Notes to Chapter 4. Pun Intended

1. El Cucuy moved between two corporate Spanish-language radio networks, Spanish Broadcasting Systems and Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation (now folded into Univisión), before his eventual exit from the more lucrative California to the less populated New Mexico airwaves. His off-air antics coupled with the prowess of Univisión, I believe, contributed to his less-than-graceful exit from Los Angeles. See Casillas, “Adiós El Cucuy.” 2. Public controversy over homophobic satires has, in particular, surrounded New York City’s top-rated show, El Vacilón de la Mañana. For instance, in 1994, a coalition of three lesbian organizations, Las Buenas Amigas, African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change, and the Lesbian Avengers, waged a fourmonth protest campaign against the radio show, its radio station WKSQ-FM, and its parent company, Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS). As a result, El Vacilón de la Mañana quietly retired some of the show’s “gay” scripted characters on a temporary basis. See Mireya Navarro, “On California’s Urban Border, Praise for Immigration Curbs,” New York Times, August 21, 2001; and Anne Marie de la Fuente, “Hispanic Shock Jock Boffo at B.O.” Variety, November 2005, 16. 3. These rallies took place in both Latino- and non-Latino-identified metropolises, including Miami, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas and Houston, Texas; and San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles, California; see Gillian Flaccus, “Spanish-Language Media Credited on Pro-immigrant Rallies,” Boston Globe, March 29, 2006, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/29/

174  175 Immigrant Man,” in Theorizing Masculinities, ed. Harry Bord and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 200–218; and Schaeffer, Love and Empire. 13. Anderson, Imagined Communities. 14. Douglas, “Letting Boys Be Boys,” 487. 15. Rebecca Piirto Heath, “Tuning into Talk,” American Demographics, February 1998, 48–53. 16. Douglas, Listening In; and Douglas, “Letting Boys Be Boys.” 17. Douglas, “Letting Boys Be Boys.” 18. Ibid. 19. Luin Goldring, “The Gender & Geography of Citizenship in Mexico-U.S. Transnational Spaces,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 7, no. 4 (2001): 501–537; Luin Goldring, “Gender, Status, and the State of Transnational Spaces: The Gendering of Political Participation and Mexican Hometown Associations,” in Gender and U.S. Immigration, Contemporary Trends, ed. P. Hondagneu-Sotelo (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), 341–354; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Overcoming Patriarchal Constraints: The Reconstruction of Gender Relations among Mexican Immigrant Women and Men,” Gender & Society 6, no. 3 (1994): 393–415; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003). 20. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gender and U.S. Immigration, 8. 21. Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy (Boston: South End Press, 2000); Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A. (New York: Routledge, 1992); and Sassen, Guests and Aliens. 22. Catanzarite, “Wage Penalties in Brown-Collar Occupations.” 23. Ibid. 24. Goldring, “Gender & Geography.” 25. Luis Clemens, “The Sound That Sells,” Marketing y Medios, December 1, 2005. 26. Ben Quiñones makes the following comment about the nature of Mexican regional music: “This is not Gloria Estefan or salsa; this is rancho music, straight working-class.” Quiñones’s comment alludes to the racial and class distinctions between Mexican and Central American communities in the United States and those of Cuban descent, considered a more affluent segment of the U.S. Latino community. His comment, however, neglects the history of salsa and its ties to working-class Latinos of color both within and outside the United States. See Aparicio, Listening to Salsa; and Ben Quiñones, “¡Despiertese, Despiertese! Starting the Day with Piolín,” LA Weekly, March 24, 2005, http:// www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Radio-Waves-3265130.php. 27. Paddy Scannell, Radio, Television, and Modern Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 36. 28. Steven Greenhouse, “Day Laborer Battle Runs Right Outside Home Depot,” New York Times, October 10, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/ national/10depot.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

176  177 1986), 90–99; Yvette Flores-Ortiz, “Levels of Acculturation, Marital Satisfaction, and Depression among Chicana Workers: A Psychological Perspective,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 20, nos. 1–2 (1991): 151–175; and V. Nelly Salgado de Snyder, “Factors Associated with Acculturative Stress and Depressive Symptomatology among Married Mexican Immigrant Women,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 11 (1987): 475–488. 41. Peña, “Class, Gender, and Machismo.” 42. Lynda Gledhill, “Latinos Demand Law on Licenses,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 2004, http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SACRAMENTOLatinos-demand-law-on-licenses-2755958.php. 43. Gil Cedillo, “Drivers’ Licenses for All Will Protect Public Safety for All,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 18, 2003, A-23; Victor D. Hanson, “Time for Frank Talk about Illegal Immigration,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 18, 2003, A-23; Tim Leslie, “California’s System of Issuing IDs Is Dangerous and Getting Worse,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 18, 2003, A-23. 44. Martin Montgomery, “DJ Talk,” Media, Culture & Society, 8, no. 4 (1986): 421–440; and Scannell, Radio, Television, and Modern Life. 45. Baum, “On the Air, Arriba!,” 43. 46. Tyche Hendricks, “Popular DJ Takes Registration Drive to Latino Voters,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 2006, A-4.

Notes to Chapter 5 N otes to Chapter 5. Desperately Seeking Dinero

1. William Lobdell, “Making a Splash on the Airwaves,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2001. 2. Station totals were found in the Los Angeles Almanac, http://laalmanac.com/ media/me09.htm; and population statistics were gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html. 3. The term “Hispanic” is widely used by radio and media industries in its reference to U.S. Latino populations. According to Arlene Dávila, “Hispanic” acts as the preferred appellation for the marketing industry, despite the fact that “Latino” is more commonly used among those working within marketing circles. For a more detailed discussion on the use of the term “Hispanic” by mainstream U.S. marketers, see Dávila’s text, Latinos Inc., 15–17. 4. The diary has undergone minor revisions over the years, especially in reference to its length and distribution. This chapter concentrates on revisions made with the diary procedure to explicitly raise the participation rates of Hispanics, and to some extent African American listeners. Asian Americans hold an elusive place within Arbitron, often being lumped with whites, with the exception of its first Chinese-language radio survey in 2005. 5. Philip Napoli, “Audience Measurement and Media Policy: Audience Economics, The Diversity Principle, and the Local People Meter,” Communication Law and Policy 10, no. 4 (August 2005): 349–382. 6. Taylor et al., “When Labels Don’t Fit.”

178  179 27. National Telecommunications and Information Administration, “Falling through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide,” http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ ntiahome/net2/falling.html. 28. Ira Teinowitz, “Arbitron Under Fire over Slips in Returns,” Advertising Age, February 10, 2003, 31. 29. Matt Richtel and Ken Belson, “Call Carriers Seek Growth by Catering to Hispanics,” New York Times, May 30, 2006. 30. Ironically, this figure was reported by Arbitron; see Arbitron, “The Power of Hispanic Consumers: A Compelling Argument for Reaching Out to Hispanic Consumers” (December 14, 2004), www.arbitron.com. 31. “Hispanic Radio: A Medium on the Grow,” Broadcasting & Cable, April 3, 1989, 49. 32. Andrea Gerlin, “Media: Radio Stations Gain by Going after Hispanics,” Wall Street Journal, July 14, 1993, B1. 33. Lynn Berling-Manuel, “Marketing to Hispanics: Expanding Radio Market Battle Reaches Static,” Advertising Age, August 11, 1986, S12; and Anne Moncreiff Arrarte, “Radio Data Don’t Rate,” Advertising Age, November 27, 1989, 88. 34. “Ratings Worth 40 Million? Networks Have No Doubt,” Advertising Age, January 24, 1994, S2; and Paul Lenti, “Univision Snares Big Share in Nielsen Hispanic Index,” Variety, March 28, 1994, 46. 35. “Marketing to Hispanics,” Advertising Age, November 27, 1989, 88. 36. Abott Wool, “Hispanic Ratings Get Real,” Mediaweek, April 19, 1993, 16; and Joanne Lipton, “Nielsen to Track Hispanic TV Ratings,” Broadcasting & Cable, July 24, 1989, 1. 37. “Nielsen Expands Hispanic TV Ratings,” Broadcasting & Cable, August 8, 1994, 1, and David Tobenken, “Nielsen Rethinks Hispanic Ratings,” Broadcasting & Cable, April 10, 1995, 54. 38. Belville, Audience Ratings, 115–118. 39. “Arbitron Radio Ratings Claim to Be Biased,” Bay State Banner, May 25, 1978, 3. 40. Interview with María Eraña, March 20, 2004, Fresno, CA. 41. Belville, Audience Ratings, 226–227. 42. Lapovsky, “Use of Seven-Day Diary Measurement.” 43. América Rodriguez, “Racialization, Language, and Class in the Construction & Sale of the Hispanic Audience,” in Reflexiones, ed. Neil Foley (Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas, 1997), 29–52. 44. Belville, Audience Ratings, 226. 45. Katy Bachman, “Waiting on Weighting,” Mediaweek, November 18, 2002, 8. 46. Leila Cobo, “Radio Hooked on Latin,” Billboard, April 9, 2005, 1; Steve Knopper, “The Spanish Market Grows Up,” Billboard, March 16, 1996, 99; and Steve Knopper, “Radio En Espanol Makes Strides in U.S.,” Billboard, May 30, 1998, 86. 47. John Merli, “Arbitron Finds Discrepancies in Hispanic Language Preferences,” Broadcasting & Cable, December 1, 1997, 44.

180  181





March for Immigration Reform,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 11, 2006; and Maria Newman, “Immigration Advocates Rally around U.S.,” New York Times, April 10, 2006. 5. Flaccus, “Spanish-Language Media”; Melissa Block, “Spanish D.J. Organizes Immigration-Reform Protests,” All Things Considered (National Public Radio, March 28, 2006); and “Immigration Protests, Part 1: Spanish-Language Media,” Day-to-Day (National Public Radio, April 7, 2006). 6. Stein, “500,000 and No One Called Me?” 7. Posted by “Shawn”; see http://www.latinopundit.com/latino/archives/002825. html. 8. Paula Doyle, “Coalition Lobbies Legislators for Humane Immigration Reform,” Tidings, May 26, 2006. Although it is not indicated, I’m sure this quote was originally uttered in Spanish.

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Bibliography

Archives

The Broadcast Bureau (1937–1973), Record Group 173.10. National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD. Comité de México y Aztlán News Monitoring Service, 1972–1980 (COMEXAZ) Papers. Stanford University Library. Federal Communications Commission (1875–1973), Record Group 173. National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD. Federal Communications Commission (1934–1979), Record Group 173.5. National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD. Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS], (1787–1993), Record Group 85. National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD. MALDEF Collection, Record Group M0673. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University.

Surveys and Reports

A&A Research. “License Responsibility to Exercise Adequate Control over Foreign Language Programs.” Federal Communications Commission Reports 39 FCC 2d (1972): 1037–1042. ———. “Who Listens to Hispanic Public Radio?” Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Hispanic Listening Data Project, 1992, 1998, 2002. Advertising Age. Hispanic Fact Pack Annual Guide to Hispanic Advertising & Marketing. 2004. ———. Hispanic Fact Pack Annual Guide to Hispanic Advertising & Marketing. 2005. Arbitron. “First Headlines from Houston PPM.” 2012. http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/HoustonFirstPPMRatings09-20-05.pdf. ———. “Hispanic Radio Today: How America Listens to Radio.” 2000, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011. Available at http://www.arbitron.com. ———. “Internet and Multimedia Research 2005: The On-Demand Media Consumer.” 2005. http://www.arbitron.com/downloads/IM2005Study.pdf. ———. “Más alla de los ratings.” No. 1, Winter 2004. http://www.arbitron.com. ———. “The Power of Hispanic Consumers (2004–05).” http://www.arbitron.com/ downloads/hisp_consumer_study_2004.pdf. ———. “The Power of Hispanic Consumers: A Compelling Argument for Reaching Out to Hispanic Consumers.” December 14, 2004. www.arbitron.com. Broadcasting Cable Yearbook, 2003. New Providence, NJ: R.R. Bowker, 2003. >> 183 

184  185

Press Releases

Ahorre: Hispanic Marketing Services. “U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Spanish Campaign.” Press release, October 12, 2004. Hispanic Broadcasting Company. “HBC’s Renan Almendarez Coello, ‘El Cucuy De La Mañana’ Is Taking His Career to New Heights.” Press release, January 19, 2003. http://www.hispanicbroadcasting.com. Hispanic PR Wire. “Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc. Enters into First Multi-market Agreement for Portable People Meter (PPM) Ratings Services.” http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=5681&cha=13. Univisión. “History Repeats Itself.” Press release, October 10, 2003. http://www.univision.com. ———. “Tu Casa, Tu Dinero—Financing Your Home.” Press release, March 15, 2004. www.univision.com. Univisión Radio. “La Bienvenida de Dra. Isabel.” Press release, March 15, 2004. www. univision.com.

Primary Sources (No Author)

“Aerial Pan-Americanism.” Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 1929. “Aliens Arrested at Fort Worth Camp.” Dallas Morning News, September 30, 1986. “All-Spanish Radio Bill from KHJ This Afternoon.” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1922. “All-Spanish Radio Program Announced.” Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 1924. “Almendarez-Coello Dominates Just-Released Arbitron Radio Rankings.” Business Wire, October 17, 2000. “Arbitron Announces Improved Methods for Tracking Race/Ethnicity and Language in Its Radio Surveys.” Radio Ink, January 8, 2002. “Arbitron Radio Ratings Claim to Be Biased.” Bay State Banner, May 25, 1978. “Arbitron Response Rates Dip Again.” Mediaweek, May 24, 2004. “Arbitron to Boost Radar Sample.” Mediaweek, March 25, 2002. “Arizona Wants Mexican Labor.” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1920. “Bill Asks Pan-American Radio.” New York Times, April 28, 1939, 38. “Clear Channel Radio Calls Arbitron Outdated.” Billboard, June 25, 2005. “Coded Radio Broadcasts Used to Tip Off Illegal Immigrants.” Houston Chronicle, October 16, 2000. “Consuls Feted by Rotary.” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1933. “The Depression in Rural America.” Washington Post, July 10, 1982. “Few Mexicans Ask Citizenship.” Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 1930. “First Do No Harm.” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2006. “500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bill.” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2006. “Form Spanish Classes.” Washington Post, February 1, 1941, 11. “Growth of Music Interest Laid to Influence of Radio.” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1936.

186  187 “People Dance and Sing.” New York Times, April 14, 1932. “Popular Stars to Broadcast.” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1927. “Quota’s Application to Mexico Demanded by American Official.” Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 1927. “Radio.” Washington Post, August 6, 1925. “Radio Concert Honors Mexico.” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1922. “Radio Course Inspires Interest in Other Lands.” Christian Science Monitor, February 12, 1938. “Radio Industry Regarded as Improving.” Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1934. “Radio King of Mexico Here for California Vacation.” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1944. “Radio Making Waves.” Broadcasting & Cable, January 9, 1995. “Radio One Opts Out of Arbitron Test.” Mediaweek, April 5, 2004. “Radio Programs.” Washington Post, March 12, 1925. “Radio Programs Scheduled.” New York Times, February 1, 1925. “Radio and Recordings Aids Language Study.” Christian Science Monitor, January 13, 1939. “Rafael Villa Stars at KHJ.” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1926. “Ratings Worth 40 Million? Networks Have No Doubt.” Advertising Age, January 24, 1994. “Reagan Abandons Pledge to Balance Budget by 1984.” Washington Post, November 7, 1981. “Singer an American to Own Detriment.” Washington Post, April 16, 1934. “Spanish Program Given, Noted Latin Artists Heard in Concert Series.” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1922. “Teaching of Spanish By Radio Announced.” Washington Post, November 15, 1925. “Today on the Radio, Tuesday July 20, 1937.” New York Times, July 20, 1937. “Unemployment, Hard Times in America.” Boston Globe, November 7, 1981. “U.S. and Latin America in Exchange of Radio Scripts.” Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 1941. “Widow Warns about Dangers of Border-Crossing.” Dallas Morning News, June 26, 1999. “WJY Introduces New Radio Show.” New York Times, June 15, 1924.

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206  207 

208  209 campaigns, 2, 20; anti-immigrant, 39, 92–93, 151; immigrant-based, 7, 91; minority media, 128–29, 173n2; on-air, 104; public relations and, 112 Cantril, Hadley, 39 capitalism, U.S., 150; racism and, 131 Catanzarite, Liza, 9 Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), 68 Cedillo, Gil, 120–21 Census Bureau, U.S., 15, 177n2; data from, 36, 137, 142–43, 165n114; linguistic criterion of, 165n114 Central America, 2, 6, 120, 124–25 Central American: communities, 175n26; immigrant women, 19; listenership, 11, 108; men, 107, 112; population, 102, 105 Cepeda, María Elena, 154n14, 156n30 charities, 41, 119, 123, 125 Charlotte, 173–74n3 Chávez, César, 2, 59, 72–73, 88 Chicago, 11–12, 57–58, 80, 102, 104, 107, 120, 127–28, 148–49, 158n45, 160n15; 173–74n3 Chicana as a Single Parent, The, 76–77 Chicano media: activism, 82; activity, 16; movement, 16, 54; projects, 68 Chicano studies, 53 Chicano Youth and the Law, 76–77 Chicanos, 4–5, 15–16, 42, 51–53, 56–59, 63, 79, 169n62; activism of, 15–16, 20, 52–53; community organizations for, 53–54, 56–59, 69; media and, 16, 52–54, 58, 63, 67–68, 82; Mexican American population as, 53; movements of, 16, 53–54; radio and, 42–43, 53–54, 74, 169n65; sound and, 20 Chihuahua, 34 children, 37, 77–78, 90, 92, 95, 99, 120, 134; immigrant households with, 36–37, 77–78, 90, 92, 95, 99; background sounds of, 99; radio programming focused on, 77–78, 95, 99, 134 Chile, 22 Chinese, 42 chisme (gossip), 4, 154n7 Chocolate, El (“The Chocolate”), 102

Christian Science Monitor, 14, 24, 32 Chualar, 75 citizenry, U.S., 23, 160n11 citizenship, 3–6, 9, 13, 19, 84, 139, 150; birthright, 7; consumer, 50; cultural, 4, 36, 50, 84; debates on, 3; dominant hierarchies of, 20; dual, 17; illicit feelings of, 8; politics of, 3, 40; struggles over, 99; U.S. legal, 4, 36, 48, 50, 84 civil rights, 2, 49, 53, 55, 77; Chicano groups for, 57, 77 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 57 class, 6, 9–10, 19, 26–27, 31, 106, 108–10, 119, 135, 146, 151, 160n13, 175n26 Clean Law Enforcement for Alien Removal Act of 2003, 93 Clinton, Bill, 2, 89, 91 Clinton, Hillary, 2 coalition, 3, 14, 65, 80, 173n2; broad-based, 166n10; broadcasters of color, 79–80; lesbian, 173n2; Mexican and Mexican Americans, 50; national, 3; U.S. and Latin American, 27 Coca-Cola, 45 Cohen, Ed, 140 College Park, 158n51 Collins, Le Roy, 55 Colorado, 56 Columbia University, 25 Comité de México y Aztlán (COMEXAZ) News Monitoring Service, 16, 58, 166n15 commercial radio, 17, 61, 66, 68, 72; community stations and, 17, 165n2; economy of, 128; immigration politics and, 17, 82; Spanish language and, 81, 88; urban centers and, 79 commercial-free radio, 15 communities of color, 3, 5, 8–9, 49, 55, 63, 139, 157n32 community: leaders, 39, 102, 169–70n89; members, 3, 58 Community Relations Service (CRS), 57–59 Community Services Grant, 67 competitors, 102, 104, 125, 174n5 Congress, 38, 55, 62, 93 conquest, 11, 22, 104

210  211 Escobar, Wilson Valentín, 153n3 Eskimo, 60 ESL (English as a Second Language), 77, 113 ethnic enclaves, 35, 39, 50 ethnicity, 42, 129, 141, 145; language and, 129, 141; Latinos and, 129, 141; Mexican Americans and, 39 exchanges, 19, 84, 89, 113, 129–30; business, 34; cultural, 27, 33–34; goodwill, 21; on-air, 5, 14, 113; Q&A, 84, 91, 95, 98–99; sexual, 104; uneven, 32, 50 Fairness Doctrine, 55, 166n6 family, undocumented, 17, 78, 84; reunification and, 93, 98; roles and, 107 farmworkers, 2, 53, 73, 88, 122; Chicano, 53, 169n62; democracy, 42, 63; movements of, 16; radio for, 16, 53, 59–60, 64, 67, 72, 74, 78–79, 82, 88 Fawcett, Keith, 104 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 7, 10, 16–17, 40, 43, 49, 55–59, 65–66, 158n51; 165n2, 166n10; 172n32 Federal Radio Commission, U.S., 27 Feem koom Xov Tooj Cua, 169–70n89 feminists, 12, 105, 176n36; anti-, 106; Chicana, 176n36 feminized: caste, 107; labor roles, 19, 122; perceptions of immigrant men, 112 festivals, 70, 89, 123; mariachi, 16, 165n2; Mexican, 120 Fiesta Mexican Music, 24 film, 8, 10, 22, 53–54; bilingual, 52; Latin America-centered, 22, 35; Mexican, 31–32; silent, 111 folkloric tradition, the, 4, 14; Mexican, 23; songs of, 31 Fong-Torres, Ben, 174n5 For America We Sing, 42 Ford Foundation, 66 “Formula for Change, A,” 63–64 Fort Worth, 86 foundations, 67, 75–76; Chicano-friendly, 67; decreased support from, 77; funding from, 16, 62, 65–67 Fox, Vicente, 109

Fraser, Nancy, 8, 19, 157n32 Freedom’s People, 42 Fregoso, Francisco, 170n93 French, 25, 31, 60 frequency, 69, 71; subsidiary form of, 72 Fresno, 16, 52, 54, 57–58, 60, 74–76, 78–79, 96, 165n2 From Mexico: Festival of Music, 27 funding, 16–17, 24, 58, 62, 64–70, 76, 81–82, 91, 158n51, 165n2 Gallegos, Jackie, 91–92 Gannett Foundation, 75 García, Ricardo, 59–60, 71–73, 88 Garza, Eva, 156n30 GED (General Education Development), 113 gender studies, 107 General Motors, 45 geography, 142; Latin American, 14 global economy, 8, 105, 112 globalization, 8–9, 104–6 “Golden Age of Radio,” 13 González, Oscar Reginaldo, 119 González, Pedro J., 11, 40–42, 164n85 Good Neighbor Policy, 21–22, 159n2 government, 28–29, 40, 42–43, 48, 62–64, 93, 109, 139, 151, 154n14, 171n15; accountability of, 139; Californian, 40; commercial interests and, 150; cuts by, 17; funding by, 24, 66; grassroots groups and, 57; Latin American, 27–28; maleled, 107; Mexican, 23, 28–29, 44; power of, 4; services of, 147; U.S., 21, 23, 27–29, 37, 42, 44, 86 governor, 1, 34, 80, 123 Grand Island, 7 Granger, 16 grant writing, 57, 75, 80 grassroots: actions, 3; efforts, 52–53, 57; groups, 16, 57, 65; organizations, 57, 59, 61; precursor, 166n15 Guerrero, Julio Caesar, 59, 65, 73–74 Guizar, Tito, 31–32, 162n42 Guthrie, Mary, 127 Gutiérrez, Elena, 166n15 Gutiérrez, Félix, 11–12, 36

212  213 KELW, 37, 40–41 Kennedy, Edward (Ted), 2, 51–52 KFWB, 28, 36 KHDC-FM, 75 Kheshti, Roshanak, 30 KHJ, 30, 34 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 166n7 KLAX-FM, 101, 143, 146 KMPC, 41 KMPO-FM, 75 KONO, 36 KROM-FM, 93 KSCA-FM, 144–45 KTQX-FM, 75 KUBO-FM, 75, 80 Kun, Josh, 15 Kundandi, Arun, 49 labor market, U.S., 18, 104, 109 labor unions, 3, 40, 46; officials of, 38 Lancaster, 96 language preference, 140–42; audience evaluations and, 140; media choice and, 129; survey of, 142. See also Arbitron Laos, 169–70n89 Laredo, 172n30 Latin America, 6, 14–15, 21–29, 35, 50, 63, 102, 160n12; aural imaginings of, 22–24, 30, 35, 50; cinematic production and, 22, 35; radio signals in, 27–28; sounds of, 24, 29; U.S. military interventions in, 22; U.S. relations with, 32–33, 42, 50, 63, 160n11 Latinas, 11, 19, 24, 40, 103, 109, 113, 117–19, 128, 150, 156n30 Latino men, working class, 18–19, 104–5, 110, 115, 119, 125, 150; Central American, 107, 112; immigrant, 106–7, 112; Mexican, 107, 112; symbolic penetration and, 119 Latino population, 7, 11–12, 68, 102, 134, 142, 177n3 Latino South, 12 Latinos, 2, 4, 6–12, 17–20, 23, 27, 32, 36, 49–50, 63, 74, 80–81, 92, 94, 103, 106–13, 117–20, 122, 124, 128–29, 135–36, 141, 144, 146, 148–52, 153n3, 155n16, 156n30, 166n15, 175n26

Latinos Inc.: The Making and Marketing of a People (Davíla), 19 laugh tracks, 100, 102, 110–11 legal status, 7, 9, 13, 84, 88–91, 121 legislation, 91, 93, 120; airwaves and, 40; anti-immigrant, 6–7, 91, 93; broadcasting, 62; civil rights, 55; immigrant, 3, 91, 93, 104, 120 Lesbian Avengers, 173n2 Lewels, Francisco, 53, 57, 59 Limbaugh, Rush, 104, 106 limones verdes (green lime report), 93–94 Línea Abierta (Open Line), 10, 78, 80, 94–96 linguistic profiling, 7, 89–90 listener, immigrant, 2–13, 16–20, 24, 28, 36–41, 46–50, 66–67, 70–72, 76–81, 83–95, 99–102, 104-13, 118–20, 123–44, 146–51 listener letters, 16, 24–25, 32, 67, 165n2, 168n53 listenership, 1, 3, 9–11, 20, 26, 37, 44, 60, 82, 90, 104-05, 108, 124, 130, 144, 146, 152; Central American, 11, 108; Englishlanguage, 32; Latino, 102, 127; male, 105; Mexican-dominant, 5, 11, 36, 40, 44, 79, 108; multilingual, 13; working-class, 9, 24 listings, 14, 24, 26–28, 33, 160n12 livelihoods, 3, 6, 87, 120 Longhorn Radio Network, 169n65 López, Alma, 78–79 López, Ana M., 159n2 López, Filemón, 79 Lopez, Jennifer, 156n30 Los Angeles, 1, 7–8, 11, 28, 34–36, 40–41, 45, 54, 80, 89, 91, 94–95, 102, 104, 107, 123, 127, 143–46, 148, 173n1; as Latinodominant, 89, 140, 144, 173–74n3; Central American population of, 102; Mexicans of, 28, 34, 40, 120; raids in, 94; shifting demographics of, 144. See also radio markets Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, 89 Los Angeles Times, 3, 14, 24, 26, 30, 34, 38, 45, 112 Los Angeles Unified School District, 180n3 Lykes, David, 139

214  215 morning show, 4, 102–8, 112–13, 118–19, 123–25, 147–48, 174n11 Mount Saint Helena, 51 Mujeres, 77–78 musician, 14, 31, 41 MySpace.com, 180n3 Napa County, 52, 69 Napoli, Philip, 133, 145 narcocorridos, 78 Nashville, 173–74n3 nationality, 48, 84, 95 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), 55 National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), 166n15 National Council of La Raza, 57 National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), 61–62, 64–65, 81 National Hispanic Media Coalition, 155n16 National Public Radio (NPR), 10, 62, 158n52, 167n34 National Spanish Speaking Radio Seminar, 58 Native Americans, 80 Nebraska, 7 New Mexico, 1, 141, 173n1 New York, 47 New York City, 7, 11–12, 22, 25, 43, 57, 80, 93, 102, 104, 107, 127–28, 133, 135, 141, 148, 143, 160n15, 173n2 New York Times, 14, 24–25, 27–28, 112 New Yorker, 108–9, 112 newspapers, 14, 18, 25, 27, 36, 38, 58, 85, 87, 128, 159n3, 167n21, 171n11, 172n25; classified sections of, 25; English-language, 24–25, 77, 149; Spanish-language, 36, 40–41, 157n33, 160n12 newsprint, 22, 31 Newsweek, 112 niche, 137, 143, 145; lucrative male-led programming as, 18; Mexican-led programming as, 43. See also Spanish-Language Radio in the Southwestern United States Nielsen Hispanic Ratings System, 137

Nielsen Media Research, 133 Nixon administration, 58 nonprofit organizations, 3, 19, 65, 67–68, 71, 77. 82, 113, 148, 158n51; adult education center as, 19, 113; private, 62 “No Más Cruces en la Frontera” (No More Crosses on the Border), 92 Noriega, Chon, 54–56 North Carolina, 7, 173–74n3 Northwest Communities Education Center, 71 Northwest Rural Opportunities (NRO) program, 65, 71 nostalgia, 6, 8, 40, 44–46, 150, 155n25 Noticiero Latino, 80 Oaxaca, 79 Obama, Barack, 2 Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ v. Federal Communications Commission, 55–56 Office of Radio Research (ORR), 46–47 Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), 22, 62 Ohio, 59 oral: histories, 176n38; tradition, 4–5 organizers, 73; community, 79, 150; conference, 58; on-air, 102 Orozco, Samuel, 80, 90, 95, 98–99 Other Americas, The, 27 Pan American Nights, 24 Pan-American Radio Station, A, 27 Pan-American Union, 14, 27–28, 160–61n24 Paredes, Américo, 4 Paris By Night, 8 Parker, Everett C., 166n7 Parlee, Lorena, 41 participation, 132–34, 139, 148, 176n38; African American, 134–35, 177n4; caller, 83–84; Hispanic, 134–35, 139, 177n4; listeners of color and, 133, 177n4; maleidentified politics of, 125; women and, 113 Patriot Act of 2001, 93 patriotism, 7, 42, 151

216  217 radio markets, 7, 11, 54, 76, 102, 104, 127, 130–31, 133–34, 143, 145; Latino-populated, 7, 11, 76, 104, 127, 131, 140, 143, 145. See also Los Angeles Radio Nueva Vida (101.9 FM), 2, 5 radio personnel, 16, 63–64 radio review, 26, 30–31 radio sets, 4, 25, 28–29, 41, 132, 160n15; accessibility to, 36 radio shows, U.S., 7, 23–24 radio station, Spanish-language, 3, 7, 9, 85–91, 94, 101, 127, 137, 140–41, 143, 145; Chicano-owned, 42–43; English- versus, 131; FCC-licensed, 17; Los Angeles-based, 1, 91, 94, 127; Mexican regional music and, 107–8; public, 59 radio studies, 8, 13, 81 radio survey, 39, 49, 177n4 raids, 87–88, 93–94 Raleigh, North Carolina, 7 Ramírez, Felipe, 71, 77 Raza, La (97.9 FM), 1, 101 Reagan, Ronald, 87–88 recruitment, 20, 67, 135, 138 refugees, 8, 169–70n89 regional music, Mexican, 107–8, 175n26 regulations, 36, 40, 45, 66 remittances, 5, 107, 109, 124 representations, 16, 19. 59, 63–64; acoustic, 44; Chicanos and, 52, 59; cinematic, 22; diversified, 8; employees and, 56, 63; minorities and, 63–64; monitoring of, 16, 63–64; negative, 113; women and, 19, 63, 113, 118 research, 43, 66, 136, 140, 151; audience, 61, 129, 132, 139; dearth of, 46; ethnographic, 165n2; population-sensitive methods of, 151; radio, 46–47, 67, 130, 133; requirements of, 66; techniques of, 132 researchers, 16, 136, 138–39; radio, 39 residency, 17; permanent, 36, 87, 122; temporary, 36 respondents, 132, 136, 142 restaurants, 9, 72, 112, 134, 151; fast-food, 2 revenue, 17, 19–20, 46, 61, 91, 124, 128, 130–31, 143, 145–46, 150, 174n5

Richardson, Bill, 1 Rio Grande Valley, 143 Robles, Daniel, 65 Robles, Sonia, 23 Rodriguez, América, 36, 43–46, 48, 139 Rodriguez, Clara, 165n114 Roosevelt, Franklin, 21, 159n2 Rosaldo, Renato, 4 Rosetti’s Typical Mexican Band, 26 rural: areas, 16, 52–54, 59, 68, 79, 92, 95, 120; communities, 52, 54, 65, 82, 88; counties, 69; locales, 16, 54, 82; radio, 16, 27, 52, 65, 74, 76, 80–81; roads, 52; society, 46 Sacramento, 68, 123, 147 Salinas, 75 Salt Lake City, 7 Salvadorans, 12 San Antonio, 36, 43, 57, 86, 143 Sánchez, George, 39, 43–44 San Diego, 89, 107, 172n30, 173–74n3 San Francisco, 19, 51, 57, 68–69, 75, 96, 99, 104, 113, 120, 123, 147, 173–74n3 San Juan, 80 Santa Rosa, 16, 51–52, 54, 60, 65–66, 69–70, 79, 165n2 Sassen, Saskia, 18, 91, 104 satellite, 11, 81, 95–96; radios and, 10; technology of, 18, 80 Satélite Radio Bilingüe, 80 Savage, Barbara, 42 “Save Our State” (SOS) Initiative, 89 SB 1070, 90 Schaeffer, Felicity A., 156n30 Schmidt Camacho, Alicia, 4 scholars, 2, 8, 91; Chicano, 16; communication, 9, 65, 155n16, 157n32; ethnic media, 8, 12, 155n16; feminist, 12; gender; 124; (im)migration, 106, 124; Latino media studies, 156n30; media, 105 schools, 25, 37, 42, 48, 90–91, 108 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 123 Schwoch, James, 160–61n24 Seacrest, Ryan, 104 Secretary of State, U.S., 25

218  219 transnational: activity, 125; actors, 105; discourse, 109; image, 125; matters, 5; network, 14, 24; moment, 19, 102, 125; movement, 102-03; order, 125; perspective, 104; plane, 107; platforms, 149; public, 99; relationship, 28; scale, 124; scope, 152; studies, 107; themes, 106 Travel Talk, 162n47 Travelogue: A Trip Through South America, 33 Troyano, Sonya, 31 twentieth century, the, 3, 111, 150, 152, 158n53; technology of, 133. See also SpanishLanguage Radio in the Southwestern United States underwriting, 17, 60, 75 undocumented, the, 2, 6, 8, 19, 85, 87, 89, 93, 105, 109, 120, 123, 148; amnesty for, 87; driver’s licenses and, 120, 123, 148; labor demand for, 92; legal vulnerability of, 105 United Farm Workers (UFW), 59, 72–74, 167n21 United States, the, 1–2, 4–6, 8–9, 11, 14–15, 18, 22–24, 28–29, 32, 34, 46, 50, 81, 85, 93, 95, 102, 125, 130, 150, 152, 160n11, 175n26; immigrant communities in, 8–9, 11, 44, 85–87, 90, 93, 98–99, 102, 104, 107, 150; Latino presence in, 2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 23, 36, 74, 108, 146, 148, 152, 175n26; Mexicans in 4, 15, 22–24, 34–35, 37–38, 41, 44–46, 50, 109, 175n26; Spanish language use in, 4, 6, 9, 15, 18, 25, 28–29, 32, 43–46, 50, 53–54, 127, 148, 150, 152, 157n33 Univisión, 137, 157n33, 173n1 urban centers, 16, 53–54, 68, 79 U.S. Council of National Defense, 22 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), 69 U.S.-Mexico border, 23, 45, 91, 93, 152 Utah, 7 Vacilón, El (“The Jokester”), 102, 148 Vacilón de la Mañana, El, 173n2

Vaillant, Derek, 166n3 Vanilla Ice, 94 Villa, Pancho, 41 Villa, Rafael, 30 Virgin Mary, 112 Visalia, 73, 76, 165n2 vocal body, 111–12, 156n30 voice, 13, 84, 86, 95, 102, 108, 111; body and, 18–19; men and, 3, 19, 30, 92, 150, 82; women and, 19, 92, 98, 115–16, 125, 151 volunteers, radio, 16, 52, 66, 69–70, 74; training for, 75 vote, the, 2, 132; Latino, 2, 124; Latin American, 124; on-air, 2; registration for, 124; turnout and, 120 Voz del Campesino, La (The Farmworker’s Voice), 52 WABC, 32 Wall Street Journal, 14, 24, 85 war, 42–43, 62 Washington (state), 11, 16, 52–54, 56, 59, 71, 88, 94, 165n2 Washington, D.C., 27, 58, 80, 149 Washington Post, 14, 24, 27, 31, 34 WBLS-FM, 133 West Coast, 5, 11–12, 53 Western Community Bilingual Broadcasting Inc., 80 Western Union, 18 Williams, Raymond, 33 WLBT, 55–56, 166n7 Women’s Training Grant, 67, 75 World War II, 42–43 WRC, 27 XEW, 45 Yakima Valley, 52, 54, 59–60, 65, 71–73, 77, 79, 88, 165n2 Yiddish radio listeners, 160n15 youth, 67, 79; English-dominant Hispanic, 142 Zavella, Pat, 12, 157n41, 167n2, 176n36

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About the Author

Dolores Inés Casillas is Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and a Faculty Affiliate of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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