Abstract
‘Viva el español: The End of Linguistic Purity’ (p. 23) could be a controversial slogan for an opinion piece in the news. Nowadays, the United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. According to recent census data, the Hispanic population reached 68 million in 2024, representing approximately 20% of the total U.S. population. Projections indicate that this demographic will continue to expand, potentially reaching nearly 27% by 2060. Consequently, despite a ‘glaring absence of scholarship on the subject in the U.S. Latina/o context’ (p. 4), the influence on television productions and the presence of over 45 million Spanish speakers in the country are facts that demand visibility and academic reflection.
Taking this into account, this book challenges several conservative ideas regarding the shaping of SLTV (Spanish-Language Television) in the United States. As a complementary approach to existing monographs, this work offers a provocative new perspective on the challenges facing the sector. First of all, the authors use the term ‘Spanish’ instead of ‘Hispanic’ to ‘underline[s] the historical importance of the Spanish language in the industry and the inherent complexities and debates surrounding this language’s centrality’ (p. 143). To do that they ‘build on previous research, but take a broader perspective that goes beyond the early history of the industry and its 70 years of challenges and growth’ (p. 12). Authored by Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago (Arizona State University) and Jilliam B. Báez (Hunter College), this volume provides a robust scholarly contribution to understanding the trends emerging within the Spanish-language audiovisual industry in the United States. Coupled with a critical analysis, the work establishes a framework of growth while underscoring existing gaps and proposing strategic future pathways for the creative industries.
The book is divided into four chapters. The first analyses how audience-targeting has transformed language use on television. In the chapter titled ‘Speaking to Billennials: Linguistic Flexibility in Reality Television’, the authors address the necessity of adapting content and linguistic strategies to a broad audience whose cultural diversity demands new formulas for engagement. Furthermore, it explains the influence of the long process of assimilation into Anglo-Saxon culture that SLTV has experienced as a form of social integration, addressing the resulting transformations in programming and editorial approaches. According to the authors, ‘Univision and Telemundo differentiated themselves from other U.S. broadcasters’ (p. 18). This means not only understanding them as SLTV (Spanish-language television), linked to the Latin American television industries, but also as abandoning their primary interest in constructing the prototype of the Spanish-speaking viewer (usually an immigrant). Instead, they began to ‘pay greater attention to younger bilingual and bicultural audiences’ (p.19) of the second or third generation, further removed from the Hispanic world.
In this same vein of adaptation, chapter two confronts the issue of inclusion. The authors note how Spanish-language television has been a pioneer in advocating for racial inclusion in audiovisual production. This demand began by seeking to reduce racial discrimination within SLTV, addressing the complex dilemma between inclusion policies and those ensuring creative freedom of this industry that used to favour whiteness and colourism. Avilés-Santiago and Báez argue that Spanish-language television can contribute to the reimagining and accurate understanding of race throughout the United States at this critical juncture (p. 10).
Chapter three highlights the paradoxes of this assimilation and the necessity of finding connections with culture, roots, and language. It addresses transformations in character representation, noting a significant increase in light-skinned characters – often used to target audiences in both the United States and Latin America – an approach that reinforces the invisibility of Afro-Latina/o identity, due to the limited presence of the various countries of origin of the Spanish-speaking audience in the media landscape and the lack of identification with it. On the other hand, it is striking how watching old telenovelas has become a form of nostalgia, even among younger generations who are yearning for new television content.
Finally, chapter four focuses on ‘Streaming Media, Nostalgia, and the Future of Spanish-Language Television’. This chapter explains how nostalgia and SLTV-style engagement have had an impact on streaming through ‘
Avilés-Santiago and Báez propose a synthetic and comprehensive vision of the evolution of the Spanish-language television industry in the United States. This is merely a symptom of the gradual transformations that have modified the existence of Spanish-language content in the United States. It is a fact that, alongside technological shifts, cultural transformations have modified how content is consumed. This book aims to provide ‘an in-depth critical cultural analysis of contemporary Spanish-language television in the United States’ (p. 4) and it largely succeeds in doing so. In summary, the Spanish-language television industry has undergone profound transformations and this book explains the contexts and development of these changes. In addition, academic studies on this topic have grown as an emerging area of study over the last 20 years and this book provides a useful account of this landscape. It emphasizes three key points: the rise of Spanish-language television content driven by the significant population growth (with Spanish-speakers representing over 50% of total U.S. growth since 2000); the expansion of the bilingual population; and inclusion policies that broaden the perception of social reality. Finally, it explores the combination of nostalgia (a preserved consciousness of cultural heritage) and the popularity of specific formats, such as telenovelas, as drivers of social change.