Sprint Nextel Corp. is helping a Latino musician launch his career. Verizon Wireless is running Hispanic heritage month promotions. Both companies and many of their wireless peers are relying on unusual tactics in big campaigns reaching out to the hottest new niche of customers.

World Wrestling Entertainment's "Friday Night Smackdown" repeated as the champion among English-language shows for Hispanic TV viewership last week, while "Fea Mas Bella" remains untested during its Spanish-language title reign, according to figures released by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Dec. 17-24.

As busy as small-business owners are, do they really need to undergo an annual business tune-up, as you suggest? Yes, because it's the little things that entrepreneurs forget about that get them.

In early 2005, husband-and-wife filmmaking team Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes spent 52 days driving 13,000 miles through 32 states with a video camera. Their mission: to document how mom-and-pop independents were faring, faced with fierce competition from big-box retailers, as well as how small communities were changing across America.

Between 1995 and 2005, the number of Latino owner-occupied homes increased by 3.1 million, reaching 6.9 million. That's an 81 percent increase compared to a 19 percent increase for all other non-Latino owner-occupied homes, according to the National Association for Hispanic Real Estate Professionals' Web site.

Whether lured by Cochise County's Wild West atmosphere, the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector's ranking as the busiest spot for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile border or the hundreds of border deaths since 1998, journalists have been coming for years, according to Border Patrol officials.

A new wave of Latin American leaders is changing the face of the region and its relations with the United States, multilateral institutions, international financial markets, and foreign investors.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorities have become so rigorous in screening immigrants that citizenship applications often are delayed for years -- forcing some people to sue.

Advertisers' efforts to reach Hispanic consumers are becoming more targeted, and language is a major factor. Advertisers spent more than $3.3 billion to market products to U.S. Hispanics in 2005, a 6.8 percent increase from 2004.

Get the entire 2006 Hispanic Business 500 Directory in Excel format.

Companies on the listing report an increase in overall billings from $1.05 billion in 2005 to $1.18 billion in 2006, an increase of 11.86 percent.

Companies on the listing report an increase in overall billings from $1.05 billion in 2005 to $1.18 billion in 2006, an increase of 11.86 percent.