Ambitious News Website El American Targets Conservative Hispanics
By Beatriz Colón and Howard Polskin, July 11, 2022
A two-year-old bilingual website that targets conservative Hispanics appears poised to add its voice to the national political conversation as the country heads into the fall midterm election and the 2024 presidential race. Hispanic voters will play a key role in determining the outcome of many of those congressional races, as well as the battle for the White House. And El American, the most ambitious launch of a conservative news website since TheRighting began tracking right-wing media in 2017, could serve as a pipeline into Spanish-speaking communities, shaping opinion and boosting the fortunes of right-tilting candidates
Speaking with TheRighting via email, an El American representative described the platform as “Fox News Meets Daily Wire, For Hispanics.” Since its launch in March of 2020, the representative said, the site has garnered hundreds of thousands of readers from its intended target audience and beyond, and more than 250 million interactions across its social media accounts.
The for-profit venture was co-founded by Venezuelan cousins Jorge Granier and Carlos Penzini. Granier, El American’s CEO, has long been involved in media. His family founded one of the first radio stations in Venezuela, Radio Caracas Television, only to see Hugo Chávez’ regime shut it down. Through Aquarius Pictures, where he is an executive producer and managing director, Granier has been involved in the CW hit series, Jane the Virgin, as well as on a documentary about Pablo Escobar. Penzini, El American’s executive chairman, is the CEO of Latin Everywhere, a Spanish-language digital media company. Like Granier, he was an executive producer on Jane the Virgin.
“A Pro-Freedom Message in English and Spanish”
The story El American tells about its inception is a familiar one. A man grows up outside the United States, sees the consequences of socialism and leaves for a better life in America. He finds success within “the freedoms and constitutional rights the country offers,” only to feel those freedoms begin slipping through his fingers.
Granier and Penzini believe that story is a common one, and they’re capitalizing off of it. They claim to have raised $1.776 million in seed funding, an effort they say was “by U.S. Hispanics, for U.S. Hispanics.”
At the time of the initial funding, Granier said “El American’s objective is to win the hearts and minds of Hispanics with a pro-freedom message in both English and Spanish.” Everything they publish is translated from Spanish into English or vice-versa. They also have video and audio content in both languages.
Earlier this year, they announced their intention to launch “the first conservative news network focused exclusively on Hispanics,” as well as a streaming platform, where they will expand their content in an effort to reach more Hispanics who share their conservative values and are seeking “freedom and truth.”
El American views the 62 million Hispanics in the U.S. as “the fastest growing audience” in the country and declares “the most interesting political trend right now is how aggressively Hispanics are moving towards the GOP.”
The Truth Hispanics Deserve
According to the site’s Statement of Principles, Hispanics aren’t receiving the truth they deserve because defending truth and freedom doesn’t suit El American’s competitors, and they lack the will to defend it.
The site, with a staff of 45, posts several new stories every day. The navigation bar on its homepage offers a lengthy list of verticals, including politics, crypto, economics, foreign policy, health, tech, entertainment and more. It also has a “world” vertical, which features sections for news about Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, China, Iran, Africa and others.
Recent articles include, “Liz Cheney is a Traitor,” “Let the Jan. 6 Clown Show Begin” and “Cuban Couple Recounts the Hardships of Socialism that Led them to Emigrate: We Want Food and ‘a Normal Life.’”.
Op-eds and editorials all skew sharply to the right. El American is unabashed when it comes to its political leanings and goals, insisting that what people “cannot stand about mainstream media” is that they claim to be impartial when, in the eyes of conservatives, CNN, The New York Times, and the like are “in fact liberal activists.”
The Power of the Vote
Confident in their strategy, the site’s founders “would love to see more freedom-minded Hispanics elected to positions of power, and you can expect to see that reflected in our coverage.”
Just last month, Texas Republican Mayra Flores became a prime example of what El American has been trying to prove – that not only are Hispanics increasingly leaning right, they are voting, and they are winning. In a special election, Flores flipped a congressional seat in the Rio Grande Valley, which had previously voted Democrat for a whopping 150 years, The New York Times reports. The New York Post, a long way away from local Texas politics, hailed her as “the future of the Republican party.”
For its part, El American has published several articles on Flores, including “Inside Mayra Flores’ Trump-backed Historic Victory: The First Mexican-born Republican Who Won a Biden District” and ‘Bienvenido In Action’ Celebrates Mayra Flores’ Historic Victory: ‘Hispanics Are Fed Up with Reckless Liberal Policies.’
For El American, America was built on “the ideas of freedom and limited government.” Co-founders Granier and Penzini are betting there are enough Hispanics in the U.S. who, having “lived through the misery and terror caused by socialism” in their home countries, will respond to their message. “We know that this country is the last bastion of freedom and we do not want to lose it.”
Beatriz Colón graduated from New York University’s Journalism, Magazine & Digital Storytelling Masters Program in December 2021. Howard Polskin is the founder and editor-in-chief of TheRighting.
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El American is the most ambitious launch of a conservative news site since at least 2017. It could serve as a pipeline into Spanish-speaking communities across the USA which would then help shape opinion and improve the outlook for right-leaning candidates. (Photo: Pxhere)
