Latino USA
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Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective. Launched in 1994, the program is a production partnership of KUT Radio and the Center for Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Latino USA's weekly, half-hour broadcast of news, cultural programs, and public affairs has generated a loyal audience and won numerous prestigious national awards from the communications industry. Latino USA is distributed by National Public Radio and the Longhorn Radio Network to 183 stations in 33 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Distribution by Radio Bilingüe and the Armed Forces Radio service expands the program's reach to worldwide audiences. "We provide a mix that will appeal to the general audience of public radio--young and old, Latino and non-Latino," says executive producer María Martin. "We are a reflection of the diversity of the Latino community. Not just Mexican-American but Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Central American." The program began in 1990 as a gleam in the eye of Gilberto Cárdenas, former UT sociology professor and director of UT's Center for Mexican-American Studies (CMAS). Cárdenas made the fledgling project his cause and actively sought funding. In 1992 he received the requisite grant monies from the Ford Foundation and immediately set about assembling a professional staff. Among his star recruits was María Martin, a seasoned producer who fleshed out the concept and content over the next several years. When Cárdenas stepped down from CMAS in 1996 to head the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, he left a flourishing enterprise in capable hands. "I think of my involvement with Latino USA as the culmination of 20 years of work," Martin says. "My real love is to be a reporter; to do the kind of thing we can particularly do well. That is, to go out to Latino communities--whether they be in the highlands of Guatemala, or Los Angeles, or Edinburgh, Texas--and tell the stories with our particular knowledge and sensitivities." María Martin is preeminently qualified to bridge the Anglo/Latino culture gap: the daughter of a Hispanic mother and an Irish-American father, she was born in Mexico but raised primarily in the United States. At age 18, fearful of losing touch with her childhood roots, she made the transformative decision to travel back to Mexico. "I decided to reclaim that side of my identity," she explains. The Latina identity she rediscovered during that sojourn would inform her future endeavors. Settling in northern California in the early 1970s, she became a social worker and part-time college student. She also got her first taste of broadcast through volunteer work at KBBF-FM, a bilingual Latino-owned and operated public radio station in Santa Rosa. She began as an unpaid DJ and co-produced "Somas Chicanas," a program about Mexican-American women. Martin had found her true calling. "I always had a tendency to follow the helping professions," she explains from a UT Austin Telecommunications office graced with the many National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) awards that Latino USA has won. "And I saw that by giving people information about education or services, I could be more helpful to them in the long run than by facilitating food stamps." Between 1980 and 1988 she pursued a wide variety of public radio work on the west coast, where her earliest national-level stories were exclusively in Spanish, the consequence of an invisible "editorial wall." Her big opportunity came in 1989, when she joined National Public Radio's national desk in Washington, D. C., as Latino Affairs Editor. There she helped implement a successful new policy to mainstream important Latin-theme material, using talented Latino journalists. Meanwhile, at The University of Texas at Austin, the idea of a locally produced program simmered. Martin was initially called in as a consultant, then invited to stay on. The year 1998 was an outstanding one for Martin personally. She received both the Guillermo Martínez Marquez Award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (for a series about the recent Guatemalan peace process that aired on Latino USA) and the Ruben Salazar Communications Award from the National Council of La Raza. And she also earned a bachelor of journalism degree from UT Austin's Department of Journalism, a degree she never before had time to complete. María Martin spent the 1998-99 academic year at Ohio State University on a Kiplinger Fellowship in Public Affairs Reporting--one of only eight mid-career journalists so honored--and a NAFTA fellowship. She returned to Austin and Latino USA after completing her master's degree at Ohio State. In May 2000 she was awarded a prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for her report "The Betrayal of Sister Dianna Ortiz". by Rae Nadler-Olenick,
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