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It’s been a shocking and painful week for those who grew up with lessons about Cesar Chavez in their history classes. The civil rights leader was accused of sexually abusing girls and women. Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta is among the accusers, and we’re already starting to see the fallout, with some organizations and community leaders reacting swiftly. More on that in a bit.
In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:
📺 Univision - Mexico
🇸🇻🇲🇽 Salvadorans - Mexicans
📙 Cesar Chavez - legacy
- Fernando
Univision premieres its first regular U.S.-Mexico news production
Photo: Enrique Acevedo, who used to work for Univision as a news anchor, interviews Mexico security chief Omar García Harfuch on “Esta Semana.” (N+ Univisión/In The Hyphen composite)
TelevisaUnivision premiered “Esta Semana con Ilia Calderón and Enrique Acevedo” on March 8, Univision’s new Sunday political show.
It replaces “Al Punto,” which was a similar show anchored by veteran journalist Jorge Ramos until he left the company in 2024.
What’s noteworthy is not that “Esta Semana’s” name is very similar to ABC News’ Sunday political show, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” It’s who’s anchoring it: Ilia Calderón and Enrique Acevedo.
Ilia Calderón (left) and Enrique Acevedo open the debut episode of “Esta Semana” from different locations. (N+ Univision)
Calderón is the anchor of Univision’s primetime weekday newscast in the United States, filmed out of the news network’s Miami headuarters. Acevedo is the anchor of Televisa’s “En Punto,” a weekday news program that films in Mexico. The first episode of “Esta Semana” starts with a splitscreen of Calderón and Enrique introducing the show, speaking to each other remotely. The show marks TelevisaUnivision’s first regular news program co-produced between its teams in Mexico and the United States.
Could we soon see more like it?
To catch you up: In 2022, Mexico’s Televisa and U.S. company Univision completed their $4.8 billion merger, which created TelevisaUnivision. The move took Televisa’s media content and production assets and combined them with Univision’s assets. If that sounds like a behemoth, it’s because it is. TelevisaUnivision now calls itself the “largest Spanish-language media company in the world.”
Some people wondered what this would mean for the news content on U.S. airwaves, and this year the company has started to answer that question. In January, TelevisaUnivision announced it was rebranding Noticias Univision news division as N+ Univision, a name that mirrored Televisa’s N+ news brand, which was created in 2022 following the merger. The local stations’ news divisions followed with their own rebrands in February.
At the time, Leopoldo Gómez, president of news for TelevisaUnivision, said the change would “enable N+ Univision to consolidate itself as the strongest and most far-reaching news organization in the Spanish-speaking world.”
The rebrand also came with layoffs. In January, the company eliminated nearly all of its U.S.-based digital news employees as part of a restructuring that consolidated digital news operations in Mexico, according to Media Moves.
I watched the first episode of “Esta Semana,” a hearty 39 minutes of political news coverage with several newsmaker interviews. The show’s graphics are snazzy, redolent of Vice News Tonight’s minimalist modern look that’s also come to characterize N+. It featured lengthy interviews with Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill, with Calderón and Acevedo alternating between interviews.
According to the network, the show is a “weekly Sunday show centered on political decision-making in Washington D.C, as well as its real-world consequences for the Latinos who work, vote, and build their lives in the United States.”
Which begged the question: Why does it make sense to have such a U.S.-focused show co-anchored by a journalist in Mexico?
A spokesperson for the company said that while the show is “rooted in U.S. politics,” it also “strives to offer a broader lens and a deeper perspective for our audience, by incorporating Mexican politics and important developments in the region of Latin America.”
That explains why the debut episode also featured an interview with Mexico Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch breaking down the killing of “El Mencho,” the leader of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, and U.S.-Mexico relations.
The show airs both in the U.S. (on Univision) and Mexico (on N+ Foro), and is available on the streaming platform ViX in both countries.
Mexico-based correspondents and bureaus have always been a part of Univision’s news coverage. But with the reorg of TelevisaUnivision’s news division giving it a more pronounced Mexico presence now, will we now see more programming that features lead talent from both the U.S. and Mexico?
“We have a strong history of integrating talent from both Mexico and the United States across major news coverage,” a spokesperson for the company said. “This includes the 2024 presidential election, State of the Union addresses, breaking news events such as the 2025 Los Angeles protests, and specials like ‘Abatido: El Mencho,’ as well as coverage of the death of Pope Francis, among many others.”
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What’s behind the “beef” between Salvadorans and Mexicans?
When I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago, I remember a Salvadoran friend told me very nonchalantly: “Oh yeah, Mexicans and Salvadorans don’t get along.” Since that moment (13 years ago), I can’t say I’ve seen the feud, but I’ve definitely heard it. Comments here and there from a Mexican friend teasing a Salvadoran friend about their food, their soccer team or their accent. I was curious why that was a thing — and why I’d never heard of it before moving to L.A.— so I looked into it.
I post a mini-doc every two weeks on my YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss the next one.
📖 SITYSK: Stuff I Think You Should Know
By now, you’ve probably heard of the allegations of sexual abuse of minors surrounding civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. What’s been interesting to see is the swift reactions from cities. Here are some that stood out:
Four city officials in Austin, Texas, are calling for Cesar Chavez Street to be renamed. The city’s annual march in commemoration of the farmworker rights advocate was already canceled. [CBS Austin]
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will sign a proclamation Thursday renaming Cesar Chavez Day to Farm Workers Day. [NBC Los Angeles]
In El Paso, March 31 will now be known as Community & Labor Heritage Day. [KFOX 14]
The City of Tempe in Arizona announced it will propose a new name to its city council for its paid holiday for employees. [City of Tempe Government]
Nebraska has its first Latina running for federal office. Denise Blaya Powell is the granddaughter of Cuban immigrants, and she’s running to represent Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. She describes herself as one “pissed off mom” in her new campaign ad. [Denise Blaya Powell/LinkedIn]
The Korean American singer who sings perfect cumbias. I spoke to Abigail Pak before her SXSW show in Austin. She goes by La Coreañera, and I haven’t stopped thinking about my conversation with the singer and musician. Why? She speaks perfect Spanish (with a Mexico City Chilango accent, to be exact), was moonlighting as a student at Dartmouth College, and she plays the accordion. Why is her Spanish so damn fluent? She grew up in San Antonio. Watch some of my conversation with her here.
Latinos: A rose without a stem? A STEM, actually. A new report from Excelencia in Education finds that while Latinos earned 31% of all STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees in the U.S. in 2023, they only make up 15% of the STEM workforce. [Community College Daily]
First-gen Latina surgeon writes a children’s book to inspire future surgeons. Dr. Jennifer D. Son said she “never saw anyone that looked like her” as she climbed through the ranks of her profession. So the Guatemalan American from Brooklyn wrote “Tiny Scrubs, Big Dreams” so that little girls can see themselves being surgeons. [NBC4 Washington]
Really quick
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👀 Unrelated, but…
This section is a random musing from the week that is not related to my work as a journalist.
This week’s rant: We gotta stop with the childhood photos of company employees. You know the ones that say, “This is who you’re saying no to when you reject our sales call,” and it’s a picture of the sales representative when he was 5. It’s been 86 days since the trend first went viral, and I’m still seeing these carousels.
That’s not the problem. The problem is they keep getting more and more professional with snazzy graphics and fonts. And it’s officially not fun anymore.
Stay hyphy,
Fernando
