PODCAST: Detroit Hispanic Media partnership aims to find ‘strength in numbers’

Daniella Zamora, right, and Maria Hayes are part of the new Detroit Hispanic Media partnership.

The Detroit area’s Hispanic population is growing and now numbers an estimated 280,000 residents. It’s been riven by fear in the wake of the election of Donald Trump as president, who rode into office on a wave of anti-immigration rhetoric that took particular and memorable aim at Mexican immigrants, whom he likened to rapists and drug dealers.

It’s the reason four local Spanish-speaking media outlets recently announced plans to band together as the Detroit Hispanic Media group. So we invited representatives of each outlet in for a roundtable conversation on the Daily Detroit Happy Hour Podcast:

• Elias Gutierrez, president and publisher of Latino Press
• Alex Resendez, general manager and director of programming for WSDS 1480AM La Explosiva
• Maria Hayes, publisher of the Nuestro Detroit weekly
• and Daniella Zamora, vice president of 1310 AM La Zeta, part of Zamora Broadcast

“You can see the fear. People were scared,” Hayes said about the election last November. “You can tell that there was fear in the community. And for us, it was difficult to see what was going on, and I think that we put away our differences and our, like Elias said, our interests conflict, maybe probably, and start working together on something that can give us power again.”

“We haven’t really seen this in our community before,” added Zamora. “But it’s really, given the political climate, it’s very important for us to unite and represent a united front. Obviously, there’s strength in numbers. It’s really just about educating our people and getting the info out there to try and alleviate some of that fear because it’s very scary for our people that are out there because we’re very vulnerable and we’re kind of left at a disadvantage with all of the changes and the anti-immigration sentiment that’s out there.”

The episode is available in the player below. Or, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, via Podcast Detroit or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.