A guide for Oregon's Latinos: Community embraces Spanish Yellow Pages

PORTLAND — From her basement 10 years ago, Victoria Lewis began selling ads for the first ever Spanish Yellow Pages in Oregon.

Persuading non-Hispanic business owners to buy a $600 ad wasn't easy. But the growing number of Hispanics moving to Portland in the 1990s made her feel that chances for success were good.

"Being an immigrant myself, I realized how powerful it was to know as much as possible about the place you live," said the 48-year-old from Peru.

"If you don't know how to get around, you are lost."

The first edition, in 1994, was only 3,000 copies and limited to the Portland area.

This year, there will be 150,000 copies of Las Paginas Amarillas, as they are called in Spanish, and they will be distributed across the state. Full-page color ads now cost $7,200, and Lewis runs the business out of an office with 12 employees.

The rise of this book is a reflection of rapidly growing Hispanic immigration to Oregon — from 112,000 in 1990 to 312,000 last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

For many in Oregon's Hispanic community, the telephone book has become indispensable.

"It might have been my third day in Portland that I noticed this thing written in Spanish," said Alberto Gonzalez, 58, who moved his family from Cuba three years ago. "I snatched the little book and was surprised by all the information it had."

The phone book has hundreds of ads, offering everything from bilingual legal representation to dependable car tires.

But it also is a fraud filter, public-service information guide and how-to manual for recent arrivals who may not know how to do things such as write a check.

The book's 100 white pages include house-painting tips, explanations of the emergency 911 system and a 401(k), how to put in a baby car seat, where to get financial help to start a business and where battered women can go for help.

Gonzalez said he and his wife have been studying the white-pages section on 100 typical questions for the U.S. citizenship exam.

Because Hispanics often are targeted for scams, often by other Hispanics, Lewis and the dozen people who work for the publication are picky about who they let advertise.

Jan Margosian from the Oregon Department of Justice, which investigates scam claims, said there have been no complaints filed against the Spanish Yellow Pages. That compares with 254 complaints since 1990 against English-language Yellow Pages publications, she said.

That isn't to say, however, that misleading ads don't seep through.

"There needs to be more oversight over what, who and the validity of the claims that businesses put in the Spanish Yellow Pages," said Eduardo Angulo, chairman of the Salem-Keizer Coalition for Equality, a Hispanic advocacy group.

Angulo said some ads have made false promises by paralegal companies about regularizing the residency status of illegal immigrants. Lewis said those companies are no longer allowed to publish in the book.

For businesses eager to tap the growing Hispanic business market, the Spanish Yellow Pages provides insight into the differences between white and Hispanic consumers.

"Anglos are used to one way of business," said Victoria Lara, the Spanish Yellow Pages sales manager. "They want to know how many books are in their area," when considering placing an ad.

Lara said the American model of convenience by way of business proximity doesn't apply in the Hispanic community, where people are used to traveling across town or farther for a particular product or service.

Curtis Grafton, a chiropractor in Beaverton, said deciding to begin publishing in the Spanish Yellow Pages three years ago has transformed his business.

Grafton figures that his $1,800 monthly ad in the English-language Verizon Super Pages gives him a 4-to-1 return on his money.

His ad in the Spanish Yellow Pages produces a 100-to-1 return, he said. Now 90 percent of his clientele are Hispanic, he is studying Spanish and he has hired bilingual help.

"There are days when I wonder if I'm going to get through the day because I have so much work," Grafton said. "I've never had it so good."

The success of the Spanish Yellow Pages has spurred competition from other groups trying to get a piece of the market. Started six years ago, the Directorio Telefonico Hispano, a similar but smaller phone guide, will publish 80,000 copies this year, sales manager Johan DeWaal said. He said businesses see Hispanics in the Northwest as an untapped market compared with other states with larger and more established Latino communities.

"In terms of opportunities and resources, it's exhausted in California," he said. "That constitutes a lot of why the Hispanic community in Washington and Oregon is booming."