La Prensa ("The Press") was an American Spanish-language daily newspaper based in San Antonio, Texas, that ran from February 13, 1913, to May 29, 1959, under the Lozano family, then until January 31, 1963, under successive owners. -
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. 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 the 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.Part 1, December 13, 1993Part 2, December 14, 1993Part 3, April 15, 1994 As of the current date – 2=mdy — La Opinión is in its year. It is the nation's oldest Mexican-American daily newspaper, the largest U.S. 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 — struggled with changes during the decade that followed the death of their patriarch, but they had several advantages over the successive owners of La Prensa. The new generation of Lozanos, led by the 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",In some quarters, the phrase Mexican-American was misleading and sometimes pejorative. People born in America, regardless of ancestry, have a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The term Mexican-American means different things to different people. But to many, it refers to naturalized American citizens who were born in Mexico. The term Chicano, which had a negative connotation before the Chicano Movement in the 1960s, gained popularity. And the phrase Latin-American or Latino or Hispanic became more pervasive as a way to identify Spanish-speaking people of all races and nationalities, including Mexican-Americans who prefer a broader ethnic and cultural identity linking pre-Mexican ancestry.The heritage of 20th century Mexican-Americans may be much forgotten by people now living in their communities, but the history has been broadly chronicled by writers, publishers, and scholars. Moreover, Chicano Studies and programs under other names at leading universities have institutionalized Mexican-American history as an important standalone inter- discipline. 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 Conservative political stance towards the Mexican Revolution
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, anti-socialist pro-foreign 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 400 workers aboard, (ii) 400 more were to leave on April 22, 1923, and (iii) 300 workers had left two weeks earlier.
Third generation progressive political influence in the U.S.
Many descendants 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.
Loyalty to Mexico
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.
Provocative editorials towards the Mexican Revolutionary Party
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.
Publishing influence in the Southwest
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:
Casa Editorial Lozano, founded around 1916 by Ignacio E. Lozano, Sr., published hundreds of titles a year during its peak and was the largest publishing establishment owned by a Hispanic in the United States Viola Novelty Company, founded and owned by Pascual Viola (1898–1946), published two satirical weekly newspapers, El Vacílon and El Fandango, active from 1916 to 1927 Whitt Printing Co., founded in 1914 by descendants of an English officer, endured its latter years only as a printing establishment; it dissolved in 1977 under the heirs Homer Whitt, Sr. (1905–1980) and Allen Hall Librería Española, surviving its latter years only as a bookstore; it closed in 1999 as San Antonio's last full-service Spanish-language bookstore