Mayra Moreno has received much support from the media community after defending herself from an ABC13 KTRK Houston viewer, who posted on X about why she was pronouncing "Hispanic sounding names with a Hispanic accent?"
This after Moreno has been grieving the death of her former co-anchor, Chauncy Glover.
Moreno responded: "Spanish is my first language and I’m pronouncing it how it’s supposed to be pronounced in Spanish. I’m not trying to teach you Spanish and what do you mean by Hispanic sounding names? They are Hispanic names."
Spanish is my first language and I’m pronouncing it how it’s supposed to be pronounced in Spanish. I’m not trying to teach you Spanish đ€Ł and what do you mean by Hispanic sounding names? They are Hispanic names. https://t.co/ETiWHasnuK
— Mayra Moreno ABC13 (@MayraABC13) November 25, 2024
Moreno later posted on X: "Imagine what Elma Barrera went through back then. She signed off on air rolling her R's...Love how proud she was!"
Moreno and Barrera are not the only Channel 13 reporters and anchors to deal with this.
In 2012, former ABC13 anchor Minerva Perez guest posted on the Mike McGuff Blog addressing this very issue:
"From the beginning of my career in a small Rio Grande Valley market, which was 95% Latino and from where all my family hails, I was questioned about the way I used a Spanish pronunciation of my name, correctly and accurately rolling the rrrr’s in both my first and last names: Minerva PĂ©rez...sacrosanct where I come from.
My nickname as a kid was Minnie, Minnie Mouse and Mini Skirt. Would viewers take me seriously if I used nicknames? I was supposed to come across as a serious Journalist.
After leaving the Valley, and moving to the mid-size market of San Antonio and away from family and friends, the catty comments started coming. Some of my colleagues, especially, laughed and sniped behind my back. I knew it and I ignored it. My news director brought me in and said 'perhaps you should consider the way you say your name.' I ignored him. I refused to homogenize my name and identity for the sake of my job and instead stayed true to my heritage. It was the decade of the Hispanics, after all.
Several markets later, and arriving in the 2nd largest TV Market in the country of Los Angeles, the hate or bullying heated up. It was there, the biggest Latino market next to Mexico City that the hate mail started arriving. 'You’re too Latina,' one cowardly and anonymous person wrote. Another suggested I should 'go back to MĂ©xico!' As Anchor Jen openly told the author of her egregious email and her viewers, 'you don’t know me.' Little did my haters know I am a 4th generation Texan, whose family goes back hundreds of years…before Tejas was taken by the Texians. The common Tejano saying goes, 'the border crossed us.' We still own part of a major land grant.
Consistently, some colleagues in all the TV markets where I worked, friends, I wrongly thought, generated some of this bullying. In one market, one co-anchor with an air of much superiority, turned to me and pointedly asked, 'Why do you say your name that way?' A not-so-kind, icy query. Another one would encounter me in the hallway and loudly mimic me, 'Minerrrrrva PĂ©rrrrrez.' I laughed as his insulting words. Another one said the way I pronounced my name “jarred the ear.” Jarred the ear? This, while they all went out of their way to correctly pronounce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They went crazy with French names. Latino names? Not so much.
Conversely, I also received a lot of praise from Latinos in every community in which I worked. They loved that I represented them proudly in what they considered a not-so-welcoming “white world.” To see me on TV was to see themselves."
A few years later in 2015, Perez published more about her career in 'I GOTTA STORY: My 30 Years in TV News' that spanned from the RGV to KTLA 5 Los Angeles. One of my favorite stories is how Perez is sampled in the U2 Desire (Hollywood Remix) from her LA TV time!
