La Prensa ("The Press") was an American Spanish-language daily newspaper based in San Antonio, Texas, USA, that ran from February 13, 1913, to May 29, 1959, under the Lozano family, then until January 31, 1963, under successive owners.
[1][2][3][4] 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.
The era was coincident with a large influx of Mexican exiles in America who had fled after a series of revolutionary-related civil unrest.
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.
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.
On September 16, 1926, (Mexican Independence Day), Lozano launched the Los Angeles-based Spanish-language daily newspaper, La Opinión.
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.
Some historians and scholars have opined that the waning might have been a result of: The headquarters for La Prensa always remained in San Antonio.
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.
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.
[27] 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.
[31] Influence on popular culture Dances by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were advertised in La Prensa in the 1940s and were well-attended by Mexican-Americans.
[32] Attitudes towards fashion In a 1940 description of a zoot suit, a writer for La Prensa gave a sarcastic description: They wear a jacket that is over 37-inches long, with three buttons of which only two are used, the shoulders are heavily padded, the waist is tight: the legs are 26 inches wide, but the pant cuffs measure only 14 inches.
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.
[38] 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.
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.
[40] 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").
In a final blow, the Internal Revenue Service seized La Prensa's assets for back taxes and sold them at auction on March 28, 1963.