Elections pay the price for dwindling Spanish-language news

More than 20% of Pima County residents speak Spanish at home ... But without a robust Spanish-language news environment, where do they go for reliable information?

Pima County just wrapped up its first major election since the Arizona Daily Star’s Spanish-language publication was shut down and left nearly a quarter of the community without a reliable news source in their native language.

La Estrella de Tucsón was the only news-forward Spanish-language newspaper in Tucson and its loss added to the country’s growing Spanish news desert.

More than 21% of Pima County residents speak Spanish at home, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, which means that tens of thousands of voters might not have had access to enough information to make an informed decision at the polls.

The news plays an integral role in informing everyday people on the decisions they make in politics. Imagine having no source of information accessible to you. How would that impact your life in the way you vote or understand political topics?

Look at this year’s Pima County Attorney race, which was a tense battle between two Democrats. Laura Conover and Mike Jette had similar policies with issues like abortion and the death penalty, but very differing views on managerial style and party politics.

Without reliable news in their language, how could voters understand the intricacies of the issues at play?

With newspapers shutting down all over the country and journalists of color most impacted by these staffing cuts, we wanted to take a look at how the Spanish news media landscape is changing and how that could affect voter turnout.

Especially since Spanish-speaking communities already face an uphill battle when it comes to accessing reliable information.

“It is not possible that these communities where the majority of people still speak Spanish do not have a place to go and receive the most important news for them,” said Maritza Félix, founder of Conecta Arizona. “We have to change that now.”

Conecta was built as a “journalistic experiment,” providing Spanish-language coverage of health and immigration news during the pandemic. With border restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Phoenix-based Conecta’s goal was to inform residents of both Arizona and Sonora.

Amidst the closing of small newspapers across Southern Arizona, Félix said the pandemic only further disenfranchised marginalized communities.

“There are more than a million people who still prefer to listen or consume their news and information in their native Spanish language. Spanish continues to be the preferred language spoken in their households,” she said. “These people didn’t have access to information that was trustworthy, that represented them so they could see themselves, because many of those medias no longer exist.”

Latinos have historically had the lowest voter turnout, yet they make up one of the largest voting populations, nationally and in Arizona. 

More than a quarter of Pima County residents speak another language at home, according to the US Census. Most of these people speak Spanish, yet there are only a handful of Spanish media outlets that offer information to the Hispanic community about politics and local elections. 

Experts say this is partly due to the fact that a majority of these communities are not eligible to vote due to age or citizenship status. Nineteen percent of the Latino population are not U.S. citizens, compared with 6% of the total U.S. population.

Still, Latinos will make up the largest voting bloc this election year.

While we now have outlets like Tucson Agenda and Arizona Luminaria who translate some of their stories and election coverage, there is still a disconnect between news media and the communities they cover.

La Estrella rarely covered politics, according to former editor and our colleague Liliana López Ruelas. She said they only included the occasional column from a politician and that there were not enough resources or reporters to cover politics in a way that the Hispanic community would be interested in. 

“It’s not enough to directly translate articles that were written with the American in mind, and if you are going to translate it for the Mexican, the Venezuelan, the Colombian who just got here, you are not doing a complete job,” Ruelas said. “You cannot give the same information to the person who grew up here to the ones who have lived here for generations, to the ones that just got here or to the person who maybe arrived ten years ago but still lacks information.”

Both Ruelas and Félix pointed out that the way information was presented was paramount to whether the Latino community would choose to engage. Spanish-language media must involve themselves in the community they cover, listen to their needs and report accordingly. 

“I was writing for people who are super busy, who have two jobs to support their family, who are worried about not being deported, who have four children and a grandmother living in the same space,” Ruelas said. “How can you ask them to stay super informed about the elections? It's like not being realistic, it's like leaving aside your true needs.”

The Latino community has to navigate systems that they’ve never had to navigate before, whether it be the school, health or political system. Many new migrant Latinos have never been exposed to those processes in their home countries, making it even harder for them to understand, or care about, these issues, she said.

And when stories are translated without understanding this, it’s a missed opportunity to inform the community in a way that they will understand, Ruelas said.

“The main problem is that maybe we have not informed enough, explained enough or in the most appropriate manner for our community… For me, understanding these systems cost me a lot of work,” Ruelas said. “How are you going to care if you don’t understand how it functions?” 

She said that the solution to informing the Latino community is to have a type of journalism that educates with a civic purpose. The lack of interest, she says, comes from the confusion and misinformation surrounding politics. 

These types of reporting include Conecta’s Primary Election Guide that explains the voting system, dates and context. 

With Conecta, Félix has created educational journalism with guides and in-depth explanatory coverage and input from the community.

She said she’s seen how the community has responded positively, most notably through her cafecito hours where she sits with community members for an hour each day to discuss topics of their choice.

A recent topic of discussion was former president Donald Trump’s assassination attempt. Félix said she answered questions, combatted misinformation and made a genuine connection with her community. 

“For us it is crucial now as an organization of community news to set the tone for these elections, not to let the candidates define the agenda, but to let the voters themselves establish what our coverage priorities are,” Félix said. 

A Columbia University study on the role of hyper-local newsrooms in elections found that small media outlets like Conecta could mobilize more people to vote than large media outlets that speak to the masses. 

Félix says Conecta’s coverage helped contribute to the high voter turnout in the recent Mexican presidential election.

It’s not only the media that impacts voter turnout. The Pima County Recorder’s Office plays a major role in reaching the Hispanic community, and they’re doubling down on their efforts to produce content in both Spanish and English.

Media releases and social media posts are translated to Spanish by real people (not AI, like some organizations use) and go through multiple editing processes to make sure the message is clear and concise for their audience. They intentionally hire native Spanish speakers with the Hispanic community in mind, and have recently expanded their team. 

Still, they also face an uphill battle in trying to create resources that “frankly don’t exist,” said Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly.

“It’s important to have accessible Spanish language materials because our community speaks Spanish,” Cázares-Kelly said. “We're so close to the US-Mexico border. This area that we are where we’re in right now has historically been occupied by Native American communities and at one time was a part of Mexico.” 

With 630,000 registered Pima County voters and that number growing every year, they know that making information accessible in Spanish is not a want, but a need. 

“We’re dealing with people's fundamental rights. As Americans, they need to be able to access this information regardless of what language they speak,” Cazares-Kelly said. “That is a right that they're entitled to.”

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We’re working to help fill the void in local Spanish-language reporting, which is why we hired Susan, who is able to translate stories into Spanish. You can find the Spanish version of the story here and the rest of our Spanish-language coverage here.

Susan's work with the Tucson Agenda is supported by the Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona, a fund of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona.