Sandra Plazas: Overcoming diversity

Posted on November 17, 2008 by comm5775

by ERIK DAENITZ

Sandra Plazas has encountered adversity in moving to a new country and running a business.

However, the challenges of entering a new culture did not deter her from pursuing her goals, and the task of running the newspaper, Mundo Hispano, is something that she sees as a duty and service to the Wasatch Front.

“One of the things that Mundo Hispano has become is the voice of the community,” Plazas said. “We are covering the issues that affect the community, and we value the trust the community has put in us.”

Plazas and her mother, Gladys Gonzalez, publish Mundo Hispano and own a Hispanic marketing and consulting company named HMC-La Agency.

Yet they faced many difficulties on the path to where they are today.

Plazas, a native of Colombia, was forced to leave the country in 1991 when her mother was threatened with death by “Narco-Guerillas,” a term she used to describe people involved in the drug trade and violence in Colombia.

Plazas was about to graduate from Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogotá. However, her plans were quickly altered.

When Plazas and her mother arrived in Utah they found work cleaning bank floors in Utah County, a cruel irony considering the fact that Gonzalez had a career in Colombia working for what is today Chase Manhattan Bank.

“The thing I learned best was persistence,” she said, when discussing the difficulties she faced. With this approach, she finished her degree in communication and media over the Internet.

By 1993, Plazas and her mother were ready for change. They wanted to do something that they could enjoy and careers that would give them a future.

They decided to start a newspaper that would serve the Hispanic community, taking a risk and investing money that Gonzalez had saved.

“People said [we were] making the biggest mistake of our lives,” Plazas said.

But, it seems that Plazas has proved the doubters wrong.

Starting as a publication with 1,000 copies per month, Mundo Hispano now prints 10,000 copies per week and has a readership of about 23,000 people. It is distributed for free along the Wasatch Front, Tooele, Park City and Heber City. Subscriptions are also available for $50 every six months.

Through Mundo Hispano Plazas publishes many articles that help Hispanics in a new culture gain knowledge about basic services and where they can go to find them.

These articles provide critical information to Latinos. But, Plazas also has a bigger goal for the paper.

“Our dream is that we would be a bridge between the two communities,” Plazas said. “As each community learns from each other we will increase understanding.”

This desire to dissolve barriers between Latinos and non-Latinos in Utah has led her to take part in other service as well.

Plazas is a member of the Utah Hispanic/Latino Legislative Task Force, a group that meets every Friday during the legislative session to analyze bills and how they will affect the Hispanic community. They issue press releases, talk to the media and testify before state representatives.

Bills such as House Bill 241 threaten to create more adversity for Latinos in Utah, limiting the opportunity for some to attend college. Plazas fights this measure through her work on the task force and by educating the public through Mundo Hispano.

“Other papers focus on sensationalism,” Plazas said. “We focus more on integration and differentiation. We do more analytical news, how it affects the community, and what we can do. We can change the legislation.”

While Plazas continues her involvement in political issues, she also focuses on service for children and teenagers.

“One of my most rewarding experiences is coaching a team of under-privileged Hispanic kids in soccer. It’s showing these kids a new world,” she said.

Plazas started the competitive team after her son Carlos, 15, was not selected to play for another club.  Players must maintain at least a “B” grade point average and perform community service. In return, Plazas finds sponsorships to help pay the $14,000 cost and covers the remainder herself.

“I am like their mom,” Plazas said. “Most of them are aiming for college, but some still don’t believe they can do it.”

She said many of the boys she coaches are ignored by their school counselors and discouraged from attending college. However, she makes an effort to steer her players in a different direction by explaining the opportunities that exist in higher education.

On both the playing field and the pages of her newspaper, Plazas wants knowledge to open up better financial opportunities for Latinos.

“I don’t see how you can have economic development with an uneducated society,” she said.

The themes of learning and overcoming adversity are common in Plazas’ life. She hopes that along with her other efforts, Mundo Hispano will be a source of education for the people of Utah.

“What we have done in the community is more important than making money,” Plazas said. “The newspaper has a mission, a mission of integration and unity within the two communities.”

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Mundo Hispano publisher discusses her life, newspaper

Posted on November 17, 2008 by comm5775

by JAIME WINSTON

Sandra Plazas is the coach of a soccer team for at-risk youth, vice president of an advertising agency and publisher of Mundo Hispano, a newspaper she owns with her mother.

Large businesses advertise in the publication, including Nordstrom and Coca-Cola. The advertising agency, Hispanic Marketing and Consulting-La Agency, has been Plazas’ most financially successful endeavor and the soccer team encourages teenagers to do well at school and in life.

“But it was not always this nice,” Plazas said

Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Plazas fled to the United States in 1991 when she was 20.

Her mother, Gladys Gonzalez worked for the Colombian branch of Chase Manhattan Bank when the company was threatened by guerilla warfare. The bank closed its doors and officials offered to help Plazas and Gonzalez relocate to New York or California. But the family chose Utah instead because of their faith in the Mormon church.

It wasn’t easy for Gonzalez to find work in Utah. “She was either overqualified or underqualified for every job she applied for,” Plazas said. Gonzalez eventually found a job cleaning floors at banks in Utah County.

Plazas also faced struggles when she arrived. “I couldn’t hold a conversation,” she said. The only English that Plazas knew was the little she learned in high school. “Now I love the United States, but at that point I didn’t,” she said.

In addition to new challenges, Gonzalez and Plazas also shared journalistic experience. Gonzalez had three years of college experience in the field, but left when her daughter fell ill with meningitis and was put in the hospital for about three weeks. “She felt that she wasn’t there to take care of me and that’s why I got sick,” Plazas said. “She wanted to make sure I was safe.”

Years later, Gonzalez returned to school to pursue a degree in business. But Plazas followed in her mother’s journalistic footsteps and graduated from Externado University of Colombia in Bogotá with a degree in journalism and communication.

In 1993, Plazas and Gonzalez put their education to use and started Mundo Hispano. They saw a need for a Hispanic news publication in Utah and began cutting and pasting articles on a dining-room table.

Plazas said the early years of the publication were the hardest and many told her there weren’t enough Hispanics in Utah to keep the newspaper running. “There were times I was burned out and I said I don’t think I can make it anymore,” she said.

Plazas and Gonzalez didn’t give up. To increase publication and target the Hispanic market, they enticed advertisers by offering free advertising space. It encouraged businesses to trust the publication, showing them that the newspaper was serious in its goals.

One of the main goals of the newspaper is to serve as a connection between the Spanish and English speaking communities in Utah. If Plazas ever decides to sell the newspaper she wants the buyer to have the same ambitions she does. “We believe this can be a bridge of understanding,” Plazas said.

For more than a year, the mother and daughter team printed 1,000 copies per month with two pages in both English and Spanish. Since the Spanish articles usually turned out much longer and it affected the format, only the editorial is in both languages today.

The newspaper also focuses on resources for Utah’s Hispanic population. To do this, Plazas and Gonzalez need to have cultural understanding.

“There are 25 cultures within the Hispanic community in the state,” Plazas said. “There are different dialects and they don’t want to be boxed as a whole.” Since there is such diversity among Spanish readers, the newspaper uses dialect from Spain, where the language originated.

The newspaper has had success reaching the community with 10,000 copies distributed each month and 2.7 readers per copy. The publication has a reporter in Mexico and one in Colombia. Plazas wants to find correspondents in Argentina and Europe as well to enhance the newspaper she runs with her mother.

Plazas works closely with Gonzalez at the newspaper, she also spends time with her children on the soccer field. Before she became involved in journalism, Plazas said she was a tomboy and loved soccer. She was the only girl on her high school’s team. The coaches of opposing teams wouldn’t worry about her though, until she started scoring goals.

Plazas’ children, Carlos, 15, and Paula, 12, also play soccer. She started a team so her son would have a chance to play when he didn’t make it onto another team. “My uncle used to tease me and tell me I bought a team for my son,” she said.

Today, many of the same players are still on the team, which started around 1998. Each team member has to keep a high grade point average in school, be well-behaved at home and help their community in order to play.

“They were all at-risk kids,” Plazas said. “Some counselors have told them they don’t have what it takes to make it.” Most of the players are considering college; some are looking for scholarships in soccer. “Before, those kids didn’t even know what a scholarship was,” she said.

Plazas said the soccer team has been her greatest accomplishment because she helped change the children’s lives for the better.

Another area Plazas makes a difference is politics as a member of Utah’s Hispanic Legislative Task Force. The group meets at the beginning and middle of the legislative session to study bills being presented and decide their position on them.

“In legislation right now there are immigration bills right and left,” Plazas said. She encourages others not to ignore issues surrounding migrant communities and said they work low paying jobs, yet pay taxes that benefit Utah.

Immigration bills are just some of the issues Mundo Hispano covers. At times, Plazas and Gonzalez argue over how to cover problems in the community. “Sometimes she feels that she’s right just because she’s my mom,” Plazas said. Despite their disagreements, Plazas feels that the newspaper serving the Hispanic community.

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Local newspaper marks 15 years of bringing communities together

Posted on November 17, 2008 by comm5775

by DAVID SERVATIUS

She calls it the “Field of Dreams” mentality, a reference to the iconic 1989 Kevin Costner film. If you build it, they will come. It is why, Sandra Plazas says, she and her mother, Gladys Gonzalez, went to work in the dining room of their two-bedroom apartment in the early 1990s to create the region’s first Spanish-language newspaper.

“People were saying to me, ‘You’re crazy! How are you going to do that? There are no Hispanics in Salt Lake City,'” Plazas recalls. “And I kept thinking, ‘No, not yet.'”

The mother-daughter team, both new arrivals in the Salt Lake Valley at the time, worked day and night and eventually launched Mundo Hispano in 1993. The new tabloid-style newspaper was free, printed monthly and had a circulation of 1,000. The first issue took more than a month to produce.

The pair worked alone for the first five years, doing everything, but as Plazas had predicted, the readers came quickly. Today the paper is printed weekly and boasts a total readership in the tens of thousands, with distribution from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south and a full-time staff running things from day to day.

The two initially had to give away space at no cost, but slowly the advertisers came, too. Each week, the back cover now showcases companies like Home Depot, Coca Cola, McDonalds and Zions Bank. This fall, Mundo Hispano will celebrate 15 years of being what Plazas calls “a bridge of integration between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic communities along the Wasatch Front.”

Plazas says she is currently on a mission, not only to bring people together, but also to make her newspaper an invaluable source of information for local Hispanic communities. One way she says she tries to do this is by closely monitoring the activities of state and local government, and by reporting on these activities in a way that helps readers understand the connection to their own lives.

“People are arriving in Utah every day with vastly different levels of cultural understanding and assimilation,” Plazas says. “A vibrant local media is important to all of them.”

Her role as the founder and editor of the newspaper has led to involvement with the Hispanic Legislative Task Force, a group of about 15 local community leaders who meet when the state legislature is in session to analyze proposals relevant to the community and advocate either for or against them. She says she spoke with Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. during the recent battle over legislation that would have denied in-state tuition rates to undocumented students.

“I pointed out that it would be much more difficult to achieve his goals for economic development in the state without an educated public,” she says.

Plazas, 37, was born in Colombia and raised in that country and Ecuador. She fled Bogotá with her family and moved to Salt Lake City in 1991 at the height of the narcotics-related violence that was rocking most of Central America at that time. She says that extortion and threats of retribution were commonplace.

“My country is a great country,” she says. “But when they say they are going to kill you, they mean it.”

When she and her family got to Utah, Plazas says the only work they could find was cleaning floors in a bank, which marked an ironic turnabout in their lives. In Colombia, her mother, a college graduate with a business degree, had worked in the banking industry. The family had employed maids of its own at home. But, surprisingly, the language in their new country was an even bigger challenge than family pride.

“You think you speak English well because you speak it so much more than anyone around you,” she says. “Then you come here and it’s, like, ‘What?’ No one speaks what they teach you in school!”

Plazas, who has a degree in communications and describes herself as “a bit of a dreamer,” says she became a journalist because she wanted to show people the truth behind things. She originally saw herself as a war correspondent, but has since come to prefer softer and more individual-oriented stories.

She has interviewed her favorite author, Isabel Allende, and one of her favorite musical artists, Gloria Estefan, for stories. She profiled George W. Bush for an assignment while he was in Salt Lake City campaigning the year before he became president.

In the future, Plazas says she will be working to increase Mundo Hispano’s advertising sales in order to generate more revenue. With the extra money, she plans to increase the number of pages, increase circulation and, ultimately, grow it into a daily newspaper with statewide distribution.

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