A Little Sick Girl, And The Rise Of Chicago's Hispanic Media

By: Mark Fitzgerald When 16-year-old Ana Esparza died Sunday, the Chicago edition of the Spanish-language daily Hoy needed only the headline ?Muere Ana? to inform its readers of the final act in her short life of miracles and tragedy.

Everyone in the Hispanic community knew who Ana was. They knew the story of the uninsured and undocumented immigrant who at 11 was told she could not get a necessary liver transplant unless her family somehow came up with $500,000. While federal programs will reimburse hospitals for emergency care for undocumented immigrants, they do not reimburse for organ transplants.

Chicago Hispanics, and Latinos around the nation, remembered how the mostly poor families of Pilsen, Little Village and other Hispanic neighborhoods managed to raise $200,000 for her health care. And how, when she was at a neighborhood summer fair in July of 2001, word came that a liver was ready, that a hospital was willing to perform the operation, and how she was whisked to O?Hare International Airport by police cars.

Hispanics rejoiced at the success of the operation, which four years later allowed her to walk healthy and proud in church four years later to celebrate the quinceanero, the rite of passage for 15-year-old Latinas.

But the remarkable thing was that Ana Esparza?s story was familiar to readers of the city?s mainstream dailies as well. When she died, the Chicago Tribune put the news on the front page.

Ana?s story became a symbol of every undocumented immigrant family facing a health crisis with nowhere to turn but their own community.

Yet Ana symbolized something else, too, in 2001--the reach and impact of Spanish-language newspapers.

For Ana Esparza?s story came to the world?s attention through the words--and, especially, the images--of Exito, the Tribune Co. weekly that would later be converted to the first edition of Hoy outside New York City.

?I really think that was the beginning of the type of impact that (Spanish-language papers) we have,? Alejandro Escalona said in an interview a few days before Ana died.

Ana?s story was broke by Exito reporter Jorge Luis Mota, who is now the managing editor of the television network Telemundo?s Chicago news operation. But it was the photography of Antonio Perez that may have touched the communities heart the deepest.

?Antonio came back with an unbelievable photograph of a girl whose face was almost deformed by the illness, and the medications, and all that,? Escalona said. In the image she stares into the camera with the mother wrapping her arms around her.

Community activists frequently reproduced that image, not just on fundraising materials--but for political demonstrations in favor of immigration rights.

Exito made Ana famous even beyond U.S. borders. When Mexican President Vicente Fox visited in 2001, he made a point of visiting with her.

Exito?s reporting even indirectly helped her get an actual liver. In an all-too-common event in Chicago?s Hispanic neighborhoods, a 17-year-old, Erick Navarrete was shot to death in a gang confrontation. ?When the medical personnel asked (Navarrete?s mother) if she would donate his organs, without hesitation she said she wanted the liver for Ana Esparza,? Escalona said.

Exito, and then Hoy, documented the many heart-rending twists of the story including the sudden appearance of the father who had abandoned her and her mother years before. He was said to be a perfect match to donate part of his liver, but he soon disappeared again.

Hoy was also the first to report the even more wrenching news that there was more to Ana?s setbacks last summer than the diagnosis that she had chronic organ rejection. The newspaper, quoting her mother, said she had secretly stopped taking anti-rejection drugs in the months before because she was still depressed over her father?s refusal to help.

Ana, of course, is not the only child of undocumented workers unable to provide for life-threatening medical conditions. The cases have become something of a staple of Hoy?s reporting--one that Escalona acknowledges stirs continual internal debates.

?We could do it almost every week,? he says. ?Obviously, you don't want to keep publishing stories like that all the time. But these stories have little to do with health, they don't belong in the health section. In reality, they have everything to with immigration, and we cover immigration heavily. That's perhaps the most important aspect of our coverage.?

Ana Esparza will be buried Saturday in Queen of Heaven cemetery in suburban Hillside after a mass in Chicago at Precious Blood Roman Catholic Church, where she observed her quinceanero a few months ago.