Hidalgo County Judge Rene Ramirez displays a Yo Cuento 2010 T-shirt to reporters at a Census outreach event in Little Mexico last month. (File photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

EDINBURG, May 3 - Yo Cuento 2010, the campaign launched by Hidalgo County Judge Rene Ramirez, is airing a commercial on Spanish-language TV stations to boost participation in the Census.

The spot, produced by McAllen-based Rio Bravo Pictures, features a family seated around a dining table discussing in Spanish the importance of Census 2010. Click here to watch the video on Yo Cuento 2010's You Tube page.

The Yo Cuento 2010 campaign is funded by private business leaders in Hidalgo County. In an interview with the Guardian on Monday, Ramirez explained the rationale for producing a Spanish-language TV spot.

“We decided to produce this spot much for the same reason that we started the Yo Cuento campaign - to promote full participation of the Census in hard to count areas of the county so that our entire community gets its fair share of resources and representation,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez is very pleased with the commercial and the reaction it has received so far.

“We think that this particular Spanish clip best reflects our strong family ties and culture, and uses local talent to communicate the importance of the Census in our local communities,” he said.

In addition to the TV spot, the Yo Cuento 2010 campaign has held Census rallies in colonias and given out lots of promotional material.

Ramirez made Census 2010 a top priority as soon as he took over as interim county judge last November. In his first interview after being named county judge, Ramirez told the Guardian that full participation in the Census was crucial. He immediately worked with county commissioners to set up a Hidalgo County Census Complete Count Committee. This panel comprises local community leaders, business owners, non-profit organizations, and concerned citizens and its mission is to develop innovative ways to spread the word about the importance of Census 2010 and to outreach to areas in the community that are considered hard to count due to various social and political barriers.

The priority Ramirez attaches to Census 2010 can also be seen by going to the official Hidalgo County Web site. On the home page are a number of Census-related icons. One has a link to the new TV spot. Another shows the participation rate in the county (currently 61 percent) and yet another shows the participation rate across the nation (72 percent).

Like many of the non-profit groups that work in the colonias, Ramirez was angry with the Census Bureau’s decision not to send out Census questionnaires to 95 percent of colonia residents and many of those living in rural, unincorporated, areas. Like the non-profits, Ramirez had based his message on everyone receiving a form in the mail, as this comment from an April 1 op-ed shows:

“How can we ensure that city and county planners in our quickly growing community are accurately assessing our public service needs? One important way is through the 2010 Census. When you receive it, fill it out and mail it in. If people fail to do this, the Valley will go undercounted and that means we can lose out on our fair share of more than $400 billion dollars in federal funding that is spent each year,” Ramirez wrote.

“This funding is used on infrastructure and services like schools, hospitals, job training centers, senior centers, and emergency services. These budget items are sometimes referred to as ‘formula-based’ federal programs because they use numbers garnered by the census to calculate and assess community needs. If our 2010 Census counts are below actual population numbers, then we run the risk of being inadequately funded.”

Ramirez believes the Census Bureau’s decision not to send a Census questionnaire to 95 percent of colonia residents will dramatically reduce the level of participation in Hidalgo County. The Census Bureau has told local elected officials and non-profits not to worry because its Census workers will track down the residents that did not receive a form through its Update/Enumerate process.

Write Steve Taylor

Printable version