Type Daily newspaper Founded February 13, 1913 Headquarters San Antonio, Texas | Founder(s) Ignacio E. Lozano, Sr. Ceased publication January 31, 1963 | |
Publisher Lozano Newspapers, Inc. | ||
La Prensa ("The Press") was an American Spanish-language daily newspaper based in San Antonio that ran from February 13, 1913, to May 29, 1959, under the Lozano family, then until January 31, 1963, under successive owners.
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History of La Prensa
La Prensa was founded on February 13, 1913, in San Antonio as a weekly newspaper by Ignacio Eugenio Lozano, Sr. (1886–1953), a prominent exile of Mexico, native of Nuevo Leon, and supporter of Porfirio Diaz leading up to, and throughout the Mexican Revolution. That same month, nine days later, Mexico's President Francisco I. Madero was assassinated. The era was coincident with a large influx of Mexican exiles in America who had fled after a series of revolutionary-related civil unrest. La Prensa, according to historian Richard Griswold del Castillo, PhD, had two missions: (i) to serve as the voice of the Mexican exile community and (ii) to defend and represent the views of the wealthy Mexican exiles who favored Diaz. La Prensa's editorials strongly challenged Mexican public policy. The upshot was that its editorial positions mirrored the political ideologies of Lozano.
From 1913 to 1954, La Prensa was the leading Spanish-language newspaper circulating in South Texas. For many years, it was the most widely circulated Spanish-language newspaper in the United States and had an international readership. During its first two decades, it covered topics pertinent to exiles of the Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1930. The lifespan of La Prensa covered eras of World War I, the decline of organized labor in the U.S. during the 1920s, the rise in the U.S. stock market between 1924 and 1929, the Great Crash, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression that followed, the New Deal, World War II, and the emergence of the U.S. as a superpower. Yet through all that, in contrast to mainstream newspapers in the U.S., La Prensa devoted considerable coverage to matters relating to Mexico, and was the leading publication in opposition to the Mexican Revolution. For mainstream U.S. newspapers, matters in Europe were more important than matters in Mexico, which positioned La Prensa in an elevated role as a prime-source for important news involving Mexico.
La Prensa was also a leading voice for Mexican culture, which at the time, was a renaissance of literature, film, visual arts (including muralism), and music (including Carlos Chávez). For Mexico, it was a vibrant period, and yet one of economic challenges and public policy shifts.
La Prensa's domestic and international readership peaked during the Mexican Revolution, due largely to its position as the leading U.S. publication covering Mexico; and, unlike the print media of Mexico, La Prensa was free to print news and editorials of its choosing. In the 1920s, Los Angeles surpassed San Antonio as the U.S. city with the largest concentration of Mexicans. In that same decade, La Prensa's largest readership shifted to Los Angeles. On September 16, 1926 — Mexican Independence Day — Lozano launched the Los Angeles-based Spanish-language daily newspaper, La Opinión. As of the current date — March 10, 2017 — La Opinión is in its ninetieth year. It is the nation's oldest Mexican-American daily newspaper, the nation's largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, and is still directed by the Lozano family. La Opinión is the enduring legacy of La Prensa.
After the Mexican Revolution, another Mexican cultural renaissance flourished, giving more rich material for La Prensa and the two U.S. cities with the largest Mexican and Mexican-American populations. New York, at the time, had a large Spanish-speaking population, but it was not predominately Mexican.
In 1936, following the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War broke-out. La Prensa was an important publication for politically engaged people of Mexico and exiled Mexicans in the U.S. involved in helping integrate Spanish exiles who were fleeing falangism. In 1953, the year that Lozano died, the Cuban Revolution began.
Yet, circulation of La Prensa declined in the late 1950s due to several factors, namely a waning public yearning to restore pre-Mexican Revolution values, a drop in Spanish literacy by writers and readers of newer generations of U.S.-born American citizens of Mexican ancestry, and a desire by newer generations to assimilate and embrace the pop culture of the post-swing and pre-rock-n-roll eras.
Given that La Prensa, under its founders, was strongly linked to its view of conservative pre-Revolution Mexican values, some scholars attribute its decline to being stuck in a bygone era while major cultural changes were occurring in new-generation Mexican-Americans — changes that included the Americanization of La Prensa's readership. The Lozono family — who sold La Prensa at a low in 1959 but retained their Los Angeles newspaper, La Opinión — struggling with the changes for a decade following the death of their patriarch; but, they had several advantages over the successive owners of La Prensa. The new generation of Lozanos, led by American-born Ignacio E. Lozano, Jr., identified with forward-thinking Americans of Mexican ancestry. Moreover, Ignacio, Jr., had experience of having worked in the family business with the mentoring of a lifetime from his father, mother, and executives close to the family.
"Mexico abroad" was a fashionable term among many Mexican exiles. La Prensa was distinctly different from other major U.S. Spanish-language newspapers because of its allegiance to Mexico and its people.
In the latter part of the 19th-century, the phrase "Mexican-American," as an ethnic classification or reference, was still commonly used, but it waned in favor of other expressions. Some historians and scholars have opined that the waning might have been a result of:
- a loss of Mexican cultural values or allegiance to Mexico by newer generations born in America
- fatigue from stereotyping
- a broader mix of Spanish-speaking Americans from other countries blurring lines of ethnic identity
- a desire for a broader ethnic or full-American or worldly or hipper identity by Mexican-Americans
- dilution degrees of Mexican-American ethnicity of successive generations
- a disavowal of the patriarchal, conservative values attached to the phrase by the early 19th-century generation of Mexican exiles
- any combination(s) thereof
The headquarters for La Prensa always remained in San Antonio. In the era when the Lozano family controlled both La Prensa and La Opinión, until 1956, the headquarters for both remained in San Antonio.
Editorial bent
The right-wing views harbored by Mexican Revolution era exiles in the U.S. had some similarities to the right-wing views of Cuban exiles from the Cuban Revolution. That is, the so-called labor classes wanted change while wealthier classes, particularity those who fled, feared that change would result in economic ruin — and resisting change would threaten their lives. From 1913, throughout the Mexican Revolution, the editorials of La Prensa included contributions by prominent Mexican intellectual exiles that supported Porfirista policies — policies that included strongman political stability, antisocialist proforeign economic intervention, and a united nationalistic society. Its negative views of the revolution complicated the Texas Mexican's attitudes towards both Mexico and the U.S.
In contrast to La Prensa's stance against labor uprisings in Mexico during the Revolution, La Prensa was an influential watchdog for bigotry and labor abuses against Mexican-Americans in the U.S. during the same period. And, in that same period, La Prensa supported Mexican-American non-union labor, notably in industries grappling with labor disputes. In one case, La Prensa supported Mexican-American labor at Bethlehem Steel in Pittsburgh in 1923. The April 17, 1923 edition of La Prensa announced that (i) a train left that day for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with four-hundred workers aboard, (ii) four-hundred more were to leave on April 22, 1923, and (iii) three-hundred workers had left two weeks earlier.
Many descendents of La Prensa journalists became leading exponents of progressive politics in America, including Lozano's granddaughter, Monica C. Lozano and Leonides González's son, Henry B. Gonzalez.
Lozano contended that all Mexicans were the same and urged them to return and rebuild their homeland. One of his editors, Federico Allen Hinojosa, published a book in 1940 in which he asserted that members of the El México de Afuera — the title of the book which translates to "Exiles from Mexico" — had distinguished themselves by not only retaining their faith (in Catholicism) and devotion (to Mexican nationalism) that their non-exiled Mexican counterparts had lost, they achieved a reconquest of the lost lands that the United States had taken from Mexico in the 19th century. While La Prensa articulated the political views of its publisher, it contained news and features about the Mexican homeland that appealed to Mexicans in the U.S. who harbored a wide spectrum of political views.
On November 6, 1934, the Associated Press reported that distribution of La Prensa and La Opinión was barred from Mexico by the government because of articles criticizing the ousting of Catholic officials from government over opposition against the Revolutionary Party-controlled government's plan to contest so-called Catholic aggression and to, among other things, transfer the role of education to the government. Archbishop Pascual Diaz of Mexico had gone into hiding.
San Antonio became the publishing center for Hispanics in the Southwest, and housed more Spanish-language publishing houses than any other city in the United States. During the 1920s and 1930s, San Antonio was home to:
La Prensa encouraged readers to attend the opera, particularly the Chicago Civic Opera when it was in town. It also urged readers to listen to classical music on the radio, "Música Simfónica." In an apparent attempt to cultivate Mexican heritage, La Prensa urged its readers to attend Mexican films, lectures by Mexican and Spanish intellectuals, and theater. Many Mexican-Americans, especially rico exiles, wanted to preserved their national heritage, Lo Mexicano; whereas lower income Mexican-Americans preferred to create their own cultural traditions.
As an example of La Prensa's influence on performing artists, internationally acclaimed Mexican violinist Silvestre Revueltas had been part of a fine arts movement in Mexico that rose to world rank. Revueltas' trio performed at San Antonio's Teatro Nacional on April 8, 1926 — a concert sponsorship by El Club Mexicano de Bellas Artes, San Antonio, of which Lozano's wife, Alicia Elizondo de Lozano, was an officer. For members of the Revueltas trio — which included soprano Lupe Medina de Ortega (née Guadalupe Medina; 1892–1953) and pianist Francisco Agea Hermosa (1900–1970). For the latter two, it was their U.S. debut. Revueltas' took-up residence and performed in San Antonio from about 1926 to 1929. His decision to do so was influenced by lavish reviews of the San Antonio Express and La Prensa.
In a treatise about women at La Prensa, scholar Nancy A. Aguirre, PhD, states that La Prensa was critical of women seeking men's roles, particularly rica (rich) women.
Dances by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were advertised in La Prensa in the 1940s and were well-attended by Mexican-Americans.
In a 1940 description of a zoot suit, a writer for La Prensa gave a sarcastic description:
Ignacio Lozano and his wife, Alicia Elizondo Lozano, operated both papers. After Ignacio's death from cancer in 1953, his son, Ignacio E. Lozano, Jr., at age 26, took over as publisher of La Opinión and his widow returned to San Antonio to continue operations, with Leonides González (1875–1966), La Prensa's longtime business manager. González was the father of Henry B. Gonzalez, who in 1961, became a U.S. Congressman. He was also the grandfather of Charlie Gonzalez, who in 1999, also became a U.S. Congressman.
González had retired in 1957 and on June 16 (Sunday), 1957, the paper suspended operation. It reappeared July 11, 1957, as a weekly tabloid. On that same day, González announced his resignation.
From then until 1959, La Prensa continued as a weekly under Lozano management with Ignacio E. Lozano, Jr., as director, Alica Lozano as manager, and Manuel Ruiz Ibañez as editor-in-chief. The last issue under the Lozano family was published May 29, 1959, Vol. 47, No. 15.
La Prensa was sold to Texas millionaire-philanthropist Dudley Tarleton Dougherty (1924–1978) and economist Eduardo Grenas-Gooding (born 1887–1968), formerly of Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba. The first issue under the new owners was published June 4, 1959, as a weekly. The new owners announced their intent to restore publication as a daily in September 1959 and extensive expansion into Central and South America, but neither ever materialized.
On December 3, 1959, Dougherty appointed Ed Harllee (né Arthur Edward Harllee; 1929–2010) as general manager of La Prensa. Raymond Palmer Orr (born 1924) continued as executive editor.
A pilot film made for television, Gringo, produced Ron Gorton in cooperation with La Prensa Publishing Co. premiered in San Antonio on December 10, 1959.
Beginning August 4, 1960, La Prensa moved its printing to facilities of the Seguin Gazette, in Seguin, Texas, owned by former San Antonio newspaperman John Clifton Taylor Jr. (1925–2014). Ed Castillo remained as managing editor and Octavio R. Costa remained as general manager of what then was 10 employees.
On May 11, 1961, Robert Turgot Brinsmade (né Robert Turgot Brinsmade; 1913–1994), an American international lawyer, purchased La Prensa and announced that he would restore it to a daily publication. Ed Castillo, who had been the managing editor since November 1959, remained in that role. Brinsmade remained owner and publisher of La Prensa until its demise in 1963.
His father, Robert Bruce Brinsmade, PhD (1873–1936), was an American mining engineer, who through his work in mining, became a labor rights advocate and exponent of the economist Henry George. Robert Turgot Brinsmade's maternal uncle, Harry Steenbock, PhD (1886–1967), was a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, inventor, and one of the discoverers of vitamins D, A and B.
Brinsmade, who had been practicing law in Caracas, admitted that he collaborated in the overthrow of Acción Democrática, the Venezuelan political party that governed from 1945 to 1948, when it ended by a coup d'état. He believed that Rómulo Betancourt, who became president in 1945 by coup d'état, and Acción Democrática, intended to set up a Marxist form of government in Venezuela by force of arms, if necessary, and justified his actions, and indicated that his actions had the support of the U.S. government. Brinsmade was roundly informed by Ambassador Walter J. Donnelly in 1948 that he had damaged long-standing U.S. interests by compromising its reputation for neutrality and abstention from political activities. The U.S. Department of State expressed "strong disapproval" of his involvement.
Robert Turgot Brinsmade married three times. He was a widower from his 1939 marriage to Mollye Catherine Johnson (maiden; 1920–1952) and a 1955 divorcee from his 1953 marriage to Ruth Elizabeth Ericsson (maiden; born 1914) — who had been, in 1941, selected in New York by John Robert Powers to be a Miss Subways model, which drew 258 marriage proposals, all of which she rejected. In 1961, he married Suzanne Joy Metz (maiden; born 1934) in Mexico City after having spent time in Caracas, Venezuela, as owner and publisher of the newspaper La Calle ("The Street"). Brinsgate and his wife settled in Houston. He had been a founding shareholder in 1948 in Sivensa (Siderúrgica Venezolana, S.A.), a Venezuelan steel company.
The last issue of La Prensa, by then a bilingual tabloid, was published on January 31, 1963, just two weeks short of the paper's fiftieth anniversary. In a final blow, the Internal Revenue Service seized La Prensa's assets for back taxes and sold them at auction March 28, 1963.