Radio gives Latinos a connection

newsobserver.com Saturday, May 3, 2003 12:00AM EDT By JOHN ZEBROWSKI, Staff Writer

ZEBULON -- The voice of Ismael Quintana, better known as Pico de Oro to the listeners of La Super Mexicana radio, comes at a furious pace, an excited stream of words touching on everything from pop singers to sports to the rising temperature outside. He speaks in Spanish, but even someone with no understanding of the language can pick up on certain phrases: enfermedades transmitida sexualmente, prevencion de abuso infantil, sifilis.

Then, there's this: Wake County Human Services.

It's 2 p.m. and this week's topic is about how mothers deal with unruly children. Quintana introduces his guest, a petite woman originally from Venezuela named Niosoty Baptista Paparella, a county especialista de salud mental (or mental health specialist). He asks her how parents should discipline their children.

"It isn't just about punishing children," Paparella said. "Some people think that discipline is to beat the children. We need to understand that children aren't property."

The show goes on for nearly 45 minutes, as mothers call in and Paparella gives advice and plugs the services offered by Wake County for the growing Latino population. Each Wednesday, a different expert on women's health sits in the cramped studio of WETC, a 15,000-watt AM station that can be heard throughout central North Carolina and southern Virginia.

Future up in air

The half-hour program runs through September, when its future becomes uncertain. The March of Dimes, which has provided the $10,000 budget the past three years, is looking for other sponsors to help fund the show.

For Wake County, the show is part of a push to better reach the Latino population, which is often kept by language and cultural barriers from using county services.

Over the past decade, the number of Latinos in Wake grew more than five-fold to nearly 35,000, outstripping the county's ability to provide the necessary help. To catch up, Human Services has hired interpreters and printed health materials in Spanish. Each year brings greater focus on Latino health issues.

But it still isn't enough, said Maria Robayo, a county public health educator who produces "En el Aire" ("On the Air"), as the program is called. Robayo was raised in Colombia and has lived in North Carolina for four years. She assigns the topics -- diabetes, hypertension, child immunization, depression -- for each week, books the guests and tries to direct them to the one-story cinderblock studio, which sits underneath four huge radio antennas in a clearing about a half-mile down a narrow dirt track from Riley Hill Road.

Robayo is also a presenter, doing two shows on sexually transmitted diseases. After her first program in March, which focused on gonorrhea and chlamydia she said about 60 people called her office seeking advice. "The response was wonderful, but it shows that people are looking for help and don't know where to go," Robayo said.

Radio a connection

For many Latinos spread around the Triangle, life is an isolated rural existence without the community support English-speaking residents take for granted. Even something as basic as watching television is complicated by the fact Spanish-language channels are available only through satellite or cable systems.

Wake Human Services works with local print media such as the Spanish-language newspaper La Conexion. But, said Martha Olaya-Crowley, Human Services' director of project management and development, the fact many area Latinos are poorly educated makes radio the best way to reach people. She said it is no coincidence that a popular English-language FM station in Raleigh recently converted to Spanish.

"People really rely on Spanish radio to stay informed," she said. "They can call in and ask a question and get an immediate response. You can hear how much they appreciate this."

On this afternoon, the caller is Maria, a mother of two whose husband abandoned her. When Maria was young, she said her own parents used to beat her. Now, she treats her own daughters roughly.

"I realize listening to you that how I'm acting is wrong," she told Paparella. "I don't want my children to be afraid of me. How can I be a more loving mother to my children?"

Robayo smiled as Paparella responded by congratulating Maria for wanting to change her behavior and telling the young mother about the classes on parenting she teaches. Each week Robayo said a similar scene is repeated over the airwaves, with women who have felt alone in a new and frightening place making contact with people who understand them.

With Univision, the national Spanish-language cable network, announcing it will soon broadcast a statewide local channel from Charlotte, Robayo is working with other counties' public health officials to see if they can pool resources to create a similar program for the television.

"We do that," she said as the phone in the studio rang with another question, "and we can help even more people."

Staff writer John Zebrowski can be reached at 829-4841 or jzebrows@newsobserver.com.