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Photo: Miriam Balcaer/Listin
Diario |
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A View From All Fronts
Jorge Ramos Avalos lives in two different worlds. As anchor for the past 17 years of the Univisión network nightly newscast, Noticiero Univisión, Ramos is one of the most influential Hispanics in the country. In Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston, his newscast attracts a larger audience than the major networks. His broadcast reaches a legion of Spanish-speaking viewers throughout the U.S. and 13 Latin American countries. He’s earned seven Emmys. He’s interviewed presidents, dictators, and revolutionaries, and reported from five different wars. He’s authored five books, writes a weekly newspaper column, and provides daily commentary to radio stations in addition to his nightly news show. Ramos was the first television journalist granted an interview by George W. Bush after winning the Republican Presidential nomination. Famous in one world, yet “relatively anonymous in the other mainstream America” is Ramos’s own description of his admittedly strange predicament. But the 45-year-old Ramos is clearly poised to bridge the gap between those two worlds. As the title of his recent autobiography, No Borders: A Journalist's Search for Home, (RAYO, 2002), attests, Jorge Ramos is crossing borders, both literally and figuratively. AARP Segunda Juventud recently met with Ramos for an exclusive interview at Univisión’s Miami studio. The journalist’s tidy corner office is but a few feet away from his anchor desk in the bustling Univisión newsroom. Although his newscast was less than an hour away, Ramos was relaxed, thoughtful and gracious, as he spoke of being a witness to history, and a chronicler of the Hispanic experience in the United States. Ramos’s own story is nothing short of remarkable. Born in Mexico City, he was the oldest of five children in a middle class family. As a youth, he excelled in classical guitar, and in the sport of pole-vaulting, earning a slot on Mexico’s pre-Olympic team. But it was the written word that captivated him, so he took a job as a radio reporter. After encountering government censorship, Ramos immigrated to Los Angeles in 1983. Armed with a student visa, he enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, and looked for work in broadcasting while earning $15 dollars a day, plus tips, as a waiter. Within a year, Ramos had a job at KMEX, the top local Spanish-language television station in Los Angeles. Within three years, Ramos was anchoring Noticiero Univisión. At twenty-eight, he became one of the youngest anchors on a national broadcast in the United States.
In the 17 years since, Ramos has reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and historic elections in Mexico. He has also put his life on the line to report first-hand on the conflicts in El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and most recently, Iraq. In Afghanistan, one of the three guerillas assigned to be his bodyguards announced that he was a follower of Osama bin Ladin and pointed a rifle at Ramos’s face. Says Ramos, “I told him, if you take care of me, I’ll take care of you. And, I gave him 15 one-dollar bills. He had never seen a one-dollar bill in his life, so he thought he was a millionaire. He let me go.” Ramos admits it is easy to “become addicted to the adrenaline rush” of covering a war. But he feels his efforts have paid off. He points proudly to a recent survey indicating that 75 percent of Hispanics chose Spanish-language television as their main source of war coverage. “Of course, they had the opportunity to watch in English, but they decided to watch in Spanish,” says Ramos. Spanish-language broadcasts, notes Ramos, are “much more open to other points of view,” and include more international coverage than their English language counterparts. Ramos feels that is the reason English-language networks are losing audience share, while Spanish language networks, such as Univisión, are gaining. “I think we’re doing something right. We don’t have the resources of all the other networks. But we were brought up in a tradition of diversity. That’s exactly what we communicate when we are doing our newscasts,” he says. Diversity is a central theme for Ramos, one no doubt inspired by his own status as an immigrant. He speaks passionately about keeping one’s Hispanic identity, while at the same time, “still being a good American.” “Right now there are 37 million Hispanics living in this country. Seventy percent of them are either immigrants or children of immigrants,” observes Ramos. He adds, “I do not believe in the melting pot anymore. The melting pot worked for the other waves of immigrants. It worked for the Italians, Germans, and Poles…but it isn’t working for Hispanics. We are different in the sense that we are maintaining certain elements of our culture that other immigrants didn’t maintain.” Ramos believes that geographic proximity to Latin America, plus technology, such as the Internet, that makes it easier to stay in touch with home, are just two of the reasons Hispanic immigrants have maintained their culture. The sheer number of Hispanic immigrants is another factor. “The identity of Hispanics is linked to our language in ways that it wasn’t for other immigrants,” adds Ramos. Ramos, who is fluent in English, notes that “You need to speak English in order to survive and be successful in this country.” But, he emphasizes, “We should maintain the Spanish language.” Ramos quotes Carlos Fuentes’s observation that “Monolingualism is a disease that can be cured.” Says Ramos, “This is the only country in the world I know of where you are looked down upon if you speak more than one language.” According to Ramos, Hispanics in the U.S. share another characteristic not always understood by the population at large: They identify themselves not only by common language, but also by country of origin. The Ramos household in Miami is a prime example. Ramos is the proud father of two children, whose smiling faces grace the walls of his office. His son Nicolás, age 5, with wife, Lisa Bolívar. Daughter Paola, from Ramos’s first marriage, is 16. Raised in Spain with her mother, Paola will spend the next two years finishing high school in Miami. Ramos wonders if his daughter will face an identity crisis in the United States. “Is she going to be a Spaniard [because she grew up in Spain], Mexican, because of me, Cuban, because of her mother, or American, because she was born in Miami? She has four different identities. For a teenager to go through all these changes in just a couple of months, it’s going to be very difficult,” he says. The same quandary applies to Ramos’s son, Nicolás. Says Ramos, “My wife is from Puerto Rico, of Cuban descent. I’m from Mexico, and my son was born in the United States. He’s really a Puerto-Cuban-Mexican-American.” During an interview with former Vice President Al Gore, Ramos asked Gore how he would classify Nicolás. Gore responded, “He’s simply a new American.” Says Ramos, “I liked that answer, because it symbolizes one of the most important challenges the United States is going through. That is, to recognize itself as a diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation. So, my son, a Puerto-Cuban-Mexican-American, and my Spanish-Cuban-Mexican-American daughter, both represent the diversity of this country.” Ramos hopes to celebrate that diversity in his sixth book, which he is currently working on. Entitled The Latino Wave, the book will coincide with the upcoming political season. “We don’t matter for the politicians unless it’s an election year. Next year, we’re going to be rediscovered. In the book, I’m saying to the politicians, you better get to know us better. You better understand what our problems are.” Those problems, says Ramos, boil down to two words: economy and education. “Two out of five Hispanic children live in poverty. Thirty percent of our children quit before finishing high school. It’s a reality that many politicians do not understand,” he says. Ramos cites studies predicting that eight million Hispanics will vote in 2004. “These eight million votes could be the swing votes in the major states, such as Texas, California, New York, and Florida.” He adds, “We can argue that Hispanics could choose the next U.S. President.” To back up his claim, Ramos recounts a conversation with the present occupant of the White House. “Bush tried to speak Spanish, and had a terrible accent. And most of the things that he said were grammatically wrong. Bush believes that the effort won him the 537 votes that made the difference in Florida." Ramos’ keen observations about politics may serve him well in the future. He has contemplated getting into politics, either in the U.S. or in Mexico. “I’ve spent too many years as a witness, watching. I would like to spend some decades doing things,” says Ramos. Another possible option, he says, is working for an international immigrants’ organization. For the time being, Ramos is busy fulfilling his long-term contract with Univisión. And he is eagerly anticipating the challenges of having a 16-year-old daughter in the house. His goal is to help Paola “become a mature woman and avoid the major problems of sex and drugs.” How does he plan to do that? “I’ll do as my dad did when I was young. He used to call me and we’d go driving to the mall, so I’d be captive. He’d talk to me about sex and difficult things. Now, I find myself doing exactly the same thing. I talk to her when she can’t escape. I talk about condoms and AIDS and boyfriends. And it’s not easy, because she doesn’t want to talk about it.” In fact, admits Ramos, “It’s much more difficult for me to ask my daughter questions than it is to ask President Bush questions.” Despite his achievements, Ramos shies away from the title of “role model.” But he does feel others can learn from his twenty years of life in the United States. “I was an immigrant. At one point I was surviving as a waiter. If I made it and became an anchorman, anyone can make it. I still believe in what Caesar Chavez used to say, 'Sí, se puede,' "says Ramos. He adds, “I believe there is no luck, and there is no second chance. I don’t believe in horoscopes or destiny. I believe in working hard for what you believe in. And I’ve always believed that I had to do something in this world to leave my mark.” Jorge Ramos is doing just that, in two different worlds. Now find out, in his own words, the top 10 news events that Jorge Ramos has covered during his career. |
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