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Conservatives and liberals clash after dismissal of Miami show host on Radio Caracol

A group of Democrats in Congress is threatening to block the purchase of Radio Caracol by America CV, which owns America TeVé, after the dismissal of Raúl Martínez, a former Hialeah mayor and powerful liberal voice on South Florida radio.

Martínez’s dismissal poured fresh fuel on an old clash between Republicans and Democrats over Spanish-language programming in South Florida. Democrats have complained for years, and especially during the last presidential election, that they are not represented in Hispanic media dominated by conservative and Republican voices.

Spanish-language radio in Miami grew alongside the Cuban exile community. Stations like WQBA, La Cubanísima, La Poderosa and Radio Mambi reflected the exiles’ drive for a free Cuba. But with the passing of time they started losing their combative audience as other stations grew. Actualidad Radio and Radio Caracol have listeners from other Hispanic groups, such as Colombians and Venezuelans.

Several Democratic members of Congress this week reviewed the certification of the purchase of Radio Caracol, now pending before the Federal Communications Commission. Newsweek reported that members of the Hispanic Caucus will press the agency to reject the deal.

The group includes Darren Soto, an Orlando Democrat who sits on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. He told el Nuevo Herald that he has informed the FCC about his concerns over disinformation on the Spanish airwaves, and will later make public his opinion on the sale of Caracol.

“Radio waves are the people’s waves, and the FCC needs to scrutinize each sale to make sure it is in the public good, and it could be quite possible that this is not in the public good,” Soto said.

“We saw similar stations perpetuate the big lie that President Trump won the election, which isn’t true, and we saw the dangerous results of that. I was there in the Capitol when the insurrection took place and we saw [the lie] perpetuated in Spanish-language media mostly unchecked,” he added.

But a member of the FCC pushed back on Monday.

“This attempt by Democrats in Congress to pressure the FCC into blocking the sale of a Spanish-language radio station based on the political viewpoints that it would broadcast to South Florida’s Hispanic community crosses a line drawn by the First Amendment,” FCC Commisoner Brendan Carr said in a statement. “The FCC has no business doing the Democrats’ bidding or using our regulatory process to censor political opinions that Democrats do not like. What’s worse, the Democrats appear to be treating the FCC as merely an arm of the DNC — expressly pressuring the agency to take action that they believe will increase their electoral odds in Florida in 2022.”

Carr, one of five FCC commissioners, was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2017.

Martínez says he was fired in a 45-second telephone call on March 7 as he prepared for his local interview and political analysis program, “La Hora del Regreso.“ His producer, Roberto Cespedes, was also fired, and both were replaced by television personalities from America TeVé, according to Cibercuba.

“The extreme right has conspired to impose its voice. They believe they have the absolute truth, and when someone reacts differently they are accused of being communists or socialists,” Martínez told el Nuevo Herald when asked about his dismissal.

Martínez was referring to the heads of America TeVé, CEO Carlos Vasallo and attorney Marcell Felipe, who heads the foundation Inspire America.

Vasallo signed the purchase of Radio Caracol on April 5 from PRISA, a media group from Spain that also owns the El País newspaper and Cadena Ser.

Felipe, who is general counsel of the America CV Network, denied it’s an issue of Republicans and Democrats. “They are trying to paint América TeVé as a Republican station and Inspire America as conservative. That’s not true. We support Republicans as well as Democrats who are anti-Castro,” he said.

“Martínez met with Carlos Vasallo before the sale of the station and said he did not know if he wanted to remain working with us. Now he starts this scandal to be the center of attention because he knows that since he abandoned exiles to dialogue with the Cuban regime he has lost every election he has run in,” he added.

Marcell Felipe
Marcell Felipe

Felipe said the House Democrats will not be able to block the sale of Radio Caracol. “The First Amendment of the Constitution of this country protects freedom of expression. The purchase of Radio Caracol is something that is profitable for us and that’s why we did it. They have the skills to manage the radio and the space in our studios to house the employees,” he said.

Luis Gutiérrez, director of Radio Caracol and president of the PRISA radio division in the United States, rejected Martínez complaints and said his dismissal was “a business decision.”

“I can confirm that I have not received any type of pressure from America TeVé directors to replace any of our workers on the station,” Gutiérrez told el Nuevo Herald.

“It was a business decision by Radio Caracol and has nothing to do with Channel 41. We are preparing for the transfer to the new owner. It is something that is normal in this type of change,” he said.

Martínez acknowledged he does not have a legal contract with Radio Caracol and accused Gutiérrez of having “a problem with truth.” He added that the decision to dismiss him had been made at the highest levels of American TeVé.

“Vasallo suffers from verbal incontinence,” the former mayor said. “He said in an interview with Channel 41 that they had managed to modify the Caracol programming from the morning of April 7 because the community had to be understood, referring to conservatives in Miami.”

Martínez has had tense relations with the new owners of Radio Caracol, as well as some Florida Republicans. He has said that Felipe has “cravings for grandeur” and called Gov. Ron DeSantis “Ron Disaster” for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez said he was sad to see Martínez leave the airwaves. “Raúl is a patriot, a lover of Democracy and a person committed to our community,” he said.

“Republicans are trying to consolidate a media machine that allows them to control opinion in South Florida. They want just one opinion, like in Cuba,” said Rodríguez, who added that he also feared the spread of fake news in Spanish-language radio.

Giancarlo Sopo, a political analyst who worked for the Donald Trump campaign in Florida, told el Nuevo Herald that “Democrats don’t appear to be satisfied with the control they have over national Hispanic networks.”

“Miami is one of the few media markets that has a real ideological diversity in Spanish-language news programs,” he added.

Sopo claimed that in the last presidential elections, Colombian Americans increased their support for the Republican Party by 15 percentage points. “It is clear that this is a group receptive to conservative messages, and that’s why it’s natural for the media in South Florida to adjust its programming to satisfy the needs of that community,” he said.

Elay Rodríguez said he went into shock when he learned that Martínez had lost his afternoon program on Radio Caracol.

A Cuban immigrant and Democratic activist, Rodríguez said he listened to the former mayor every day since he started the program more than three years ago, listening on his car radio on his way home or on his computer. As some of the other broadcasters in other Spanish-language stations grew more politically extremist, he believed “the mayor’s program was something different.”

“It wasn’t what is heard here in Miami, which is always the same.,” he said. “In this case it was a program that touched on community news and criticized local politicians. It was based on fact-checked information on what was happening here in the United States and it wasn’t so focused on Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.”

Edgar Pena, a Cuban who describes himself as “neither conservative nor liberal,” said he no longer listens to Spanish-language radio after the Caracol shake-up.

“All the stations here in Miami now advanced the same viewpoint. Only [the former mayor] was there to offer something different,” he said. “Here in Miami there’s no diversity of opinion. The news has only one side — almost always the conservative Republican side.”

Pena said the lack of diversity reminds him of what Cubans left behind on the island.

“Cubans left Cuba because all the news media were dominated by the government and always had to report the same news,” he said. “Here it’s the same. Everyone toes the same line. There’s no variety.”