Bucking mainstream media, Cuban political refugee launches bilingual Hispanic-American news site

Gelet Fragela, a Cuban political refugee and founder and director of the ADN Cuba news site, announced Tuesday the launch of ADN America, a new, bilingual news outlet for Hispanic-Americans.

Fragela told the John Solomon Reports podcast how, a few years ago, she founded ADN Cuba, which "focuses a lot" on "the threat of socialism throughout our region, especially the human rights crisis inside Cuba."

Now she has launched ADN America for the Hispanic-American community, a bloc which, she says, is moving towards the Republican Party

ADN America said Tuesday it will be an "educational resource for first-generation Hispanic-Americans" providing information on U.S. history and the operation of its political, legal, and economic systems, while highlighting elected Hispanic-American and Latino politicians.

The news site will publish many of its stories in both Spanish and English to appeal "to first, second, and third-generation Hispanics who may gravitate toward one language or another."

"The mainstream media assumes Hispanic-Americans share the same political values, when in fact we are a diverse group with incredibly diverse opinions, beliefs, and interests," Fragela said. "But we all share one key trait in common; our love for freedom and the desire to participate in the democratic process."

Hispanics are "the fastest-growing demographic in the country" and "becoming increasingly important in national politics" as they vote — and run for public office — in growing numbers, according to the site's launch announcement released Tuesday.

Many immigrants who "have escaped communism or have come to this country looking for a better life share common values that are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution," said Fragela, and "no matter how different we are, where we come from, our heritage, those values, our moral fabric is what holds us together."

Latino voters are shifting toward the GOP as the Democrats continue moving left "because we know what those policies do, that's why we fled Latin America," she said. "So we don't want to be here voting for the same policies that made us flee our countries in the [first] place."

Lamenting that many in the mainstream media now use journalism as an ideological "tool," Fragela said ADN America will serve a need "to inform the people, to inform audiences, to have honest conversations, to spark real debate." 

Fragela was a Cuban children's TV show star before she and her family fled Cuba for political asylum in Costa Rica, where she lived for 10 years before immigrating to Miami.

"I'm Cuban by birth, I tell people, I'm Costa Rican by adoption, and I am an American by choice," she said.

Her grandfather was a political prisoner who fought in the Bay of Pigs, and her father was a lawyer who disagreed with the Castro regime.