New Voice for Latinos

One of the hottest prevailing winds in the magazine business is the current trend toward special-interest publications. The newest subject of concentration is ethnic pride--magazines addressed to English-speaking Americans with foreign backgrounds. Last October saw the first issue of 1-AM (for ItalianAmerican), with items on Italian food, wines and the arts. It was quickly followed by a competitor, Identity, a sophisticated blend of Italian American news and culture. Now comes Nuestro, an ambitious four-color monthly for Hispanic Americans. Nuestro hit newsstands last week at $1 an issue with a splashy cover story announcing "The Latino Era."

Nuestro (Ours) is the brainchild of Graphics Executive Daniel Lopez, 36. For nine years, he dreamed of creating a journal that would give voice to the "common joys, agonies and aspirations" of the 12 million Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Chicanos now living in the U.S. The son of a Mexican-born Chicago steelworker, Lopez won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, did graduate work at George Washington University, and spent 13 years as an ad salesman, printing executive and manager for a graphics firm. In 1972 he launched an embryo magazine company--initial assets: $650--and set out to drum up capital and subscribers. The venture collapsed when the Nixon economy took a tumble. Undaunted, Lopez geared up again in 1976 and raised $1.2 million from private investor groups and individuals to bring out Nuestro.

The first issue contains 64 pages and some 40 bylined articles, each written in English with a brief Spanish precede, by Latino contributors. There are personality pieces on Cuban-born Dancer Fernando Bujones, numero uno at the American Ballet Theater, Rodeo Star Leo Camarillo, Spanish-born Fashion Designer Fernando Sanchez, Miami Newscaster Emilio Milian, who continues to speak out against Cuban terrorists despite a bomb attack that blew off both his legs, and Archbishop Roberto Sanchez of Santa Fe, N.M., the highest-ranking Latino prelate in the U.S. Regular features include fiction or poetry, a gallery of art or photography, a food and crafts column, and a cross-the-country regional news report.

To non-Hispanic readers, Nuestro's ingenuous latino es bueno tone of voice may seem like ethnic overkill: the cover portrait of two strikingly handsome Latin faces is twice repeated inside the magazine, for example. Still, the magazine's diversity of sources and subjects should encourage a proud sense of unity in the nation's often peckishly insular Hispanic factions. "It will help Latinos realize how much they have in common," says Co-Managing Editor Jose Ferrer, "their roots, achievements and problems." Adds Publisher Lopez: "Nuestro will reflect a viable culture in which God is not a joke, in which families have meaning and strength, in which the heart holds as much essential information as the head."

Demographics augur well for Nuestro 's staying power. Some 86% of all U.S. Latinos over 14 are literate in English. Aggregate income of the 12 million U.S.

Latinos is $30 billion--more if the pay of 8 million or so illegal aliens is counted. The number of Latino families is increasing at four times the median U.S. rate, and if the trend continues Latinos will become the country's largest ethnic group by the year 2030. As important, perhaps, are their reserves of creativity. Says the magazine's other managing editor, Philip Herrera:* "Nuestro will provide an outlet and showcase for the tremendous talent in the Latino community, the bulk of which has never been tapped."

Nuestro's initial press run was an ambitious 180,000 copies, prompted by a staggering 12.4% return on a subscription mail-out--far above the 2% to 3% achieved by most prospective magazines. Advertising is thin, only 4.6 pages for the first issue. But with his solid capitalization, Lopez will be comfortably solvent for months ahead. "Nuestro will succeed," he concludes. "Latinos have been ready for this magazine for years."

* Both Ferrer and Herrera were formerly associate editors at TIME.

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