WHRB, Chicanos End Stalemate; All-Spanish Shows Will Be Weekly

WHRB has agreed to broadcast weekly Spanish-speaking broadcasts beginning February 28. The one-hour programs will be heard every Sunday night at 7 p. m.

The agreement to air the programs came after a meeting held last Friday beetween WHRB and representatives of the Harvard Chicano community.

The original request for the programs was made last December by members of Aflec-American Studies 105a, "The History of Spanish-Speaking Peoples." The chief difficulty in broadcasting the shows, according to WHRB president Michael F. Kraley '71, was the inability of the radio station to monitor the content of the all-Spanish programs.

On Friday, the two sides agreed that Alex M. Saragoza, spokesman for the Chicanos, and Kraley would meet during the week before the broadcast to examine an English transcript of the program to iron out any possible difficulties, Kraley said yesterday.

Kraley mentioned possible violations of the "fairness doctrine," which requires that all sides of a controversial issue be broadcast, as one area that might be troublesome. Saragoza said yesterday that he and other Chicanos would seek advice on possible broadcast violations in the transcript from a group of Chicano law students, in addition to discussing the transcript each week with Kraley.

Both Kraley and Saragoza said that there would be another meeting be-tween WHRB and the Chicanos after the third program to discuss the possibility of daily rather than weekly shows.

According to Saragoza, production of the weekly programs will be undertaken as a class project of AAS 105b, the second half of the course requesting the air time.

At the meeting on Friday, the Chicanos presented a 20-minute taped interview with a grape picker on the problems of unionizing in California. Saragoza said yesterday that the interview plus commentary on it by Chicano students from Harvard would form the basis for the first show, to be aired next Sunday.

Saragoza added that the first few broadcasts would try to catch up on news from the Southwest relevant to the Spanish-speaking community in the Boston area.