Americano Media wants to be the Spanish-language Fox News. Here’s what you need to know about it.
Americano Media has its sights set on bringing centrist Latinos to the right ahead of 2024. These are the hosts the network has on the job.
Written by Leo Fernandez
Research contributions from Janos Balazs & Monica Rodriguez
Published
Since Americano Media’s inception, the network has provided right-wing radio programming for Spanish-speaking audiences with notable hosts who reliably spread misinformation and extremism. This includes right-wing narratives disparaging immigrants, undermining the results of Democratic elections, attacking the LGBTQ community, and spreading conspiracy theories – including the deeply racist Great Replacement theory, which posits that white people and “legacy Americans” are being deliberately replaced through mass migration from non-white countries.
According to a January 23 report from Politico, the conservative network has a plan to reach centrist Latinos, which includes a $20 million marketing campaign, expansion to 25 radio stations, streaming content, and the creation of a digital news website and app. Politico’s Natalie Allison also reports that Americano has “spent several million dollars building studios to launch new television programs, with plans underway to be on cable in every major battleground state ahead of the 2024 election, and in Puerto Rico in the coming weeks.”
In addition to Americano Media’s investments in marketing and developing content, the network also utilizes social media platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Notably, Americano Media’s Twitter gained a large bump in followers after interviewing former President Donald Trump, from 12,000 followers in late October 2022, when the interview aired, to over 68,000 in January.
Three of Americano Media’s most notable right-wing pundits are hosts Dania Alexandrino, Freddy Silva, and Jesús Márquez, whose shows consist of grandstanding monologues decrying Democrats and the Biden administration while also sticking close to narratives spun by English language right-wing media. These hosts have consistently peddled anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-choice, and election denial rhetoric to Americano’s growing audience, and are poised to gain influence as the network’s multimillion-dollar expansion project takes effect.
Dania Alexandrino
Dania Alexandrino is a prolific disseminator of right-wing talking points and misinformation whose programs Hablando de Frente and En Perspectiva air on Americano Media, and who also has programming on Florida radio station Acción 97.9, her Facebook page with 20,000 followers, and her YouTube channel where she hosts a weekly live show.
Alexandrino is also a staff member of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida and is responsible for developing and teaching a Spanish-language news curriculum. In addition to pushing conspiracy theories, misinformation, and hateful rhetoric on her own shows, Alexandrino has also been a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room where she attacked George Soros.
The following examples include extreme or misleading statements made on air about immigration, election integrity, reproductive rights, and the LGBTQ community.
Immigration
- Alexandrino said, “If wanting me, my children, and my family to be put first as American citizens before the illegals that are coming into this country violating our sovereignty laws – if that makes me a fascist, well look, I carry it proudly.” [Perspectiva USA, 8/26/22]
- Alexandrino made fearmongering claims that illegal immigration is bringing crime and “enormous” economic problems to American cities. Rhetoric associating an increase in the population of undocumented immigrants with an increase in crime is false and has been disproven by several studies. In 2020 the University of Wisconsin–Madison published a study showing that “U.S. citizens were twice as likely to be arrested for violent felonies in Texas from 2012 to 2018” compared to undocumented immigrants. [Perspectiva USA, 8/22/22]
- Alexandrino claimed that President Joe Biden is responsible for allowing an “enormous amount of delinquents to enter through the southern border.” She added that this is because the majority of the Venezuelans passing through the border “are not good people.” [Perspectiva USA, 9/9/22]
- Alexandrino said that Americano Media is “the only Spanish-speaking media outlet that continues to talk about this chaos on the border and the amount of people entering the country in an illegal manner.” She continued: “We are the only ones that continue to talk about this in a repetitive way so that you understand the chaos that Joe Biden and ‘Alejandrito’ Mayorkas have caused on the southern border.” [Hablando de Frente, 11/25/22]
Voter Fraud
- Dania Alexandrino claimed that former President Trump’s allegations of irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections “were not unfounded.” Alexandrino went on to falsely claim that “leftist” ballot harvesting groups funded by George Soros collected ballots from the Black community, disadvantaged people, disabled people, and elderly people and used them to commit fraud. [Hablando de Frente, 10/28/22]
- Alexandrino said she wants people to vote in person rather than by mail because of “all the tricks they intended to perform in 2020.” [Hablando de Frente, 11/7/22]
- Alexandrino criticized the use of the term “big lie” to refer to Trump’s baseless accusations of a rigged 2020 election. Alexandrino claimed it’s “a term used in Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and is associated with Adolf Hitler, because … the intention of CNN is exactly that, right, to try to associate Donald Trump with fascism, with Adolf Hitler, and also attempt to say that Donald Trump was telling a lie regarding the irregularities that were seen in the 2020 elections.” [Hablando de Frente, 10/4/22]
LGBTQ Hate
- Alexandrino spoke against gender-affirming care for transgender youth and claimed that “the most difficult thing is that at that age, they are neither children nor adults, nor are they completely adolescents, and therefore, they are confused, but that does not mean they know what they want.” [Hablando de Frente, 10/24/22]
- Alexandrino claimed that “there are only two genders, male and female” and that “today, these precepts promoted by the Democratic Party, by this globalist left, have clouded all those lines of normality.” She went on to claim that President Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are trying to turn the military into a force of ideological and sexual confusion adding that taxpayer money pays “for degeneracy” in reference to gender-affirming care for children and LGBTQ soldiers, who she goes on to label as “pseudo-soldiers.” [Perspectiva USA, 7/18/22, 7/18/22, 7/18/22].
Reproductive Rights
- Alexandrino claimed that the only time a woman has a decision about her body is “before sleeping with a man, before having unprotected sex. … You have all the power in your hands to decide who you will sleep with. … Because abortion, as you enact it, should never be used as a contraceptive method. Abortion is simply a radical decision after conception. It is the murder of a defenseless and innocent creature with the permission of the state.” [Hablando de Frente, 1/13/23]
- Alexandrino claimed that House Democrats voting against the Born Alive act showed how they are “diabolical and murderers of innocent creations.” Alexandrino went on to claim that “the Democratic Party does not care about innocent lives. … The Democratic Party does not care about your health. The Democratic Party only cares about control. … They mandated masks, they mandated the vaccine, but when it’s about an innocent creature, it’s ‘Oh no, we cannot demand that their lives be saved.’” [Hablando de Frente, 1/12/23]
Freddy Silva
Freddy Silva is another prolific misinformer on Americano Media who, according to his LinkedIn, has been a longtime producer and reporter. Silva’s content is mainly on his radio show Entre Líneas, where he covers popular right-wing narratives often with a guest who aids him in spreading sensationalized commentary. Silva also has an active Facebook account where he posts clips that push globalist conspiracy theories, racist talking points, anti-vaccine fearmongering, and other general right-wing narratives.
LGBTQ Hate
- Silva said that the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires federal and state governments to recognize interracial and same-sex marriages, could in fact be a “threat to the natural family as we know it.” He went on to claim that, as in the case of “gender ideology,” this bill seeks to “impose its own narrative” on society rather than “consulting” it. Silva also claimed the “progressive advance is destroying concepts that until this century … the last two decades, society had clear. The concept of the natural family: dad, mom, kids, but with this progressivism, family can be whatever, and the same is happening with marriage.” He was responding to constitutional lawyer and anti-abortion blogger Gualberto Garcia Jones, who baselessly claimed that the law will lead to “discrimination against those of us who hold a traditional view of marriage as a man and a woman.” [Entre Líneas, 12/1/22]
- Silva said that “groomers” are trying to sexualize children through sex education after his guest Raymond Azar, a producer for Americano Media, claimed that pedophiles are using the LGBTQ banner to enter society. [Entre Líneas, 1/18/23]
- Silva claimed that gender-affirming care is part of a “vulgar” attempt to promote “transhumanism,” which he described as" the transformation of homo sapiens, of our human species as we know it." Silva said that “unfortunately, what we are doing is allowing that with these gender-affirmation policies, these LGBTQ policies, and the same gender ideology policies, what we are doing is opening those doors for transhumanism, which is the transformation of homo sapiens, of our human species as we know it for what may come, what will come out of that gross transformation.” [Entre Líneas, 10/11/22]
Immigration
- Silva called for “control” at the border, claiming that immigrants fleeing from organized crime in their country of origin meet the same organized crime here in the United States. According to Silva, immigrants involved in organized crime are protected by “the laws, by civil laws, the constitutional laws that allow these individuals, these criminals, these bad people, to continue committing crimes. The moment they serve a sentence they are deported to the border and once again they return to commit crimes.” [Entre Líneas, 9/6/22]
- Silva said that “Mexican drug cartels are operating and are using many of these migrants as mules to carry the drugs, to transport them and, of course, to move them from one side to the other” despite evidence showing that immigrants are far less likely to traffic drugs than U.S. citizens. [Entre Líneas, 9/15/22]
- Silva cited an unverified report to claim that “Venezuela empties prisons and sends violent criminals to our southern border.” Silva went on to use the unverified report to claim that agents are warning “that the released prisoners have been seen inside migrant caravans traveling from Tapachula, Mexico, to the U.S.-Mexico border last July.” [Entre Líneas, 9/21/22]
Jesús Márquez
Jesús Márquez is an up-and-coming host at Americano Media who uses his radio show Battleground Americano to promote right-wing talking points and misinformation in a similar format to other hosts on the network. In 2014 he ran for Nevada state assembly and is associated with the Republican Party. He has been featured as a guest on Victory News, a Christian TV Network, where he pushed right-wing talking points about censorship, inflation, and immigration.
LGBTQ Hate
- Discussing the Respect for Marriage Act, Márquez said that “one must be very careful with rights, not all are rights, some are privileges. When they give you that right they have to take away the right of others, then it is no longer a right." Márquez added, “In this case, to give homosexual people the right to get married, two people of the same sex can get married, that's fine, but if the religious right is taken away, for example, from a pastor, we’ll say, from a church, for example, in which that person can refuse to marry a same-sex couple because their religious belief prohibits them, or prevents them from marrying these two people, these two men, for example, then that right should stop there.” [Battleground Americano, 11/29/22]
- Márquez claimed that many feminist women have joined conservative groups against trans women in women's sports teams with the justification that “men who believe they are of a different gender are taking away women's rights.” [Battleground Americano, 11/25/22]
Voter Fraud
- Márquez said that, in previous years, the election results were known on election night, but “now it is different and all this is because the Democrats made changes to the electoral systems of several states due to the pandemic, or rather under the pretext of the pandemic. They began to make changes, changes that we are now paying dearly for.” [Battleground Americano, 11/10/22]
- Márquez claimed that “Kari Lake almost won and possibly even won, but they took the election away from her." [Battleground Americano, 11/16/22]
- Márquez claimed that Democrats “changed the laws in different states due to the pandemic, where they introduced all this voting by mail, this ‘mail-in harvest,’ where a lot of ballots are still all over the place and are gathered, processed, and counted by Democrats.” Lucia Navarro, a journalist at Americano Media, added that this is the “perfect conditions to commit voter fraud” to which Márquez agreed. [Battleground Americano, 11/9/22]
- In regards to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision not to count mail-in ballots without dates, Márquez claimed that Democrats “across the country have tried to fight or put regulations and laws that make cheating easier.” [Battleground Americano, 11/1/22]
Reproductive Rights
- Márquez claimed that “the liberals, the progressives, have changed the language to advance their agenda of death” in reference to calling abortion a reproductive right. Márquez went on to claim, “It is a deadly agenda because when they are seeking at all costs to kill a baby, not only inside the mother's womb, but also when the baby is already born, this is nothing more than a bloody death agenda." [Battleground Americano, 1/12/23]
- In a bid to characterize anti-abortion activists as a persecuted group, Márquez accused the Department of Justice of targeting anti-abortion activists and called it “the police of the armed wing of Biden and the current regime.” Márquez added, “Democrats are already consolidating themselves as the absolute defenders of abortion. Previously, at least, they felt a little sorry, they didn't openly admit it like that, but today, they 100% admit it." [Battleground Americano, 10/6/22]
- Márquez compared services offered by Planned Parenthood to the sterilization advocated for and performed by Nazis. His guest, anti-abortion activist Mayra Rodriguez, agreed and added that abortion and gender-affirming care is part of an industry that is playing at God “deciding who is male and who is female, who is born, who is not born.” [Battleground Americano, 10/24/22]