Radio Bilingue

Radio Bilingüe is a nonprofit organization dedicated to public media for educational purposes through news, public affairs, community and cultural conversations. This gift supports general operations.

Radio Bilingüe is a nonprofit organization created to serve the information needs of farmworker communities with a special focus on Indigenous migrants. It produces a national Spanish-language news program, as well as a weekly call-in show in the Indigenous languages of Mixteco and Triqui. These shows are syndicated and heard on 102 terrestrial radio stations across the United States, in 25 states, including Iowa, Indiana, Oregon, and Arkansas. It also builds and operates more than 25 low power FM radio stations reaching rural communities. MacArthur funds support general operations, and the intended outcome of this work is that Spanish, Mixteco and Triqui-speaking communities across the United States have access to public interest news and information that is relevant to their lives.

Radio Bilingüe is a California-based public radio network and the leading producer of Spanish-language content in the U.S. Radio Bilingüe provides Spanish, English, Mixteco, and Triqui language news and information to its audience made up of farmworkers, low-wage workers and immigrants, as well as more established second-, third-, and fourth generation Latinos.  Co-founded in 1976 by MacArthur Fellow Hugo Morales, the organization broadcasts music and cultural programming and produces work that advance Latino community education, civic engagement, and health and well-being. 

Radio Bilingüe is convening a forum in Fresno, California that includes MacArthur Fellows Hugo Morales (1994), the Executive Director of Radio Bilingüe; Jose Quiñonez (2016), the founder of Mission Asset Fund, an organization that provides financial literacy and the means to secure safe credit to low-income and minority families; and other professionals in the immigration and worker rights fields.  The purpose is to share information and updates on immigration policy, family and asset protection, and workers’ health, safety and employment rights.  This forum is intended to provide critical information to the Central Valley Latino communities and beyond who face difficult realities, endure fear of raids and checkpoints, and who may be victims of misinformation promulgated by anti-immigrant organizations.

Radio Bilingüe will produce and broadcast the Migrant Rights on Radio Project, which will ensure a recognizable, consistent stream of critical information for Spanish, Mixteco and Triqui-speaking people currently or planning to seek work in the U.S., to their families, friends and communities, and to advocates and officials. The Project will communicate how workers can identify, protect themselves against and act upon common problems, as well as regular news coverage of guest worker policy, stories of fraud and abuse, and of workers organizing to obtain better conditions. It will reach listeners in more than 100 communities in the U.S. and Mexico.

Radio Bilingüe is the only national Spanish-language non-commercial public radio network in the United States. It owns and operates six full power FM stations in California and broadcasts programming via satellite to more than 100 affiliate stations across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Mexico, serving large urban markets as well as rural communities. Its listeners are Spanish-speaking rural farm workers, urban workers, and recent immigrants, as well as more established second- and third-generation bilingual Latinos who value their cultural roots and native language. This grant will support the production of Radio Bilingüe’s flagship news programs, Noticiero Latino and Edición Semanaria during the 2012 election year.