From the Albuquerque Tribune:
Don’t mess with these New Mexicans.
The teens in Rhonda Stanfield’s communication skills class at Robert F. Kennedy Charter School unsettled a bottling company, a distribution company and a marketing plan – all in six weeks.
Billboards put up in the spring as an advertising campaign for Tecate beer featured a bottle at a 45-degree angle surrounded by the words “Finally, a cold Latina.”
The class wanted the billboards removed from their community in the heart of Five Points in Albuquerque’s South Valley.
“I didn’t think we were going to change anything because we are so young,” Lauren Hermosillo, 18, said.
But their success has led them to take on all alcohol advertising in their community.
“We want to do more,” she said.
They’ve already completed research that they say shows there are five times more alcohol advertisements in Hispanic communities than in white communities in New Mexico.
…Surely, they thought, anyone who worked for the distributor would understand their frustration at stereotypes. But, Hermosillo said, a woman who answered the phone at Labatt USA in Miami – which distributes Tecate – asked him “What’s a Latina?”