You can love or hate Univision; but one thing is certain: The message the network wants to send out to the world has changed radically from the years of Perenchio and his lieutenants, when talking about an English-speaking Latino was almost cause for termination of employment.
The Census might not bring about a revolution but someone at the 800-pound-gorilla has realized it is no longer Spanish only. Novelas only. Tamales only. When you have a population of 50.4 million people, you cannot assume everybody eats tamales or watches Univision’s nightly telenovelas. [I for one have very little tolerance for both.]
Now, Univision will have to work hard to change some of its programming to better reflect this so-called New America.
I’m just sayin’….
MI BLOG ES TU BLOG 
It is embarrasing, indeed, that people are proud of “telenovelas”. I for one am pretty upset about the fact that this kind of “products” are exported from Mexico and even worse, consumed by a population (in this case I’m talking about mexicans specifically) that now lives in another country and should be open to more interesting/educational stuff than these telenovelas.
Unfortunely it seems that most of the times it happens the other way around. Many people immigrate to the U.S. bringing only bad reputation (cholos or gang stuff, telenovelas, etc.) although of course not everyone does. This might be related to the fact that most of the people that immigrate to the U.S. were not (sadly) given the opportunity here to get a better education and they won’t have it in there either.
Just for the record, I’m mexican, live in the border, cross legally often and most of my family lives there so I know what I’m talking about. Although I do respect all cultures and believe they should somehow be proud of their roots, you got to embrace the way of life of the place that now you live on, be it a different city, state and specially country.
I’m sure that not all “latinos” watch telenovelas and dress up like gangs in U.S. as not every latino outside U.S. does. Unfortunely there are many stereotypes caused by the majority.
Although I do like tamales 🙂 but mexican food for example has a really bad reputation in the U.S. but let me tell you that most of the so called mexican food you find in U.S. is more like tex-mex food which has nothing to do with true mexican food which is really good, you just have to find a true mexican restaurant which might not be cheap like taco bell 😉
El estereotipo del latino que vende Univisión da nausea y el único corolario que se desprende de su comercial es que si le vendes a los latinos (que nos reproducimos como conejos) tienes oportunidades de crecimiento.
Tengo 10 años sin tener tele (los mismos que llevo en EU). De vez en cuando, de viaje en un cuarto de hotel o de visita en casa de algún amigo, veo la misma sobredosis de misoginia en programas llenos de mujeres-objeto, de programación dedicada al enano mental y de promoción del American Dream (que —-s quiere decir eso? Tener el green card, la casita, el coche, tele de plasma y un empleo?)
Vivo, por otro lado, casi divorciado de los latinos con los que me encuentro. Con pocas y honrosas excepciones se nos ve felices en nuestra chambita de actor secundario, poniéndonos más marranos y comprándonos y poniéndonos lo último que ofrece la sociedad de consumo.
El movimiento organizado que nos permita algún avance en posiciones políticas, en espacios de toma de decisión y de influencia cultural, educativa, científica, tecnológica no se ve por ningún lado.
Será que nos hace falta un Bill Cosby latino que nos venga a regañar por ser pasivos, conformistas, agachones, obsequiosos y en general el reflejo de lo que difunde Univisión? (o Televisa, Televisión Azteca, O Globo, etc.)
Aclaro que no pienso de ninguna manera que los latinos seamos un bloque único y homogéneo. Como en cualquier curva de distribución normal, existe una porción de la población que está al lado derecho y busca cambiar todo esto.
Apologies for the rant. Se despide de ti tu lector, ardiente enamorado de los tamales rancheros (de pollo con salsa roja, en hojas de plátano) y seguro servidor,
Ernesto
WOW!!!!!!
Hola Laura,
Thank you so much for sharing this video, and what an amazing blog you have here! I’ll be visiting often!
~L
Another ‘thing’ I find most sad about these novelas is the fact that if it were not for Brazil and perhaps Venezuela, you’d not realize that ‘black latinos’ can do “lead roles”, which the other networks are still keeping hidden from their viewers.
On one hand I applaud ‘Globo’ for presenting actress Tais Araujo in various ‘leading roles’, but as myself where are the other black Brazilian actresses who can do the same thing, Tais is not the only one who has the skills to pull this off. Venezuela gets a pat on the back for letting actress Brenda Hanst take on a lead role as well, but Telemundo, Univision, Telefutura has yet to make a move on this front.
Lastly, while even I realize this shouldn’t boil down to a person’s ‘skin color’, but the talent they present to the audience, it makes you wonder what harm can it do to have a few black or darker-skinned latina/latinos as ‘leads’, and why are their ‘European’ counter-parts accepted more readily in the ‘community’? I pray this changes soon.
P.S. I also believe that you can be latino and not speak the language (a lineage thing here?), or even be bilingual.