Univision, the largest Spanish-language TV network in the United States, has undertaken an epic endeavor this presidential election: the registration of approximately 3 million new Latino voters.
Although the network describes the effort as nonpartisan, it is being criticized for being ideologically biased. This is not only because Latinos are known for their strong connection to the Democratic Party, but also because Haim Saban, a partial owner of the network, is a Hillary Clinton backer. Most visibly, though, the criticism targets Jorge Ramos, Univision’s most prominent anchor and a driving force behind the quest for voter registration, for once again engaging in activist journalism.
Yet, as has become typical in this convoluted presidential campaign, barbs over ideology eclipse the larger picture. Univision is neither the first — nor is it likely to be the last — ethnic media outlet to push its audience toward political participation. In fact, that has always been a core business of such channels: They allow immigrants to maintain ties with their past while oiling their path to assimilation.
For centuries, all newcomers to the United States, regardless of background, have depended on their own press to navigate the perils of life in the strange new land. The first newspaper created by blacks, Freedom’s Journal, was founded in 1827, two decades before Frederick Douglass founded the antislavery The North Star. Since then there have been literally hundreds of African-American newspapers, dozens of them still active today. Their role hasn’t been limited to informing readers about local and international events or to expressing opinions within the ethnic communities. Their outright mission has been to find a place for blacks in America while fostering change in the nation itself. Indeed, black newspapers have been instrumental in keeping America in check in terms of its own values: freedom, tolerance, and the pursuit of happiness.
Likewise, before World War I there were scores of German-language newspapers. New York alone had a dozen, including New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. In the 1920s, Polish immigrants read six different dailies, among them the Polish Roman Catholic Union’s Dziennik Zjednoczenia. Italians immigrants still keep newspapers like America Oggi, published in Westwood, N.J., in business, both in print and online. And there are dozens of radio stations in Korean, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and other languages in the country that cater to ethnic enclaves. Those who listen to them will tell you that entertainment is only one of their goals.
Latinos, the country’s largest minority, have a broader, more vigorous, and diverse media than other minorities ever did. There are national outlets like Univision that give the impression — false, no doubt — that Latinos are a homogeneous group. And there are others that focus on region, age, gender, and national heritage such as Mexicans, Cubans, Dominicans, or Puerto Ricans. According to a recent Pew finding, most Americans by far still get their news and political information from TV, in spite of the ubiquitous presence of the Internet. This is true of Latinos, too.
What’s more, Latinos are extraordinarily active radio listeners. The numbers in this front are staggering. For instance, there are more Spanish-language radio stations in the United States than in all of Central America.
Of course, this is because there are far more Latinos in the United States than in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, and Belize combined. But that isn’t the only the reason. Latinos tune in to radio because it makes them feel at home and part of a larger imagined community defined by language. I might go as far as to suggest that they create a nation within the nation.
Spanish-language radio — I’m an avid listener — offers a variety of programs: legal advice, religious rituals, dating suggestions, investigative reporting, and more. They also teach people how to apply for a green card, how to deal with abusive employers, and how to connect to the Internet. In the words of sociologists a generation ago, they make immigrants modern.
A large number of Latinos come from countries where the path to democracy has been difficult. The legacy of dictatorship, government corruption, and disregard for electoral rules hampers hopes for change. This translates to a sense of alienation in the overall population and the perception that one’s vote is unlikely to make a difference. Add to it the fact that a solid portion of Latinos still have only a high-school education level. The effort by Univision to educate its audience about its rights in the United States, then, is laudable.
It is true, of course, that its campaign for voter registration is being performed in splashy fashion, with all its digital properties allegedly involved, including Univision Deportes, which will encourage voter drives near stadiums hosting the Copa América this summer. It will also involve Fusion, its wing dedicated to English-language Latinos, and The Root, its digital property aimed at blacks. This, after all, is a TV network of the 21st century: Its objective is to generate buzz. What else makes us move these days?
Is 3 million is the right target? It looks ambitious yet feasible. The number represents nearly 10 percent of the total of Latino voters eligible for this election, which is around 27 million. The turnout for Latinos in the 2012 presidential election was 48 percent, meaning about 11 million Latinos voted, fewer than half of those eligible at the time. Univision is working under the assumption that it is this minority who will decide who the next leader of the free world will be and that those 3 million might make the difference.
Jorge Ramos says that “the real challenge is to convince Latinos to go out and vote, and what is really interesting is that maybe Donald Trump is doing that.’’ Ramos no doubt sees Trump as a double-edged sword. He has publicly clashed with him. Clearly, Ramos doesn’t want to be outmaneuvered by another TV personality, one he sees as a bully.
Curiously, Ramos is similar in his advocacy style to Abraham Cahan, the editor of Forverts, the Yiddish-language daily created in 1897 that is credited, in part, for greasing the entrance of Jews not only into America but into the 20th century. Loosely affiliated with the Socialist Party of America, it remains one of the most successful ethnic outlets in the nation’s history, success being measured not only in terms of circulation — it had 275,000 readers in the mid-1930s — but as the glue that helped affirm the place of Jews in the melting pot.
Taking into account the difference between historical contexts, there is much of Univision in Forverts and vice versa. The newspaper ran regular columns on hygiene, fashion, and cuisine. It constantly compared life to the Old Continent. It told its readers that beating one’s own children was primitive. It discussed the importance of public schooling, politics, and suffrage, and, yes, it frequently encouraged people to register for voting.
Cahan, like Ramos, was fanciful, opinionated, and even belligerent. He made sure, in no uncertain terms, that others knew what he taught. He wrote in Yiddish as well as English, including novels like the classic “The Rise of David Levinsky.’’
Ramos, the author of half a dozen books, has been a popular syndicated columnist. He is the anchor of Noticiero Univision as well as of Fusion programs. In the age of CNN and Fox, he practices a decidedly biased type of news making that sometimes gets him in trouble. Not surprisingly, he is a folk hero among Latinos and a villain to conservatives.
In the end, Cahan and Ramos appear to have the same aims: to use their opinions as conduits in the transformation of public policy, pushing the minority they represent to have a prominent role in American society. They might have outsized personalities, their left-leaning ideas ruffling feathers at all times. But both men’s overall purpose is in tandem with what a healthy ethnic media in this country has always been about — making newcomers have a voice that counts and helping them on the road to assimilation.
Ilan Stavans is professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.
