Javier Marin is the author of the new book Live from America: How Latino TV Conquered the U.S. He has owned Spanish-language media outlets in the United States since 2000, and he lives in Maine.
Q: What inspired you to write Live from America, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: When I first emigrated to the United States in 2000, my instinct was to try to break into mainstream news media. I quickly realized, however, that crossing over into English-language journalism, especially as a non-native speaker, is not just difficult; it is structurally prohibitive. I truly believe it is one of the hardest industries in which to cross over.
That realization forced a strategic pivot. I decided to build something of my own. I began thinking about starting a Spanish-language newspaper. I knew the audience was prosperous and essential to the U.S. economy, but at that point, I was not yet an expert.
That curiosity led me to study Hispanic media as an industry. I wasn’t setting out to write a book; I was trying to understand how power, distribution, regulation, and culture intersect in Spanish-language media.
Very quickly, one company stood above all others: Univision. I began researching it from the ground up, its origins, its ownership battles, its regulatory constraints, and its extraordinary ability to build scale in a language many considered marginal.
What I found was a fascinating saga. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States became virtually the only country to allow the rise of a national television network in a language other than its dominant one.
Even countries with large immigrant populations, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, or France, never allowed national networks in Hindi, Chinese, or Arabic. I needed to understand why the U.S. was the exception.
This research began as a private exercise, something I needed as an operator and owner. What I uncovered was so revealing, and in many cases so little known. That is how Live from America was born.
The working title was originally Translating America, but it became clear that it didn’t travel well across languages. I’ve always loved the opening line of Saturday Night Live—“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” It conveys immediacy, authority, presence, and a historic technological breakthrough: broadcasting live, en vivo.
Live from America captures a fact that may make some uncomfortable, but remains true: Spanish is not an afterthought in the United States. Spanish was used in Arizona, Texas, California, Nevada, Florida, part of Wyoming and Utah before 1776. It is currently used by over 20 percent of the population in this country. Spanish language is part of American life.
I wanted the book to be released simultaneously in English and Spanish. That may sound obvious, but in practice it is rare. Only about 1 percent of Spanish-language books are translated into English, and when they are, the translation often appears a year later.
For a story about power, media, and influence, that delay matters. This history belongs to both audiences, and it needed to arrive in both languages at the same moment, especially in a country that is now the second-largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world, after Mexico.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: The research behind Live from America was not something I suddenly began for the book. For more than 20 years, researching the U.S. Hispanic market has been part of my daily work as a media owner. I needed that knowledge to make decisions, about audiences, advertising, growth, regulation, and political power.
One of the first things that surprised me was historical. I realized that Hispanic America did not arrive after the United States; in many ways, the United States arrived after Hispanic America.
It is important to learn and understand the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War and absorbed vast Mexican territories into the United States, while explicitly promising to protect the language, property, and cultural rights of the people who already lived there. Much of what we consider “American” territory and culture predates English-speaking America.
Most historians approach this story from separate perspectives, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Anglo-American, focused on factual timelines. What is far less explored is the Spanish imperial perspective.
One of the most revealing places I encountered this was in a military museum in Toledo, Spain, which presents colonization as Spaniards themselves understood it. It highlights the profound differences between Spanish conquest and English imperialism; differences that still shape culture, language, and power today.
My research then shifted to modern political and economic history, specifically, how a diverse group of Spanish-speaking communities came to be treated as a single market.
What surprised me most was learning that the term “Hispanic” itself is largely a political invention officially released in the early 1970s. It was President Richard Nixon, born in California, who commissioned a White House committee in 1969 to create a single label that could encapsulate all Spanish-speaking people.
The goal was pragmatic: to recognize, and mobilize, a powerful voting bloc and an emerging economic force.
The reality, of course, is that Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and others come from distinct cultures and histories. But from the White House’s point of view in 1969, they were one audience. And once that decision was made, the market followed.
That political recognition intersected directly with media. The growth of the Spanish International Network, later known as Univision, was shaped by this moment.
The Reagan political era played a role as well. Ronald Reagan had been governor of California while Nixon was president, and together they understood the long-term political and economic potential of Hispanic America.
The network was founded by a Mexican American entrepreneur in San Antonio and expanded nationally with the backing of a powerful Mexican media family, the Azcárragas.
What shocked me was discovering that this same family was later forced to sell the network to an American corporation, Hallmark Cards, based in Kansas City, a region with virtually no Hispanic population. That decision, made in 1986, was also political. And yet, it remains largely unknown outside a small circle of insiders.
In 1991, the Azcárraga family returned, but only as minority shareholders. It is a hard story to believe, yet it is fully documented in the book.
I was struck by how little of this history was known in mainstream media, how a fourth national television network was allowed to rise under the noses of ABC, CBS, and NBC, and how power, regulation, discrimination and language all played a role.
Years ago, when I taught a course called Latin American Media History at Tufts University’s Experimental College, I had already researched how media moguls across Latin America built empires with enormous political influence. That course culminated with Univision’s story.
For the book, I expanded that work through extensive legal research, business and financial analysis, entertainment history, and deep dives into contemporary political history of the U.S.
What surprised me most was not the information itself, but how deliberately invisible it had been made to the mainstream.
Q: What do you see looking ahead for Spanish-language TV in the United States?
A: Spanish-language television in the United States is entering a period of profound transition. The audience is not disappearing; it is evolving. What is changing is the business model, the language mix, and the way power is distributed across platforms.
Traditional Spanish-language broadcast TV, led historically by Univision and Telemundo, will remain relevant, particularly for live content such as news, sports, and major cultural moments.
With more than 62 million Spanish-speaking people in the United States, this audience remains a central political and economic engine, even as current anti-Latino rhetoric at the federal level temporarily suppresses its full economic weight.
I believe that pressure will not last. History shows that any political coalition serious about winning elections must eventually reconsider the Hispanic vote. Recent regional elections, in places like Miami, New York, and New Jersey, have once again demonstrated how decisive and swing-oriented the Hispanic vote can be.
Q: What impact did writing this book have on you, and what do you hope readers take away from it, especially given today's political situation?
A: Writing this book changed my relationship to the story itself. What began years ago as an obsession with understanding the history of Univision has now become an urgency to make that history widely understood.
I know there are millions of people who, once they see how deeply Spanish-speaking communities are embedded in the making of this country, will realize, perhaps reluctantly, that this reality is not reversible. Spanish did not arrive yesterday. It is structural.
What I hope readers take away is a clearer understanding that speaking Spanish has nothing to do with being less American. It is part of America’s past, its present, and increasingly, its future.
National Spanish-language television, especially Univision and Telemundo, played a decisive role in that transformation. These networks were not just media companies; they were catalysts. They helped turn a fragmented community into a visible, prosperous, and politically influential block.
On a personal level, I live comfortably in both languages. I love hearing English and Spanish in my home. I am proud to be an American citizen, and at the same time deeply concerned about the current immigration crisis.
That concern is widely shared within Hispanic communities. We should all be part of the solution. Hate and aggressive rhetoric only fracture the effort.
I did not write this book out of ego. I was not even planning to publish it. This story maybe did not need to be told, until the current political moment made its absence risky.
Is the story fascinating? Yes. Was I the right person to tell it? I believe so. Was it intentional from the start? No.
As Jorge Ramos, for decades the equivalent of Walter Cronkite for Spanish-speaking America, said about the book: “The research is exhaustive, and I don’t recall having read anything like it. It arrives at a crucial moment.” That is exactly why I hope people read it now.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now, my focus is split between two parallel efforts. The first is continuing to build awareness for the book itself. The Spanish-language edition has found its audience quickly, which is not surprising. The bigger challenge, and opportunity, is in English, where the story still has to break through certain reflexes in mainstream media.
I’m also beginning early conversations around adaptation. A film producer recently approached me about the possibility of taking Live from America to the screen. It’s very preliminary, but it’s exactly the kind of interest I hoped the book would spark.
This is a story made for visual storytelling, power, ambition, politics, media, and culture colliding over decades, and I’m exploring that path carefully while staying focused on the book.
At the same time, I’m actively working to reframe how this story is positioned in English-language media. Too often, when editors see my last name or the subject matter, they instinctively place it in a narrow box: Hispanic Heritage Month, identity coverage, or a niche audience.
That reaction is frustrating, and frankly outdated. This is not a book about a community asking to be included. It’s about how Spanish-language media helped reshape American politics, culture, and business, and how that transformation affects everyone. I want this story treated as American history, period, not something relegated to a special month.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One thing readers should know is that this story is driven by extraordinary, and often overlooked, characters who shaped American media in ways few people realize.
There is Jerry Perenchio, a former talent agent for Ronald Reagan, Marlon Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor, who became one of the most enigmatic entrepreneurs in American media history and ultimately built Univision into a powerhouse.
There is Mariana R. Pfaelzer, the first woman appointed as a federal judge in California; without her rulings, there might never have been a national Spanish-language television network in the United States.
There is also Reynold Anselmo, born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts, who played a pivotal role in the rise of Spanish-language television, later financed and owned his own satellite becoming the first individual to launch personally a rocket to the space, and he also became the only CEO in corporate America to stage a public hunger strike to protest what he believed was an unjust FCC decision.
The book also traces unexpected cultural beginnings: how Sofía Vergara launched her career; how Gloria Estefan and Emilio Estefan broke barriers with Miami Sound Machine; how Salma Hayek managed to finance Frida, her first film as a producer; and how Mexicans made it possible to broadcast the 1970 FIFA World Cup live and in color, creating Pelé’s legacy during his final World Cup.
Did you know that Fox News was not the first network to use an open-studio newscast, complete with camera framing that highlighted women anchors’ legs, later popularized by Roger Ailes?
In many ways, this book reads like a telenovela itself. A story of ambition, power, exile, and the symbiosis between politics and business; of Latino machismo colliding with Latina feminism.
Ultimately, it is the story of how Hispanic television didn’t just survive in the United States, but produced a new class of multibillion-dollar media moguls, built on Spanish-language television in the United States.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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