TulsaPeople / June 2010 / TulsaPeople Q&A: Margarita Vega-Treviño

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TulsaPeople Q&A: Margarita Vega-Treviño

Owner, publisher and president, VEGA-TREVIÑO

Margarita Vega-Treviño knows how to work an eight-hour day into five hours. The mother to three young daughters, she wants to be home with them before and after school to fulfill her most important role — mother.

When she’s away from home, however, Vega-Treviño serves several roles as a communicator, leader and an advocate for Tulsa’s multi-ethnic communities.

With her husband, Francisco, she owns VEGA-TREVIÑO (formerly Zapata Multi-Media), which publishes northeastern Oklahoma’s oldest weekly Spanish-language newspaper, Hispano de Tulsa; Tulsa Color, a bilingual monthly magazine about ethnic diversity; and Paginas Hispanas, an annual business and social services directory for Spanish-speakers.

Outside of her positions as publisher and editor-in-chief for the publications, Vega-Treviño is a member of the Tulsa Latina Business Women and a board member for the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice and the Hispanic American Foundation. And last month, she accepted a 2010 Newsmakers Award from the Tulsa Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications for her professional achievements, community involvement and contributions to the advancement of women.

Vega-Treviño recently sat down with TulsaPeople in her sixth-floor office in downtown’s historic Thompson Building to discuss Tulsa’s Hispanic community and how her company serves a vital role in making the city aware of its diverse population. 

Why did you recently transition Hispano de Tulsa into a bilingual format? That was January 2008 and the reason we did that — there were three main reasons. One, it all came from what was happening with the anti-immigrant vibe that (Oklahoma House Bill) 1804 brought about in 2007. We were writing really good stories … but we were preaching to the choir. We needed the community at large to read what we were writing — not just the Spanish-speaking people.

So that was the main reason. The other one was financial — to give our clients more business exposure to people who were non-Hispanic and giving them another client base.

… And the third one, it was to try and be that connection, that bridge of understanding. There were a lot of misconceptions about the Hispanic community and what Hispanics and Mexicans were here to do. And, you know, if you just took the time to learn what this community is about, but then, of course, you’d have to do it in English, and so that’s why we changed to a bilingual format.

Your company recently started publishing Tulsa Color, a bilingual magazine about our city’s diverse population. Why did you see a need to create a magazine about Tulsa’s ethnic diversity? Things such as (HB) 1804 happened because of misunderstandings, because we don’t know enough about one another. Tulsa is a multicultural city. There’s nothing that will change that, and we just don’t know enough about one another to respect or to embrace one another. I think there’s nothing like just knowing where we all come from, and that’s why the whole diversity premise (is important) — because we don’t know.

One of the first interviews that I did … I interviewed Mayor (Kathy) Taylor, and one of the questions I asked was, “What color are your friends?” In asking that, I immediately thought to myself, “What color are my friends?” And that was my first editorial. All of my friends are the same color. I have friends of all colors, but your friends friends are the people who come over to your house.

And so we all need to learn. We all need to kind of open our eyes and our ears and learn about all the people who surround us because that’s what’s going to unite us. If anything, we’ll have a better understanding of one another. You don’t have to be friends, but you have to respect (one another). If you understand, you’re bound to respect them more.

In light of Arizona’s recent passage of Senate Bill 1070, why was it important for you to lead the media campaign challenging Oklahoma’s HB 1804 in 2007? When we did the media campaign, it was important to us because it (HB 1804) went from being an immigration issue to being a human rights issue. It became kind of the passport for those who wanted to tell you, “Don’t speak Spanish,” who wanted to tell you, “We don’t want to hear.” It became their passport to act.

A group of organizations came together to create the United Front Task Force — it was people from the Muslim, Jewish, African-American communities — and we made it a point for our speakers, for our representatives who either went on TV or in the newspaper, to not be Hispanic.

And it was important for us to create a media campaign so that the community at large heard the message, and not just preaching to the choir because it’s the voters who we needed to target, and we needed to make sure that people knew how many misconceptions were out there, such as people come here to mooch off of the government. Well, they can’t because they’re undocumented. They can’t get all those benefits that people think they’re getting. It’s not allowed.

Why and how should companies reach out to Tulsa’s Hispanic population and other minorities? People should hire who’s more competent, of course, for the job. But should people try and make an effort to have a diverse workforce and try and find those competent people somewhere else besides the usual spots? Most definitely — because it will enrich their company culture. It’s as simple as that. When you have people who are coming from different points of reference, you get a diversity of ideas and thoughts and ways of thinking, and it just brings more to the table when it comes to both working and coming together.