Signals for Change

Hugo Morales against the gritty backdrop ALUMNI of Fresno, California tecs—and others of Mexico’s native peoples—who work in fields, factories, and fast-food joints throughout California. Signals for Change Indigenous languages such as Mixteco, Zapotecan, and Triqui are heard on RB, along with Brazilian Portuguese and An alumnus dedicates his life to Latino radio. Hmong—“other linguistically marginalized populations” that he says are well rep- resented in Fresno. English is heard some- ith his flowing tiny highlands village, Miltepec. He was times as well, particularly during the white hair and Mix- last there, with his mother, in January. teenage program, La Paz. “RB creates most tec Indian physique, “Over 200 demonstrators are in jail,” he of its own content, so it speaks directly to Hugo Morales ’72, continued, “and there have been allega- the interests and needs of its audience,” J.D. ’75, spoke re- tions of torture. It’s a very unstable situa- says RB board member Viola Canales ’79, Wcently to a crowd, mostly prominent An- tion that has not been widely reported.” J.D. ’89. “For example, RB was the only sta- glos, in San Francisco. “Some of the city Except on his radio station. Radio Bil- tion that carried [last spring’s pro-immi- halls around the state were shut down ingüe (RB), which he founded in Fresno in grant] marches live from start to finish.” and more people were protesting. And is- 1976, is the nation’s only public Spanish- For 31 years, Morales has shepherded sues of race, class, and native languages language radio network. The talk he gave, RB—from an all-volunteer, mostly music have surfaced,” he said, referring to dis- to supporters of California Tomorrow, venue funded by the Mexican equivalent crimination and political strife in his na- which promotes social justice (he is board of pancake breakfasts to a $3-million tive state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Morales has vice-chairman), reflects the salient issues company with six stations in California lived in California since the age of nine, aired on RB, especially during segments and 90 satellite a∞liates throughout the but he returns annually to Oaxaca and his geared to the estimated 100,000 Mix- United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.

Photographs by Matt Black www.haa.harvard.edu Its programming is aimed at working His listeners are predominantly Latino his father, Rafael, crossed the border and “with listeners as agents of change and immigrants, he says, many raising families became a farmworker in Healdsburg, not merely as objects of change,” accord- on $30,000 a year or less. Contrast this to about 80 miles north of San Francisco. ing to its 2006 annual report. “RB is more the National Public Radio audience, near- That left his mother, Concepción, with than a radio station,” says California as- ly half of whom earn upwards of $75,000 a three small children. “We were very, very semblyman Juan Arambula ’75, a friend year. “Most of my classmates probably lis- poor,” he says, remembering his mother since college. “It is the culmination of ten to NPR as a way to connect,” he ex- weaving straw hats all day to buy the fam- who Hugo is and his contribution to the plains. “And RB could be an NPR service, ily a chicken. It was not until 1958 that betterment of society and to the people but we choose to serve the low-income they all boarded a Three Stars bus and, as that he cares about. He is a public servant population with intelligent, challenging resident aliens, reunited with Rafael, who and I think he has made more of a di≠er- programming in Spanish.” Farmworkers had become a naturalized citizen. ence in peoples’ lives than he would have represent a large chunk of RB’s audience. Morales spoke no English, but was as an elected o∞cial.” “Some concrete gains have been made, ahead in math (thanks to his Catholic To that end, Noticiero Latino—the news but, relatively speaking, they continue to schooling in Mexico). During recess, his service—continues to report on the immi- third-grade teacher, who knew no Spanish, gration debate. In February, reporters fo- Hugo Morales talks with some of the read him English-language picture books. young participants in the ¡Viva el Mariachi! cused on the citrus freeze, interviewing workshop held during his radio station’s “Toward the end of fifth grade, I began to some of the thousands of farmworker fami- annual mariachi festival. get a clue about what was being talked lies a≠ected and pointing to the slow arrival of federal aid. “Still, people are at the brink of losing their homes because they cannot pay mortgages,” Morales says. “Federal funding does not allow for remuneration to the undocumented workers, and 70 percent of the farmworkers are undocumented.” Other topics range from pollution control and AIDS among Latinos to the inflationary rise in tortilla prices. Linea Abierta (“Open Line”), the nation’s first and only Spanish-language live weekday talk show, o≠ers roundtable discussions, inter- views—with former president Bill Clinton and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others—and live call-in dialogue between friends and family members in Mexico and the United States. Parents be among the most exploited class of about in the classroom,” he says. “That’s call in to La Placita Bilingüe, a virtual village workers in the United States,” Morales why I’m in favor of bilingual education.” plaza, to discuss teen obesity or gang vio- asserts. “Who can say that a worker has Seventh grade was spent in a sanato- lence, or to share family recipes and grapple a good quality of life if he or she is earning rium, recovering from tuberculosis. with keeping up traditions, such as a $7 per hour, has no health insurance, no There, he whipped through a year’s worth daughter’s debut at age 15—“A Quinceañera. unemployment insurance, no Social Secu- of schoolwork in about six weeks, catch- Why do we bother doing this here in the rity, and can’t get a driver’s license?” ing the eye of his teacher. At the same States?” La Paz explores conflict resolution, time, he was reading Time magazine and academic achievement, drug abuse, and It is a personal subject. Morales spent national newspapers, awakening a social even teenage pregnancy. “Unfortunately, a much of his own early life picking pro- consciousness that became the core of his disproportion of our youth are marginalized duce in northern California, alongside his adult identity. “I saw how the mainstream economically and are low performers in our parents and siblings. “My dad earned looked at Latinos, and I was shocked peo- public schools,” Morales says. “From the be- about $4,000 a year, which was typical, ple would think we were dumb or lazy,” ginning, we have dedicated programming about $1 to $1.25 an hour,” he says. “Once he says. “I was living among very smart, and music to support them and recognize we came to the U.S., we all worked be- talented people—musicians, poets, writ- they’re part of our family. Many people who cause that salary was not enough to feed ers, carpenters—and I thought, ‘These tune in and write to us are behind bars.” us.” When Morales was a year old, in 1950, people have the wrong idea about us.’

Harvard Magazine 75 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL That’s when I really began to ish-language programs on WHRB, play- excel academically and to articu- ing Mexican folk music as well as Latino late to the outside what it was to rock and jazz, and recruiting Puerto Ri- be poor, and the merits of the cans from outside the Harvard commu- people who were poor.” nity to play salsa, recite poetry, and report In high school, he joined the on the independence movement. “He debate team and the school talked me into becoming a member of newspaper; he was elected stu- WHRB. I became a studio engineer for dent president and was the only his program, in addition to having my person of color in the college- own show,” says Juan Arambula, who also preparatory classes. Always close grew up in a California farmworker fam- to his parents, especially his ily. “He’s very good at that: he has the mother, whom he admires for quality of making it di∞cult for people to raising him alone, he took to say no to him.” heart his dad’s refrain: “It is our By the time he got to law school, duty to help our community.” He Morales had decided to become a public remembers boarding buses with servant—maybe an elected o∞cial or a his family to attend rallies orga- union organizer, and “I wanted to use nized by César Chávez. “I wore radio to empower farm workers to help my UFW [United Farm Workers themselves,” he says. During the summers of America] Eagle pin every day he went home, worked in the fields, and in school; I was very blunt about lived in the farm labor camp with his par- my political views,” he says, with ents. After graduation, he lectured for La a laugh. “Everybody knew who I Raza Studies at California State Univer- was and what I stood for.” sity in Fresno and posted flyers about The potential power of radio starting a bilingual radio station. as an instrument of social “Everyone who called became a board change first dawned on him member,” he says, laughing. “There was no when his brother, Candido, be- money; we began from scratch, organizing came the DJ of a Spanish-lan- music concerts and holding menudo— guage music program in Sonoma tripe—breakfasts. The whole idea was to County in 1964: “I saw every go back to our Chicano roots and build on farmworker, of every age, listen- that. We would net about $400, and a ing to this program.” (Candido is radio station cost about $200,000 to set up. now president of the Institute We were quite romantic about the whole for Mexicans Abroad, appointed idea.” It was Arambula who suggested ap- by former Mexican president pealing to foundations for grants: Morales Vicente Fox; Morales’s two sis- convinced him to write the first proposal. ters work as a teacher and as a In 1980—on the Fourth of July—RB went speech therapist in California.) on the air, playing mostly folk music for At Harvard, Morales went to listeners in the San Joaquin Valley. the larger demonstrations and Funding was a consistent problem advocated for increasing the until, in 1997, Morales installed 17 satellite number of Latinos on campus, downlinks, opening up major sources of but “was mostly studying.” He revenue beyond the valley. These days did help develop the first Span- Morales, who is known for his persuasive fundraising techniques (the station en- Sage Stossel ’93, executive editor joys a 60 percent success rate on its grant of The Atlantic Online, regularly proposals), still spends about half his contributes editorial illustrations to the Boston Globe. She prepared time traveling to promote the station, this narrative of Harvard’s June often getting backaches driving the three festivities after attending the hours between Fresno and San Francisco muddy fifteenth reunion last year (he also has a house in Oakland) in his with her husband, Michael Callaghan, and her brother, Scott Prius. But the trips give him time to Stossel, both class of ’91. think. “I’m the ideas man,” he says. “I come up with the big concepts.” His cur-

Harvard Magazine 77 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL rent goals include decreasing reliance on (“When I see them surviving out on the that link. Every March, Morales attends public funding (the Corporation for Pub- street,” he says, “it’s an inspiration to me the station’s annual mariachi festival, a lic Broadcasting provides 27 percent of how a≠ectionate they are toward humans fundraiser that draws thousands of peo- the budget, much less than it used to); despite the challenges they face.”) He has ple and is the longest-running event of its gaining a foothold in the Los Angeles no children, and recently moved in with kind in the nation. “I think it is a good media market; filing for spectrum space his companion, Amy Kitchener, a folk- thing for immigrants, regardless of where to become the only public-radio outlet for lorist for the State of California. they came from, to maintain their lan- Latinos in Texas; and developing a na- Spare time has often been spent visit- guage and culture,” he says. “And it is also tional Spanish-language Latino news and ing his parents. Although Rafael Morales, important for all American immigrants to information service for digital public- who died last December, had lived and be a part of the mainstream, in order to radio channels in the United States. worked in America for more than half his function and be a part of this wonderful life, he wished to return to Mexico after country, which is America.” (He himself His honors include the 1999 Edward R. death, so his wife and son made the trip filed for citizenship the day he turned 18, Murrow Award from the Corporation for to Oaxaca in January, burying Rafael’s because he wanted “a voice in my new Public Broadcasting for his “visionary” ashes in the Tequixtepec graveyard next adopted country.”) expansion of public radio and commit- to his parents. The elder Morales was also In practice, he acknowledges, it is a ment to community service; he had al- a musician: it was as secretary of the mu- challenge to hold onto one’s roots. “Even ready received a so-called “genius grant” sicians’ union that he crossed the border myself, at a certain point I was taken away from the MacArthur Foundation in 1994 in 1950, ostensibly to retrieve some in- —took myself away—from the commu- for his creative and entrepreneurial ap- struments. “Mariachi music was his bread nity in order to help my community,” he proach to improving the lives of Latinos and butter, and his passport to the U.S.,” says. “So my retention of language and cul- and other people of color. That mission says Hugo Morales. “As Latinos,” he adds, ture is very important. I could not main- remains his focus. Even his dog, a German “we are a transnational population and tain my sanity without my strong affirma- Shepherd mix he rescued from the mariachi is a national genre of music that tion of who I am.” nell porter brown streets, is named Revolution. He also brings all Mexicans and Mexican-Ameri- cares for 12 stray cats in his Fresno neigh- cans and U.S.-born Mexicans together.” borhood, and has paid to have them fixed. RB has played its own role in fostering Candidates for Election This spring, five new Harvard Overseers University faculty appear around the and six new elected directors for the Har- country to lecture on their specialties vard Alumni Association (HAA) board Comings and Goings and meet with alumni. Here is a list of will be chosen by alumni. Election results some of the speakers traveling to will be announced at the HAA’s annual local clubs this spring. For details, contact the club in question, call the Harvard meeting on June 7, Commencement day. Alumni Association (617-495-3070), or go to www.haa.harvard.edu. All Harvard degree holders, except Cor- On May 2, former University Marshal Richard Hunt talks about “Harvard on the poration members and o∞cers of instruc- World Stage” for the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Philadelphia. The Harvard Club of tion and governance, are entitled to vote Santa Barbara hosts psychology professor Marc Hauser on May 4. On May 6, mem- for Overseer candidates; all degree hold- bers of the Harvard Club of Central Florida can hear about “Why Americans Love ers may vote for director candidates. God and Europeans Don’t” from associate professor of government and social The candidates, listed below in their studies Glyn Morgan.Appearing at the Old Colony Harvard Club on May 8 to dis- order on the ballot, are: cuss “Life at Harvard College Today” is the College’s dean, Benedict Gross. Christo- pher Queen, of the Division of Continuing Education, is at the Harvard-Radcliffe For Overseer (six-year term, five to be Club of Western New York on May 9.The next day, McArthur University Professor elected): and Nobel laureate in economics Robert Merton talks with members of the Har- Richard A. Meserve, J.D. ’75. Washing- vard Club of Quebec.The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Plummer professor of Christ- ton, D.C. President, Carnegie Institution ian morals, is at the Harvard Club of New Jersey on May 16, and at the Harvard of Washington. Club of Birmingham the following evening. On May 17, Chua Tiampo professor of Lucy Fisher ’71. Los Angeles. Film pro- business administration emeritus George Cabot Lodge explains “Economic Devel- ducer and co-head of Red Wagon Enter- opment and Poverty Reduction” to the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Rochester. The tainment. Harvard Club of Northeast Ohio hosts Ali Asani, professor of the practice of Indo- Lisa M. Quiroz ’83, M.B.A. ’90. New Muslim languages and cultures, for a lecture on “Understanding Islam and the Role York City. Senior vice president, corpo- of Religion in Muslim Societies: Going Beyond the Headlines” on May 23. rate responsibility and inclusion, Time On June 5, Loeb professor of classical art and archaeology David Mitten reveals Warner Inc. “Macedonian Royal Tombs at Vergina and Their Contents” for the Harvard Club of Ronald Cohen, M.B.A. ’69. London. Southern Connecticut. Chairman, Portland Capital and The Portland Trust.