<i> Periodicos</i> Seek Readers, Shelf Space : Journalism: Outside post offices, markets and bakeries a large number of Spanish-language papers are battling for circulation.

In one hand, Norma Yanez carried a sack of groceries. In the other she gripped four periodicos and a copy of “Teleguia.”

As she walked out of the North Hollywood supermarket with her food, newspapers and television guide, Yanez said she “takes as many papers as I can. I like to read the news, the stories--especially news from Guatemala, my country.”

In heavily Latino neighborhoods in North Hollywood, Pacoima, Sun Valley and San Fernando, outside post offices, markets and bakeries called panaderias, a startling number of newspapers are battling for shelf space in what has become an increasingly competitive war of words--words in Spanish, that is.

With the debut last month of a free Spanish-language newspaper called El Universal, San Fernando Valley Latinos now have two local twice-weekly publications. El Eco, which emphasizes local news in contrast to the international focus of El Universal, started three years ago.

The two are among a broad array of free and other Spanish-language publications specializing in sports, entertainment or news that circulate in the Valley, reflecting the dramatic growth in the area’s Latino population in the past decade.

“The Valley up to this point has been devoid of a strong newspaper presence,” said John Catalani, director of Burbank-based Hispanic Media Associates, the advertising sales firm for a consortium of 85 Spanish-language publications throughout the country. “Obviously publishers have found there was a void and if there is a void you fill it.”

The dizzying selection of Spanish-language papers in heavily Latino neighborhoods mirrors the scene at newsstands in large Latin American cities, where people are accustomed to reading numerous news publications.

“Immigrants come to this country with a background that is used to a high concentration of print media,” said Henry E. Adams, executive vice president at Market Development Inc., a San Diego research firm that specializes in Hispanic marketing. “There is a thirst for newspapers if they can get them.”

Booming Latino communities such as Van Nuys, where the Latino population increased 76% from 1980 to 1987, Pacoima, where the population rose 55%, and Sun Valley, with a 48% increase, constitute an attractive market for Spanish-language publications, according to demographic information provided by The Times’ marketing research department and Market Statistics, which sells research material to The Times.

“It has become apparent to those of us in the publishing field that there are a substantial number of Latinos in the Valley who were not being spoken to as a community group,” said Monica Lozano-Centanino, publisher of El Eco, which is owned by La Opinion. Half of La Opinion is owned by Times Mirror Co., parent company of the Los Angeles Times. “The market is large and it may be large enough for a number of publications.”

Consider the bundles of free papers on the floor, near the telephones and stacked high on a rack at Food Bag grocery store in North Hollywood:

In addition to El Eco and El Universal, there are four other free publications and three others that can be purchased. Those for sale are La Opinion and Noticias del Mundo, both Los Angeles metropolitan newspapers, and Diario Las Americas, a Miami-based daily newspaper of Latin American news.

Those papers and others compete for a piece of the nation’s most lucrative market for Spanish-language publications. Advertisers spent $16.2 million in 1989 on print media in a sweeping area that includes San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to a study by Hispanic Business magazine.

For readers such as Vilda Herrera, 32, of North Hollywood, who left the store with three papers, the publications are the prime source of reading material for her large family.

“Me, my husband, my four children, my in-laws, we all live together and every week we like to read all the papers we can,” she said. “We think it’s important to know what’s going on.”

Pedro Galvez, 22, a busboy who came to North Hollywood from Mexico three years ago, said he has relied on the local newspapers for information on where to shop, find a doctor and go to school.

Despite the booming population and a seeming supply of eager readers, the competition was too much for three local Valley publications, including the venerable El Sol of San Fernando, that folded in the past two years. El Dia and La Voz published only for two months in 1988.

“It wasn’t worth it anymore,” said Thelma Barrios, publisher of The Sun, the San Fernando newspaper that published El Sol as its Spanish counterpart. “There has been such an infiltration of so many Spanish papers, competing for the same advertising dollar was difficult.”

The competition has not deterred other entrepreneurs convinced that they can prosper by offering a new and improved product.

New to Valley racks is Estadio, a full-color weekly tabloid focusing on “ deportes y espectaculos, “ or “sports and spectacles.” Estadio, which means “stadium, “ is published by North Hollywood businessman Moises R. Rauda, who for the past 18 years has owned an electronics-plating firm. The Magnolia Boulevard firm doubles as the paper’s offices.

Since Estadio’s introduction last January, 46,000 copies of the paper have been distributed weekly from news racks in the Valley--primarily the eastern part--and in downtown Los Angeles, Huntington Park, South Gate and Santa Ana. The Valley accounts for 26,000 of these copies.

However, it was the grand entrance of 26,000 copies of El Universal, delivered twice a week to royal blue news racks, its tabloid masthead also trimmed in an eye-catching shade of blue, that has stirred up a competitive ruckus in the Valley.

Joseph Arbona, the publisher of El Universal and former publisher of El Eco, said he is testing the paper in the Valley’s heavily Latino neighborhoods with plans to distribute it beyond the area within a year if it proves successful.

“I know this area very well. I know the Valley better than any of the others,” said Arbona, who started up El Eco in 1986 with $3,000, but sold it shortly afterward to La Opinion, the nation’s largest Spanish-language daily. Arbona said he left El Eco last August because of differences with La Opinion management over the focus of the paper. Arbona wanted to see a balance of Latin American and local news, while the newspaper’s executives wanted El Eco to focus strictly on community news, he said.

“Hispanic people have a strong link to their homes and they want to know what is going on over there,” Arbona said. “If you only have a local paper, you will miss half of your readers.”

Lozano-Centanino of El Eco views El Universal as direct competition.

“What other publication is distributed in the same areas, put on the racks the same day? It’s no secret that we are competitors,” she said.

She predicts that both El Eco and El Universal will be successful “only if there is substantial difference in content. The reader can only handle so much. . . . It’s too soon to say what El Universal’s niche will be.”

For Spanish-language readers, the competition translates into a virtual bonanza of free news and entertainment papers.

“In the Hispanic market it is not a degrading thing that these are free,” Catalani said. He said the Spanish paper tradition in the United States has been to distribute as many papers as possible for free to attract a reader base. A circulation of 20,000 to 30,000 is considered a healthy readership.

“For publishers, the competition can be somewhat of a strain,” Lozano-Centanino said. “But for the community, for the readers, it is a recognition that there is something happening in the Valley, in Los Angeles, in California. . . . Latinos in general now have publications that respond to them.”