The Surging Hispanic Economy

Latino Communities Spread Across America, and Businesses Follow

By EDUARDO PORTER
STAFF REPORTER OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Phyllis Bancroft and Jose Luis Villegas dreamed of owning their own TV station. So three years ago, after quitting their jobs working on the evening news at Spanish-language TV network Telemundo in Hartford, Conn., they sold their possessions and set out to find an untapped Latino market they could mine.

They finally found it in, of all places, Charleston, S.C. They looked at census data and asked around, and they discovered that the local Latino population had been surging for years. Last May, they took their station, WJEA, to the airwaves as an affiliate of Telefutura, the new Spanish-language network of Univision Communications.

The two business partners are among a growing number of businesses and entrepreneurs pursuing Hispanic consumers as they fan out across America from such established enclaves as California, Texas and New York. More and more immigrants from Latin America are pursuing plentiful jobs in meatpacking plants in Nebraska, poultry farms in Arkansas, fish-processing factories in Alaska and in construction and agriculture in South Carolina and many other states.

As their numbers grow in these new areas, so does their spending. Latino disposable income nationwide has grown 160% since 1990, to $580 billion, according to a recent study. In Tennessee, it swelled sevenfold to $3.2 billion. In Iowa, the amount quintupled to $1.5 billion, and in Delaware, it quadrupled to $700 million.

Idaho Unido

Lured by these numbers, businesses and entrepreneurs are rushing in. Overcoming language barriers and other hurdles, many are thriving. In Torrington, Wyo., local radio stations broadcast Spanish-language shows. In Idaho, readers can pick up Idaho Unido, an English-Spanish newspaper published every two weeks. And in Tennesssee, pork producers have formed a cooperative aimed at selling pig carcasses to Hispanic meat markets.

"We get two or three calls a week from people looking for bilingual people," says Ed Gumucio, a Bolivian immigrant who in March 2000 launched a service in Smyrna, Tenn., to train staff at local hospitals, banks and other companies to communicate with Spanish-speaking workers and customers. Business, he says, is thriving.

South Carolina's job market has been pulling in Hispanic laborers for more than a decade, some arriving from other U.S. states and others directly from Latin America. Mainly of Mexican origin, they have evolved from a migrant farm-worker group that swelled during the harvest season to a more permanent community with families and children in school.

Based on census data, the number of Hispanics in South Carolina more than tripled between 1990 and 2000, to about 95,000, or 2.4% of the state's population. Hispanic purchasing power in the state has sextupled over the past 12 years, to an estimated $2.2 billion this year.

Hispanics are in evidence throughout Charleston's suburbs-from the Spanish chatter heard in the trailer camps behind Ashley Phosphate Road to the workers on the suburban golf courses of Mount Pleasant. Sunday Mass in Spanish at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church is standing-room only. At night, men in cowboy boots and hats flock to the International Discotec to dance to the polka-like tunes of Los Terribles from Mexico.

All this activity points to a flourishing Hispanic economy. Alberto Moreno, an immigrant from Mexico's northern state of Jalisco, makes a killing dispensing tacos from a trailer parked near a gas station. He says he paid off his trailer in four months, netting $2,500 to $3,000 per weekend, and he's itching to buy another. A few blocks up the road is Los Puentes, a Hispanic market where local Latinos can send money home, buy airline tickets and phone cards, and stock up on groceries and religious articles. Norma Jimenez, an Argentine immigrant who opened the store in 2001, says sales reached $90,000 a month by the end of the first year. She has since opened three more stores, in John's Island, Columbia and Rock Hill.

Catching On

Some Anglo businesses in town are catching on. A formerly "oldies" AM radio station was flipped into Spanish a year and a half ago. Randy Withers, who owns a business that manufactures plantation shutters, last year launched Charleston's first Spanish-language newspaper, Vida Latina (Latino Life), after noticing that most of his work force was from Mexico and Guatemala. About a year ago, retailer Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. began stocking Mexican products in its local grocery stores, including Jarritos soda pop and Maizena corn-flour drink mix.

Auto makers, food companies and other big national advertisers don't have to seek out pockets like the one in Charleston. They buy time on a nationwide network such as Telefutura, and when a local affiliate begins broadcasting, their ads reach the intended audience. And they are interested in reaching new audiences. In fact, it was from General Motors that Charleston's local McElveen GM dealership got the idea to take a stab at Hispanic advertising.

"GM urged us to look at our local Hispanic market," says Doug McElveen. It translated one of its regular TV spots into Spanish and ran it for 90 days on the English-language CBS affiliate. The locals were so startled when that ad first appeared that the effort was at the top of the evening news.

For all the promise, it's still a struggle for mainstream Charleston businesses to sell to the budding Hispanic market. Some businesses ignore Charleston's emerging market, arguing that Latinos have little money and send much of what they do have back home to Latin America. Others haven't courted Latinos because they lack the staff to deal with customers who don't speak English. "We've been trying for months to get a bilingual salesperson," says Richard Cooper of Charleston's local Ford dealership, Jones Ford.

Language is considered such a barrier that, to draw advertisers, the new Spanish-language AM station aired a job-mart program to recruit Spanish-speaking staff for potential advertisers. "Many people want to tap the Hispanic market but don't know how," says Cliff Fletcher, who runs the station.