Sounds of Belonging

U. S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy

Dolores Ines Casillas

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780814770160
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho de los medios y el entretenimiento

How Spanish-language radio has influenced American and Latino discourse on key current affairs issues such as citizenship and immigration.

Winner, Book of the Year presented by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Honorable Mention for the 2015 Latino Studies Best Book presented by the Latin American Studies Association Thelast two decades have produced continued Latino population growth, and markedshifts in both communications and immigration policy. Since the 1990s, Spanish-language radio has dethroned English-language radio stations in major citiesacross the United States, taking over the number one spot in Los Angeles,Houston, Miami, and New York City. Investigating the cultural and politicalhistory of U.S. Spanish-language broadcasts throughout the twentieth century, Soundsof Belonging reveals how these changes have helped Spanish-language radiosecure its dominance in the major U.S. radio markets. Bringing together theories on the immigration experience withsound and radio studies, Dolores Inés Casillas documentshow Latinos form listening relationships with Spanish-language radioprogramming. Using a vast array of sources, from print culture and industryjournals to sound archives of radio programming, she reflects on institutionalgrowth, the evolution of programming genres, and reception by the radioindustry and listeners to map the trajectory of Spanish-language radio, fromits grassroots origins to the current corporate-sponsored business it hasbecome. Casillas focuses on Latinos’ use of Spanish-language radio to helpnavigate their immigrant experiences with U.S. institutions, for example inbroadcasting discussions about immigration policies while providing anonymityfor a legally vulnerable listenership. Sounds of Belonging proposes thatdebates of citizenship are not always formal personal appeals but a collectiveexperience heard loudly through broadcast radio.

1

Acoustic Allies

Early Latin-Themed and Spanish-Language Radio Broadcasts, 1920s–1940s

A series of radio programs for the purpose of introducing to the people of the United States the music of their Latin-American neighbors has been inaugurated.

—Frederic J. Haskins, “Latin Melodies Charm America,” Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1925

The Americans, even though they have always looked down on us less than we are, they have always liked Mexican food and music.

—Josefina “La Prieta” Caldera, 1931

As early as the 1920s, and long before Carmen Miranda mesmerized Americans with her tutti-frutti hat, U.S. radio listeners tuned into programs intended to charm and culturally enlighten English-speaking American audiences.¹ Before President Franklin Roosevelt popularized the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933, U.S. radio had already begun to broadcast on-air profiles of Latin America.² Different U.S. radio programs in popular prime-time slots posed as romanticized “borderless” sites where cultural groups traversed geographical and cultural boundaries. “Travel” to long distance locales, without the ease of commercial flight, was largely limited to the imaginative ear. With radio financed by U.S. government and economic interests, radio listeners metaphorically became friendly neighbors as they convened over the airwaves, in the spirit of camaraderie and, of course, commerce.³ Radio singer Josefina “La Prieta” Caldera notes that the era’s goodwill exchanges, felt mostly through culinary and musical routes, existed alongside reproachful assumptions about Mexicans.

Already well documented by historians of media and foreign policy alike, the Good Neighbor Policy saturated public culture (theatrical performances, art exhibits) and public print (major newspapers in both the United States and Latin America) and intensified with film in the 1940s.⁴ Media efforts were managed by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), an arm of the U.S. Council of National Defense.⁵ After a series of military interventions in Latin America, the United States deployed the Good Neighbor Policy as a means of redressing its reputation in order to be seen as less imperialistic. As a part of a larger economic ploy to boost national, cultural, and economic relationships with Latin America, the United States adopted a hemispheric approach that emphasized cooperation and nonaggression.⁶ Several studies have documented the significance of the Good Neighbor Policy on the cinematic production of over one hundred Latin America–centered films.⁷ Hollywood overtly conspired to legitimize U.S. economic and foreign policy by going to great pains to screen Latin American geographies, iconographic sites, and Latin American peoples with newfound consideration.⁸ The effect spilled over to the arts where, for instance, in 1929 New York’s Madison Square Garden staged a majestic Mexican city and called it “Aztec Gold.” Mexico was heavily promoted to American travelers as “safe yet unspoiled” and admired for its “quaintness, natural beauty, and artistic treasures.”⁹ The allure of Mexico’s history of conquest and romantic elements of Spanish language made for a captivating radio audience, eager to hear more.

Yet, seldom do discussions of the famed Good Neighbor Policy and its cinematic representations focus on the political and social struggles occurring with Mexicans in the United States. Radio’s aural imaginings of Latin America occurred during an era of heated debates on Mexican immigration. National newsprint coverage, particularly that from California, reported on the “immigration problem” caused by Mexicans. As radio shows sponsored by the OCIAA spoke of Argentina, Mexico, or Chile through colorful and curious adjectives—obviously a fascination with all things Latin—Mexican communities within the geographical boundaries of the United States were demonized in the press and repeatedly told to go “home.”

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 Mexican-sponsored radio. In the end, these U.S. radio shows did little politically to improve the conditions of Mexicans in the United States, actual neighbors and residents in the United States. These tense immigration debates—altogether ignored within American-sponsored Latin-themed radio shows—were, however, instrumental to shaping the character of Mexican-led Spanish-language radio. Immigration as a point of conversation drew Mexican listeners to Spanish-language radio.

Yet unlike well-financed American-sponsored programs, Mexican-led radio shows lacked the commercial funding of private interests and catered to a Spanish-dominant and working-class listenership. The prime-time shows provide glimpses of generous private and government-funded transnational networks of radio programming; at the same time, Mexican-led radio increasingly struggled to find its place on the U.S. airwaves. Mexican-led broadcasts aired intermittently throughout the United States and served as “acoustic allies,” airing advocacy-oriented announcements, popular music, and sounds of Latin America to Spanish-dominant listeners. Ultimately, both of early radio’s factions of Latin/o-themed programming helped English- and Spanish-speaking Americans imagine notions of Latin America for different, and often troubling, purposes.¹¹

“Radiolando”: Latin-Themed Programming (1920s–1950s)

Early radio’s Latin-themed programs showcased the language of Spanish, celebrated ethnic differences, and benevolently framed Latin Americans as important radio guests. Radio shows, with titles such as Fiesta Mexican Music or Pan American Nights, invited listeners to “visit” and learn about Latin America through radio consumption. For instance, in 1925, the Los Angeles Times reported the commencement of bimonthly Pan American Nights and the spring addition of a monthly Mexican Night radio show. These programs included “a short address, instrumental and vocal music by the best available artists . . . all from Latin America.” Occupying prime-time evening slots, these broadcasts conveyed a sonic profile of Latin America as a faraway destination inhabited by cultured and sophisticated communities made readily accessible via radio. These types of radio shows were evident in “radio listings” columns and “letters to the editor” reviewed in five major English-language newspapers: the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times.¹²

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 expensive and drew audiences from a higher socioeconomic class. The classed assumption followed that the more affordable tabloids and confessional magazines exposed “the ignorance and tastelessness of the people” while radio “promised their cultural redemption.”¹⁴ By 1930, half of all American families and nearly 60 percent of families with one immigrant head of household owned a radio, prompting a more linguistically diverse listenership to join the airwaves.¹⁵

Radio broadcasts of the 1920s and 1930s that focused on Latin America, often in both English and Spanish, projected an internationalist image, and were categorized as “foreign-language” programming. Broadcasts of this nature, hosted on English-language radio stations often translated spoken Spanish to English and relied on the sounds of Spanish-language music for the crux of its programming. In a few instances radio listings gave readers advance notice of Spanish spoken: “Announcements will be made in Spanish and English in order that the English-speaking audiences may also enjoy the concert”¹⁶ and “WMAL, 9 p.m.—A Pan-American concert which will be introduced by announcers in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.”¹⁷ Another radio review placed music as the translator of sorts between Spanish and English: “The international language of music will predominate on these programs, but the increasing study of Spanish in the United States and of English in Latin American will permit large audiences to appreciate spoken messages.”¹⁸ The announcements made assurances that cultural understandings via listening did not require language proficiency.

The international origins of Spanish-language broadcasts located Spanish and “Latin” culture outside U.S. borders. In 1925, a Los Angeles Times article commented on the popularity of Spanish-language musical broadcasts on U.S. radio: “Now, however, with the interest of South American music being stimulated, people are beginning to ask, ‘Haven’t you any native music?’ and are surprised at the great beauty of this when they hear it!”¹⁹ In another instance, this from 1933, a radio listing for a Spanish-language music concert by Rosetti’s Typical Mexican Band described the relation between the music’s origin and people: “The music you have heard are not a product of jungle savages but represent the flower and fruit of one of the oldest civilizations.”²⁰ Non-English-language musical selections were indirect references to the non-American (and, within this era, nonwhite) bodies that gave voice 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 Spanish-language 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 f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Language
• Introduction: Public Advocacy on U.S. Spanish-Language Radio
• 1. Acoustic Allies: Early Latin-Themed and Spanish-Language Radio Broadcasts, 1920s–1940s
• 2. Mixed Signals: Developing Bilingual Chicano Radio, 1960s–1980s
• 3. Sounds of Surveillance: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio Patrols 83 La Migra
• 4. Pun Intended: Listening to Gendered Politics on Morning Radio Shows
• 5. Desperately Seeking Dinero: Calculating Language and Race 127 within Radio Ratings
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author