By: juan josé garcía  (Page 5/7)

Valadés, a first generation writer of La Prensa ,never lost sight that Mexicans living in the United States have “a life that is not the one they left across the Rio Bravo in Mexico,” and that they have to comply to the new reality. This raises the challenge that all publications in Spanish in the United States have to accept by being from “there and here" that we all like to be told the gossip of the town we left behind. We inform readers as to who is the mayor of the new town, how to register children in school, where and how to take them to the doctor, what rights they have as residents, even if they are undocumented aliens, and what resources they have at hand to reach the happy and highly praised "American dream." They must indicate to the reader that it is important to know about their country of origin and the entire world, but they must also know what happens in the educational meetings of their school district. This is a mission, more than a job that Ignacio Lozano marked in his two creations: La Prensa of San Antonio in 1913, and La Opinión of Los Angeles in 1926. The first one was sold in 1957. The second, La Opinión , continues to be as strong as ever.

Lozano arrived at San Antonio at 22 years of age and had a family to care for; his widowed mother and several brothers. Soon, he realized that the community he lived in wanted and needed to know what was happening in his revolutionary Mexico of which many had left to save and feed themselves. For that reason, the workers of the newspaper considered the company as a patriotic mission, without forgetting that "here is not there." In fact, the founder had a universal mind and opened an editorial and a bookstore where they sold Spanish books, and workers even dressed up as Don Juande Zorrilla and Juan José (1890) of Joaquin Dicenta . This indicates that an element of the mission of the Lozano newspapers was the cultural promotion of the readers. 

Phases of la opinión

Like La Prensa of San Antonio, La Opinión was born in Los Angeles with the mission to serve the great Mexican colony that had moved from Texas to California. It was hard going in the beginning, but the first issue reached the streets September 16, 1926, the Mexican Independence Day. To undertake the uncertain mission of publishing that day was an indisputable signal of its vocation and mission: to serve as guide to the just arrived Mexican community and to defend it from the abuse to which it was exposed. La Opinión fulfilled its purpose. It was the only newspaper of Los Angeles that protested energetically against the massive deportation of Mexicans, including the U.S. citizens among them, during the Great Depression.

In 1953, the founder passed away and his son Ignacio Jr. took charge. La Opinión entered its second phase, that of being a North American newspaper written in Spanish. It then lost the exclusive title of "Mexican, done by Mexicans for the Mexicans." It turned into a local newspaper for all those who wanted general information in Spanish. In the mid-1970s, the third generation of Lozano’s took over and the newspaper fulfilled their commitment to serve as a bridge to the thousands of Latin American immigrants. These are the years during which exiles of Central and South America fled from dictators ruling in their countries. La Opinión became their main source of information about their countries and the new one in which they lived. They also made it "theirs." "I want our newspaper be the best,” as I was told by an Argentinean while complaining about some errors that appeared. La Opinión expanded enormously in that decade.