When the pandemic hit the United States in January 2020, Maritza Félix, a journalist based in Arizona – couldn’t visit her mother in the Mexican state of Sonora, bordering Southern Arizona. As Felix’s mother primarily relied on WhatsApp for communication, she noticed that some of the information her mother was sharing about COVID-19 was incorrect, so Felix decided to help her fact-check information on WhatsApp.
By Manmeet Sahni
She created a small WhatsApp group for her mother and a few friends to fact-check information, which led her to build a WhatsApp-based news service – Conecta Arizona.
A 2022 study by Brookings Institute linked a relatively higher internet and social media usage by Latinx communities to increased vulnerability to mis- and disinformation. “Targeting Latinos in Spanish is particularly problematic given that most social media platforms do not perform the same amount of fact-checking in languages other than English, which results in misleading content staying live on these platforms for a much longer period of time than English content,” the study found.
It analysed online misinformation using Facebook (now Meta) and found that “Facebook failed to flag 70% of Spanish-language misinformation surrounding COVID-19 when compared to 29% of such information in English.”
The Latinx community is more susceptible to disinformation and misinformation as it often stems from structural racism and historically discriminatory practices in the health care and political system.
“There is a long and recent history of medical malpractice promulgated against communities of colour by the federal government. For example, the U.S. involvement in the mass sterilisation of Puerto Rican women and Mexican men and women remains a hidden and dark part of U.S. history,” a 2021 report by Brookings Institute, a non-profit organisation, noted.
The report says this fear is perpetuated by “evidence of a violation of Covid-19 guidelines, forced hysterectomies and maltreatment at immigration detention centres where Latinos constitute the majority of those detained.”
Conecta Arizona now reaches over 100,000 people. It turns three in May and is a source of engagement and community building.
Felix has connected thousands of community members with features like ‘La Hora Del Cafecito’ to engage with the community and have meaningful conversations. In a conversation with Manmeet Sahni, Félix explained how the Conecta Arizona community grew organically, its role, and some of its challenges.
aidóni – Why did you create Conecta Arizona? How has the community responded?
Maritza Félix – Since my mom stays on the Mexican side of the border, the pandemic was the first time in my life that we couldn’t go back and forth because of border restrictions. We were using our cell phones to communicate, and she was sending me everything on WhatsApp because that’s the app we use in our migrant communities to communicate, as it’s free and easy.
She sent me everything she could find online about the Coronavirus; many things were sketchy or wrong. For example, Coronavirus will die in Arizona pretty soon because the viruses die with the heat, and Arizona is extremely hot. I wasn’t sure if that was quite right.
So, I started doing some fact-checking for her. I created this small WhatsApp group to inform my friends and family, and it grew organically. We reached the group limit in less than a month and started creating broadcast lists to reach more community members.
Unlike regular news organisations, it was important for us to have conversations. So, every afternoon, we would chat and discuss in ‘La hora del Cafecito.’
In 2020, most conversations were about Covid: border restrictions, vaccines, viruses, what was going to happen, what was open, and what was closed, and (if) there was any government help to pay the bills.
I didn’t have all the answers, so once a week, I invited an expert – an immigration attorney, doctors, mental health experts, and people from the Mexican consulate – to answer communities’ questions.
I was inviting people my community needed to get a hold of. We kept growing and started our radio show, and it has been three years since we launched.
I partnered with Spanish-speaking freelance journalists working in the border region to find feel-good human stories under the tagline ‘We build human bridges while others are building walls’ to launch a newsletter and a podcast, ‘Cruzando Lineas, and I partnered with different media outlets through which we reached nearly a million listeners. A grant from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists funded the 9-episode podcast.
aidóni – Where do you see Conecta Arizona going from here? Is it a sustainable model that other communities of colour can adopt to combat misinformation and disinformation?
Maritza Félix – Yes, I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Conecta Arizona is not a project but a news organisation. Conecta Arizona was launched as an experiment, which I thought would last three months but it has been three years, in May. Conecta Arizona’s model can be replicated in many communities, not just in Spanish-speaking ones. How many people speak Mandarin in California or Arabic in Chicago or New York? We are all migrants. We are always using our phones and WhatsApp. It can be done so easily. But what we are working on right now is making Conecta Arizona sustainable. After three years, we have numbers to prove this model works.
Journalism’s future is collaborative, but it needs to be sustainable. We can’t ask people to work for free. It’s community service, but you need to make a living out of it. Unfortunately, community foundations and most non-profit organisations that give money to journalism projects care a lot about data, clicks, and page views. On the other hand, we only had a landing page for Conecta Arizona a couple of weeks ago when we launched the webpage just for them; we don’t care about those numbers (web traffic).
We are trying to change how we measure impact in our communities with stories, testimonies, the number of interviews, the number of people we have reached, and the number of questions we have answered during these years. And now we have the numbers to prove that what we’re doing is working. We can monetise that to be sustainable and grow because it will be awesome to have Conecta California or Conecta Texas or Florida.
“We are trying to change how we measure impact in our communities with stories, testimonies, the number of interviews, the number of people we have reached, and the number of questions we have answered during these years.”
aidóni – How do you fund Conecta Arizona?
Maritza Félix – I got the JSK Stanford Fellowship based on my project in 2020. It was the first year they did it remotely. And they were community oriented. They invested in me so I could invest in my community. I was a seed and got buried in the perfect soil for me to flourish!
And then they offered me a second year. So they invested two years.
Something I am doing right now is working on the sustainability part, and that’s hard because I was always just a journalist. I love telling stories, and I love to interview and produce (content). I hate doing taxes and financial planning. I didn’t know if I should be an LLC or file for 501(c)(3), or what is the difference between having my own non-profit or having a physical sponsor, or the cost. Learning all this stuff is overwhelming as things are done differently here than in Mexico. I am learning how to be an entrepreneur as I became an entrepreneur during the pandemic without knowing it.
Right now, we are trying to diversify our income. We ask for grant money, and that’s been the most successful. They are very small grants, but we are working with a couple of them at the same time. We have a couple of ads on our radio show or newsletters, so we are doing the for-profit and the non-profit hybrid model. We are also working with public institutions, like the health department, to get a steady income for Conecta Arizona.
We want to be smart about getting the money because we don’t want to ask our community to pay. We don’t want to put a paywall or a membership and have some content available for people who can pay because we are trying to fill a gap, and in Spanish, very few resources are available in these border states.
aidóni – What challenges do you face as you continue to grow the organisation?
Maritza Félix – On this journey, I met amazing people trying to change their communities’ narratives and build an ecosystem of local news. We don’t want to be a massive media outlet because they are fulfilling their mission: Telemundo and Univision. They are doing their job. We want to fill in the gaps they are leaving.
Because we are doing things non-traditionally, it has been challenging to convince big investors. Especially if you speak a language other than English, you always get a smaller slice of the cake.
I met with some foundations who said, “Oh, this is so innovative, this is so cool, but can you do it bilingual?” And I am like, no, I can’t! We were specifically established to fill a gap for Spanish speakers, and we don’t have the resources to do it bilingual.
It is challenging to educate funders about what we are doing is important; it is in Spanish and is needed. Also, sometimes funders want to go with the safe bet. They talk about innovation and experimenting but don’t want to.
aidóni – You are based in a swing state where the Latinx community was instrumental in helping Biden (Democratic Party) win the 2020 U.S. elections. How do you think misinformation among the Latinx community in Arizona could impact the U.S. elections next year? Does Conecta Arizona have plans to help with this issue?
Maritza Félix – Since 2020, we have been combating mis- and disinformation on WhatsApp, answering basic questions. We were really pushing for civil engagement for first-generation voters.
For example, trans-border people as there are a lot of people who have dual citizenship – many were born here and then moved to Mexico and were raised over there, but they came and voted for the first time in the U.S. In mixed-status families, where one (person) was born here (in the U.S.) and is growing up in the system, they are not quite there to petition for the family yet. And so many family members cannot cross the border (like) the way they did in the past.
We are getting ready for a more practical approach for 2024 and are still in the process of defining our strategy for the next election cycle, but the focus is on more informal yet informative guides to address the needs of these first-time voters, dual citizens, voters with mixed-status families, and Latinos who are getting more involved in politics. We are teaching them to identify and fact-check (information).
It’s important to be transparent because we do a lot of fact-checking. I always tell my community that we can fact-check facts, but we cannot fact-check opinions. And try to explain to them what’s the difference. It is hard because, with politics and religion, they can find whatever aligns with their ideology, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. So making a safe space for them to explain, ask questions, or ask for information without feeling dumb or lectured (is essential.)
aidóni – In what other ways do you think Conecta Arizona has helped community members, especially during the pandemic?
Maritza Félix – There is a huge need for mental health services in Spanish in Arizona. That isn’t new, but we have had many conversations after the pandemic. We partnered with a network of psychologists in Sonora, Mexico, (who are) providing free services for our Conecta Arizona people. In the future, we want to work on community-support groups for mental health, finance, immigration, or arts.
And a good thing about being a journalist is that we have a huge network of contacts. So, when the pandemic hit hard, someone asked where they could renew their driver’s license, as nobody answered (the call there). And I knew somebody at the Department of Motor (Vehicles) and called them. They joined us in a ‘Cafecito’ to answer the questions one-on-one.
Once, a U.S. Ambassador joined us. And people from Conecta Arizona said, “He’s talking to us. He’s speaking to us directly. There is nobody in the middle.” And I said, “Yes, so you can ask him questions directly.” Parents who live in Mexico and send their kids to study in the U.S. don’t know much about stuff here. We were doing this infographic about tax season the other day, and in a slide, I said the deadline is in April, and a parent asked if his daughter needed to file taxes if she had an income.
Recently, a group member said thanks to the group, she survived the pandemic because she was by herself in her home in Scottsdale and was lonely.
We’re now producing original content for our newsletters and our webpage. And so sometimes the stories we get, people see themselves in them, which is really important.
They know that if they’re going to call us, somebody’s going to pick up the phone. You don’t need to be a newsworthy story for us to get back to you.
Top image: Maritza Félix, the Mexican-American journalist behind Conecta Arizona
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