After winning the US presidential elections, Trump’s new administration took down Spanish-language content from the White House webpage. Previous Obama and Bush administrations maintained Spanish-language content in webpage attributed to the number of Hispanics in the country. It was a fundamental move to allow the Hispanic community understand vital policies and information deliberated by the administrations.
Contrary to the White House’s promise to add the Spanish content after taking it down, it has been a year since Trump’s administration pledge to bring back the content. Unlike America, other nations such as Iran and North Korea have Spanish content in their official government websites.
Sean Spicer, the former presidential press secretary told the Hispanic community that the new administration had taken down the Spanish content from the White House webpage but the IT personnel were working round the clock to put up a new site. In July 2017, Helen Aguirre Ferre, the White House Director of media affairs revisited the matter and stated that she expects the new website to be operational by the end of 2017. Of late, she has declined to clarify whether the plans to put up a new Spanish website is ongoing.
Rejoinders to the Current Status
The absence of the new Spanish website has attracted many reactions, especially from the Spanish speaking Americans. Most opinions revolve around Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and his plan to build a border wall against Mexico. The move is opinioned to alienate some Hispanics from accessing the USA. During his campaign, Trump criticized Jeb Bush for answering a question in Spanish stating that the former Florida governor should make an effort to speak English while in America. Trump also maintained a harsh anti-immigration rhetoric when he called Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. The move influenced the Hispanic voters to vote against him.
According to Javier Palomarez, the President, and CEO of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, there are over 4 million Hispanic-American entrepreneurs most of whom welcome Trump administration’s pro-business agenda. He concluded that the absence of a Spanish webpage sends a troubling message to the Latino community
While a Director of Hispanic media during Barack Obama’s tenure, Luis Miranda said they kept a Spanish-language site in order to enlighten the Hispanics on topics such as health issues, immigration, veterans and banking affairs.
The White House on the other hand, after taking down Spanish content from their webpage, put up a Spanish Twitter account dubbed @LaCasaBlanca. It was formed in the same month of January 2017 when the official White House Twitter account (@WhiteHouse) was formed. @LaCasaBlanca is regarded the equivalent to the English White House Twitter account. Presently, the Spanish Twitter account has only 200 tweets compared to the 3,200 tweets on its English counterpart.
