If scholars had to actually rely on audio recordings found in federal, state or university archives to document the histories of Spanish-language or bilingual radio in the United States, we would be left without a record of the exciting, developing studies of Mexican, Chicana/o, immigrant radio broadcasting. The last twenty years have been such a pivotal moment for non-English and immigrant-directed radio as demonstrated through a wave of publications focused on the political significance of radio to Spanish, bilingual, and Mexican indigenous-speaking communities (e.g., Castañeda 2004, 2014; Casillas 2011, 2014, 2017; Dávila 2001; Dunbar-Hester 2014; De La Torre 2018, 2022; Díaz Martín 2018; Anguiano 2012; Jimenez 2016; and Robles 2019). Many of those writing about Spanish-language, bilingual (Spanish-English/Mixtec-Spanish) radio have found an interdisciplinary home within the creative, rigorous, and politically-oriented areas of Ethnic Studies, Feminist Studies, and Radio and Sound Studies. Media historian Jason Loviglio characterized this emerging turn as instances of “public histories seen in plain sight” and heard well within ear-shot. Scholars centering Spanish language and bilingual radio have navigated this turn by creatively assembling archival records that fill critical gaps through interviews with radio broadcasters and station owners, locating and digitizing radio ephemera like photographs and program guides, and with some luck, audio tapes and other media capturing a radio station’s or program’s history and impact.  

Radio within non-English-language communities has long been recognized as an accessible medium for working-class listeners, especially for those living in racially isolated barrios with limited access to other media. Quarterly listings of Nielsen radio ratings routinely verify the popularity of Spanish-language radio within major radio markets (Nielsen 2019). Listening to radio is both more cost-efficient and convenient given its portable nature, and lends itself to a workforce demographic, like those of immigrants and Latinas/os, accustomed to unfavorable graveyard and swing shifts and within service sectors where radio provides companionship, such as housekeeping, construction and kitchens (Casillas 2014, Anguiano 2012, 2018) or farm labor (De La Torre 2018, 2022; Jimenez 2016). Capturing this intimate relationship between radio and listeners, often without the ease of audio, necessitates a critical take on the archive itself.  

Critical Archive Studies, in particular, has provided a productive language of power through an informational studies lens to articulate the inequities involved in constructing and accessing archives. It has shifted much-needed attention towards the subjectivity inherent in assembling an archive as well as the politics of institutionalizing archives and making them accessible. Here, we follow the cues set forth by the insightful area of Critical Archive Studies and make the case for three intentional, meaningful discussions necessary for researching and teaching non-English-language radio. First, a decoupling of “audio” and “archive” allows for more innovative approaches to the study of sound.  Second, discerning what constitutes an archive as well as the significance of access to said archive unveils a host of institutional, class, racial, and linguistic inequities. Last, it’s important to ensure that histories of radio for immigrants and listeners of color do not dwell within the margins of media histories. We have found within our own writings of Chicana and Chicano Public Radio that accounts of media activism are not just histories to record but to learn and build from. Ultimately, we argue that pedagogical strategies towards radio directed at immigrant, indigenous, and/or listeners of color begins with an understanding of archives as social and political practices that center relationality and community building. 

Stop Romanticizing Audio as Archive 

Very few universities and government archives include Spanish-language, bilingual audio as part of their radio collections, a fact that can be discouraging to imagine writing about radio without listening to past recorded radio programming. The dearth of audio itself is a familiar narrative often explained by former radio hosts as “a lack of tape” (De la Torre, 2022; Martin Díaz, forthcoming). Radio hosts often taped or recorded over past programs in order to save on supply costs. Yet, researchers have conducted oral interviews with radio hosts, producers, and listeners or found themselves sifting through listener letters, community newsletters, station pledges and other key artifacts used to piece together the political struggles and meanings of a specific show, host and/or radio station. Indeed, these are approaches also used by scholars documenting English-language women’s radio and English-language community or alternative radio. 

Studies, for instance, of Chicano Public Radio – a term used to reference the 1970s and 1980s establishment of Mexican American, bilingual community radio - requires a de-romanticization that historical studies of radio require audio recordings as “true” data. Monica De La Torre constructs the organizational history of Radio Cadena (KDNA-FM) in Granger, Washington, recognized as the first Spanish-language community radio station in the U.S. She writes: 

De La Torre identifies such instances of archival-building between scholars and radio hosts or producers as “sonic bridging” to characterize their collaborative labor.  In a similar vein, Carlos Jimenez details the bureaucratic and funding struggles behind building the Facebook Radio station, Radio Indígena in Oxnard, California for Indigenous Mexicans. In this more contemporary case, “sonic bridging” involved helping organize dance fundraisers, and planning meetings, all while writing the radio station’s history as it was taking place (Jimenez, 2016).  

Scholars of ethnic, non-English-language radio have relied, quite heavily, on reimagining what constitutes “audio” and “archive” within studies of radio. This methodological pivot re-orients how we position archives as highly-organized collections firmly planted in one geographical location, curated by professionals, and more towards an understanding of archives as evolving, semi-scattered, self-curated collections often stored in home archives and radio stations. The website of “la voz de tu comunidad” (the community’s voice) found on the dial as KBBF 89.1 FM from Santa Rosa, California displays a retro logo as well as a 1970s brochure in their “archives” page. Recognized as the first bilingual (Spanish-English) radio station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), viewing the KBBF-FM brochure with hand-written accents on the Spanish text reminds us of how many different media systems – typewriters, printers alike – did not serve a bilingual cultural experience.  

In order to interrogate how whiteness or the dominance of English, for instance, permeates both institutional archives and the field of radio, as scholars and teachers of radio, we should make sure our pedagogical approaches to the study of radio includes questioning the scarcity and composition of audio archives; including the inherent power that both archives and archivists hold in dictating which/whose histories to record, document, and make legible (Harris 2005; Caswell, Punzalan, and Sangwald 2016). 

The DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Archive and DTIA (Don’t Throw It Away) Ethic 

At the same time that the Digital Humanities has developed into a well-funded, public field of inquiry and the sophistication of digitization has helped rescue precarious audio recordings, digitizing and archiving Spanish-language audio remains a significant challenge.  Certainly, lengthy, detailed applications that require formal partnerships and established buy-ins can play a role. But locating audio recordings from years past, the scarcity of it, is also itself a basic dilemma.  

Technological innovations like CDs, streaming services, hard drives, and cloud storage have impacted a radio broadcaster’s or station’s ability to document and preserve their own work. Esther Díaz Marín’s research with locatoras (women radio hosts) in Los Angeles led her to a collaboration with radio broadcaster Alicia Alarcón and her boxes full of self-recordings, rare instances of radio hosts self-taping and self-archiving her radio shows. After listening to the shows, Díaz Martín contacted the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center to initiate a conversation about finding an archival home for Alarcón's personal archive and radio recordings from approximately 1996-2016 of her news commentary show "Alicia Alarcón: En Acción" which aired weekdays through AM radio stations XPRS 1090 AM (1996-1998), KWKW 1300 AM (1998-2000), KBLA 1580 AM (2001-2005, 2008-2010, 2013-2015), and KTNQ 1020 AM (2006-2008, 2010-2013).

The CSRC recently received the Alicia Alarcón Papers, which consists of audio recordings, video, manuscripts, and notes related to the acclaimed journalist’s career in the United States from the 1980s to the present. Alarcón was a columnist for La Opinión in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was also a reporter for Univision and CNN for Latin America. She eventually moved to radio and pioneered a successful model for brokering time for Spanish-language talk radio in the AM dial as an independent political and news commentator. The materials are currently at the CSRC in queue for cataloging (which is backtracked due to the pandemic). 

Monica De La Torre’s research showcases a similar DIY archive and DTIA ethic. After locating some program recordings through a woman radio host and station co-founder, she built an online archive hosted on the free WordPress site. The online archive features personal photos taken by KDNA-FM’s founders, old radio programs, oral histories with the station’s founders, and a link inspiring others to focus on community, organizational research by following a DTIA (Don’t Throw It Away) system. These DIY examples demonstrate a realization that we cannot wait for “institutional” or recognized archives to include ethnic, immigrant, non-English radio. Related is Eric Silberberg’s La TopoRadio project is an open-source online resource that maps scholarship on the history of Spanish-language radio in the United States according to the geographic locations of the radio stations that each article or book examines. Through this visual bibliography, researchers can identify publications that focus on a specific radio station, community, city, or region, while also showcasing the geographic reach of Spanish-language radio in the United States. 

In many ways, the Spanish-language, bilingual, Latinx caucus of the Radio Preservation Task Force, housed under the Library of Congress, has less of an objective to save radio’s slim audio recordings but to make certain community, Low Power FM, and commercial radio invest time and resource to archiving their shows. Research projects with graduate and undergraduate students that work toward closing the Spanish and bilingual radio archival gap can include geospatial projects like La TopoRadio; archiving broadcasting history through oral history interviews with radio broadcasters such as De La Torre’s work; or like Díaz Martín collaborating with local community-based organizations and university research centers and archives.

Start Identifying Radio by Language 

Histories of Spanish and bilingual community radio counteract the assumptions that anything outside English-language media is not constitutive of U.S. media history. With such vile and hateful actions, policies, and public sentiment against Mexican, Central American and Latina/o communities writ large—the work being done on the ground by activists, cultural producers, artists and artivists must be prioritized for archiving and preservation (Garbles 2019). Critical Archival Studies are working toward expanding the historical record to include non-white, non-English media productions and bring from the periphery to the center the media histories of women, Mexican, Chicana/o/x, Latina/o/x, LGBTQIA, and immigrant communities. Archives have the potential to showcase strategies developed by community media producers to diversify media in both content and content creators, that activists for more diverse representations have fought and won important battles. They offer blueprints for us today—if we can see and hear in the archive how media activists fought for equitable representation.  

Scholars of Spanish-language and bilingual radio, particularly within community-based productions, often must “reimagine the archive not as a state repository but as an active site of knowledge production” (Cotera, 2015).  The challenges facing archival preservation are well known and documented by scholars across disciplines (Vallier, 2010; Cotera, 2015): “staffing shortages, copyright ambiguities, format obsolescence, preservation concerns, cataloging costs, facilities upkeep” are a few issues which are underpinned by “receding lines of funding” and a lack of staffing dedicated to drafting grant and funding applications. We have witnessed in our own research and on-site visits to community radio stations the nonexistent space to properly store and care for sound recordings and other ephemera. Yet, just because we do not “see” or even “hear” remnants of Spanish-language or bilingual radio does not mean there’s no tangible impact or affect felt by these radio stations. The central role these stations played in offering a distinct playlist for farmworkers or a special on-air slot for social workers and activists set the foundation for its tenacious growth. 

References 

• Anguiano, José. “Latino Listening Cultures: Identity, Affect, and Resilience in Chicana/o Music Practices.” PhD diss., Santa Barbara: University of California, 2012. 
• Anguiano, José. “Soundscapes of Labor and Belonging Mexican Custodians’ Radio Listening Practices at a Southern California University.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 30, no. 1–2 (March 1, 2018): 127–54. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2018.000001. 
• Castañeda, Mari. “The Transformation of Spanish-Language Radio in the United States.” Journal of Radio Studies 10.1 (June 2003): 5–15. 
• Casillas, Dolores Inés. “Sounds of Surveillance: U.S. Spanish-language Radio Patrols La Migra.” American Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 3 (September 2011): 807-829. 
• Casillas, Dolores Inés. Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 
• Casillas, Dolores Inés. “Spanish-language Radio,” Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies.  
• De La Torre, Monica. “Feminista Frequencies: Chicana Radio Activism in the Pacific Northwest.” In ¡Chicana Movidas! Mapping Technologies of Resistance in the Movimiento Era, edited by Maylei Blackwell, María Eugenia Cotera, and Dionne Espinoza. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. 
• De La Torre, Monica. “Sonic Bridging: Locating, Archiving, and Preserving Spanish-Language and Bilingual Radio in the United States.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 16, no. 4 (October 2, 2018): 446–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2018.1524969.  
• De La Torre, Monica. Feminista Frequencies: Community Building Through Radio in the Yakima Valley. Washington: University of Washington Press, 2022.  
• Díaz Martín, Esther. Radiophonic feminisms: the sounds and voices of contemporary Latina radio hosts in the U.S. Southwest, 1990-2017.  Texas Scholar Works, The University of Texas at Austin, http://hdl.handle.net/2152/68106  
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