It doesn’t take an skilled in bilingual and bicultural schooling like García to grasp what it means for communities when these channels out of the blue go darkish.
“It’s a huge loss to not have Telemundo,” García stated.
The Salinas Valley is called the salad bowl of the world. Subject staff and farms produce greater than 371 million kilos of vegatables and fruits. Greater than half the leaf and head lettuce consumed in the USA is grown right here.
Virtually two-thirds of Monterey County’s residents are Latino, based on the U.S. Census. Greater than 1 / 4 of residents are overseas born and the biggest of that group — 102,772 folks — are from Latin America.
Newspapers withered
Native Spanish-language radio stays, however Sandy Santos, the final producer at KMUV, stated there’s a distinction between these stations and what KMUV supplied. Native Spanish-language radio just isn’t correctly arrange for reporting and fact-finding, she stated.
“It leads to chaos, misinformation and half-truth,” Santos stated.
“I just don’t know how useful that is for folks in Monterey County, Salinas or Santa Cruz,” she stated.
Huge repercussions
Schooling coverage shapes colleges, she added, and Monterey County has excessive charges of English-learners and bilingual college students. Residents, together with immigrant and Spanish-only properties, should be knowledgeable about college coverage, together with this summer season’s freeze in federal funding for migrant schooling and looming federal funds cuts.
Residents want to pay attention to their proper and responsibility to advocate for applications that serve themselves and the broader group.
Generally, the lack of native reporting in the end correlates with a decline in civic engagement — suppose voting — and a rise in corruption, research present. It doesn’t matter what language is spoken. We might quickly know what that appears like for the Spanish-speaking inhabitants in Monterey County.
George B. Sánchez-Tello is a reporter and author who teaches at California State College, Northridge. This column was co-published by CalMatters and Voices of Monterey Bay.
