May 11, 2020 — As shelter in place restrictions begin to loosen, the various health orders from the state and the county grow ever more nuanced. It’s hard enough for native English speakers to wade through the dense legalese, the medical information, and the misinformation that’s out there, but it’s even harder for people who don’t speak English, or have limited English language skills.
Jacqueline Garcia Orozco, the editor of the Spanish language newspaper Periodoco Al Punto, attends every briefing and provides as much information in Spanish as she can. Now, she’s teamed up with community member Mari Rodin to produce short bilingual videos to encapsulate the most important points for people to keep in mind. “The reality is, no,” said Orozco, when asked if monolingual Spanish speakers were getting all the information they need. “In all the aspects: about health, about the economy...and when there’s a lack of information, rumors start spreading..we would like to advocate for more information in other languages,” as well as Spanish and English.
Rodin said Orozco and her husband, Ukiah City Councilman Juan Orozco, brought her attention to the shortage of Spanish language information during her campaign for supervisor. “For me, it really opened my eyes, because I’m an English speaker and I’m privileged to be able to absorb the information that the county puts out,” she reflects. “But for people who don’t speak our language, it’s a whole different story. And the implications of them not understanding the order, and thereby mistakenly not following the order, potentially getting into trouble with law enforcement, just because they don’t know, possibly what the order says. And then also keeping themselves safe, and other community members safe. It’s critical.” The video dialogues, she said, would be “somewhere between a conversation and a public service announcement.”
Orozco worries that Spanish speakers who are learning English might mistranslate the English word ‘relax,’ and think it means an all-clear. “I can just see them, organizing picnics and gatherings,” she says. “This is a wrong message,” and one that is all too easy to make without accurate information in their native language. Not all local businesses have posted their guidelines for staying safe in any language other than English. She also worries about migrant workers. “I don’t know if they know what is going on in the area, that they need to follow some rules,” like wearing face masks.
The plan for the videos is to hit the most important points, like the rules about wearing facial coverings. “The other thing that we talked about,” says Rodin, “was what are essential activities. So we just took the highlights of it. The minutiae aren’t relevant to most people. So, what aspects of the order are relevant to the greatest number of people. And those are the things that we’ll touch on.”
“Latino people don’t care who is going to be the Public Health Officer,” Orozco adds. “They just want to know, when are we going to return to our normal lives, to have their jobs back.” People with uncertain immigration status are not eligible for benefits, which compounds the struggle of being out of work. It’s a matter of life or death, too, as Orozco points out. “We need to have this information in Spanish because of the high rates of Latino people infected in California.”
The bilingual videos should be hitting Facebook this week, starting on Jackie G. Orozco and Mari Rodin’s pages. Al Punto is free in paper form in Lake and Mendocino Counties, and you can check it out on Facebook too, at Periodico Al Punto.