This week, editors at The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language cohort, El Nuevo Herald, apologized to readers over a Spanish-language insert that said American Jews support “thieves and arsonists” and compared Black Lives Matter protesters to Nazis. The editors said they were “deeply sorry” for the column that was posted in an insert in the newspaper called “LIBRE” and stated they would no longer include the paid Spanish-language supplement, which has included anti-Semitic and racist columns for months. The editors were first informed due to a reader flagging the material.
The column’s author, Roberto Luque Escalona, compared Black Lives Matter protesters to the Kristallnacht (a group of Nazis that destroyed Jewish businesses during World War II), but suggested that BLM protesters were worse than Nazis because “the Nazis didn’t steal; they only destroyed.”
According to the New York Times, a top editor of El Nuevo Herald has resigned due to the debacle. The announcement came from Kristin Roberts, vice president of news at McClatchy, which publishes The Herald and El Nuevo Herald in an email to staff, which The New York Times obtained.
According to Roberts, Nancy San Martin, El Nuevo Herald’s managing editor, had resigned. Aminda Marqués González, the executive editor and publisher of The Herald and El Nuevo Herald, will no longer be publisher, a job she had held since April 2019, but will remain executive editor.
According to Organizations including NBC News, Spanish-speaking Floridians are facing increasing disinformation leading up to the 2020 Presidential Election. Democrats fear the disinformation is having a powerful impact on Latino voters in Florida, skewing their views and amplifying Trump’s messaging. Florida is the largest battleground state where Trump has seen increased support among Latinos, according to a recent NBC News/Marist poll.