Western Iowa’s Spanish voice

One of the more influential venues for discussion and debate in western Iowa’s burgeoning Hispanic community is published in Carroll.

The 1-year-old Spanish-language paper, La Prensa (The Press), is a family operation, the product of an ambitious mother-son team originally from Nicaragua but with deepening roots in Carroll.Published twice a month, La Prensa, a free tabloid, is distributed at several locations in western Iowa including Carroll, Storm Lake, Denison, Spencer, Humboldt and Fort Dodge. Distribution stands at about 6,800.

Editor and founder Lorena Lopez, a former television personality in Nicaragua, launched the publication in May 2006 with her son, Carlos A. Arguello, 23, a Carroll High School and University of Northern Iowa graduate. Arguello serves as the general manager for newspaper, which the family runs out of its home at 320 W. 11th St., in Carroll, and has printed in Sheldon.

The La Prensa mission: give the growing western Iowa Latino community a voice.

For a time, Lopez translated an area English-language paper into Spanish, but the journalism didn’t resonate with Latinos or come close to bridging the cultural divide, she said.

“Hispanic people are not interested in a translation,” Lopez said. “We need local news.”

La Prensa carries sports and entertainment, and its most popular section with readers is “Sociales,” a social-news page that features weddings, engagement and “Sweet 15″ celebrations – the latter an Hispanic version of a debutante ball or coming-out party.

“They are huge,” Arguello said, noting that his family was invited to more than 20 Sweet 15′s last year alone by other families hoping they would play up the affairs big in the paper. “It’s almost a wedding.”

But Lopez and Arguello (her full and natural son as Hispanics handle last names differently than the white community) say the paper’s most significant role is that of educator, largely of the American political and legal process. They see themselves as navigators for western Iowa Hispanics trying to make their way in a new bureaucracy, a different system.

“What don’t they know about where they live?” Arguello said. “In some way or another we influence 16,000 people a week.”

Most of the news is locally generated by Lopez, who works a 70-hour week. But there are some contributors, and La Prensa has a Nicaraguan-based news service that provides some international copy.

In recent weeks, Lopez has shown plenty of shoe-leather pluck in tracking down presidential candidates for interviews – which she can do in both English and Spanish.

She recently interviewed presidential contender U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Denison. Obama speaks Spanish, and Lopez published his remarks on immigration along with a photo she shot on page one.

While she’s been impressed by Obama and with the only Hispanic in the presidential race, Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Lopez said that if she had to write an endorsement for the presidency today it would be for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Lopez said she’s also taking a cue from the native white community in small-town Iowa and doing all she can to promote volunteer work and philanthropy among Hispanics.

“If we want to be a part of the community, we have to learn that,” Lopez said.

Lopez, 44, hasn’t taken the usual career path to Iowa community newspapering.

With a master’s degree in communications from Central American University, which has a campus in Managua, Lopez became a recognizable face on Nicaraguan television in the 1980s. She even hosted the Miss Nicaragua pageants for a time.

But the same professional drive that finds Lopez getting exclusive interviews with major American politicians landed her on the persona non grata list with the Nicaraguan government. She produced a controversial piece about homosexual activity among teen-age boys forced by the Army into remote areas for service.

Lopez said the fallout from that series is complicated to explain, but it is one of the major reasons that she found herself in California in 1993, along with sons Carlos and Nauj (Juan spelled backward).

Divorced from a plastic surgeon in Nicaragua, she met and married Justin Chandler, a Mapleton native, who now works for Carroll Coolers.

In 1997 the family moved from California to Carroll, and Arguello believes they were the first Latin family to settle here and stay for any significant period of time in the modern era.

Lorena, who has worked to improve her English, held a variety of jobs in Carroll. She worked as a babysitter, washed dishes at St. Anthony Regional Hospital and earned her nursing credentials.

But the journalism fire never stopped burning.

With encouragement from her family she started the paper.

“Carlos told me, ‘Mom, that is your career,’” Lopez said. “He has been my biggest supporter.”

Lopez and husband, Justin, who assists with distribution of La Prensa, have another son, Justin, 10, a fifth-grader. In another family connection, Lopez’s first husband, Juan Carlos Arguello, Carlos’ father and the plastic surgeon living in Nicaragua, writes a health column for the newspaper.

A 2002 CHS graduate, Carlos Arguello is one of those young people seemingly perfectly suited for an emerging new era in Iowa, the intersection of business and demographic shifts.

Having come to the United States at age 7 he is a fully acculturated American, with a freshly minted degree in marketing and real estate from UNI. But he also speaks fluent Spanish and has a deep understanding, and love, of his Spanish culture. It’s powerful one-two punch for a self-described entrepreneur.

At age 14, Arguello started his own translation business, Caal Translation Services, that he continued to run at UNI.

As the Hispanic community makes a larger footprint in western Iowa, and begins to feel more ownership of the cities in which it is a part, La Prensa will become more vital – and have more influence, Arguello said.

“I think it will be really interesting in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.

Arguello said he foresees some potential expansion of La Prensa into other Iowa cities, and the possible move to weekly status. But for now, he wants to help his mother improve what they already have. He thinks Carroll is the ideal base for the western Iowa Spanish-language paper.

“We love Carroll,” he said. “We love living here. It’s not a big deal for us to operate a multi-county newspaper out of Carroll.”