Around 'El Mundo' in 35 years
Ballpark festival to honor area's Latino community
For the past few weeks, Alberto Vasallo III has been dashing back and forth between his Jamaica Plain newspaper office and Fenway Park to finalize the last-minute details.
Taped video greetings from Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz . Check. Construction of a stage over the Red Sox dugout. Double check.
It's not every day that the Cuban-American publisher gets to stage a Latin festival with local musicians and former and current Red Sox players at the historic ballpark.
The occasion: A celebration of the Hub's Hispanic community and El Mundo newspaper's 35th anniversary.
"It's a way to look back at 35 years in the Latino community," says Vasallo, who is throwing a big birthday bash next Sunday called "Festival Latino at Fenway." Adds Vasallo, "We want to give Latinos the Fenway experience."
The daylong festival will feature a health and fitness pavilion, clowns, face painting and a tour of Fenway Park. But the event will also pay tribute to former Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant, who was profiled in one of the first issues of the newspaper in 1972.
Vasallo credits "El Tiante" with helping cement a cultural connection between big-league baseball and local Latino fans.
"We are part of Massachusetts history, and by having it at Fenway Park, such a historic venue, it sends out a strong message to the general public that the Latino community is not only part of Red Sox N ation, but part of Boston N ation," says Vasallo, who grew up hanging out at El Mundo, which was founded by his father, Alberto Vasallo Jr., in Cambridge.
A map maker in his native Cuba, the elder Vasallo journeyed for 12 hours on a boat bound to Key West to escape the island nation's communist regime. Vasallo spent two months in Miami before moving to Boston in January 1966. He settled in Cambridge, where he began to promote local Latin bands and sell jewelry.
In doing both, he noticed an information disconnect among the Hispanic communities in Boston, Lawrence, and Lynn.
"You had these growing Hispanic communities but they had no news or communication among each other," says the elder Vasallo, who lives in West Roxbury. "The community needed a newspaper."
So he launched his own, calling it El Mundo, which means "The World," after popular newspapers in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
He wanted his newspaper to report local news of Hispanic interest in Boston and to serve as a cultural bridge for Spanish-speakers. The first issues sold for a dime.
The paper immediately tapped into the pulse of the Puerto Rican and Cuban communities, whose numbers at the time were surging in Greater Boston.
Vasallo's staff reported hard news and in-depth features in Spanish about community leaders and sports figures on the rise.
Among them: Tiant, who joined the Red Sox in 1971 and whose 19-year big-league career included 229 wins and striking out 2,416 batters.
Vasallo the son remembers interviewing the baseball legend for the paper when he was a teenager.
"He came to Boston at a time when racial tensions were high. He was this black Cuban who didn't speak much English," says the younger Vasallo. "We have seen many people grow in the community."
The paper has also documented the evolution of popular Dominican and Puerto Rican festivals and parades.
During the 1980 Mariel boatlift, El Mundo writers reported on the arrival of some of those Cubans in Boston and how fund-raisers were held to support them.
"El Mundo has been a very important lifeline, particularly during the earlier years of the Hispanic community before the advent of cable TV and access to national Spanish programming and information," says Jorge Quiroga , a reporter for WCVB-TV (Channel 5) who was profiled in the newspaper when he first started with the station in 1974 to produce "Aqui," a Spanish-language community show. "I couldn't imagine Boston's Latino community without El Mundo."
The paper has regularly profiled Latino beisbol players such as Ramirez and Pedro Martinez. Some of those players, such as Wil y Mo Pena and David Ortiz, will greet fans at Fenway next Sunday via video appearances, welcoming the families with "Mi casa es tu casa."
As the Boston's Hispanic community has swelled to 14.4 percent of the city's population as of the 2000 Census, the paper's circulation has grown to 30,000, reaching Latinos in Boston, Lynn, Lawrence, and Chelsea.
To reflect the rainbow and backgrounds of Boston's Latino community, the younger Vasallo has selected a diverse lineup for the fiesta at Fenway.
Local Latin musicians such as salsero Tito Rojas and bachata singers Monchy and Alexandra will take to the stage being set up in the ballpark.
"Without music, it's not a party," he says.
Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@ globe.com. 