Ignacio E. Lozano
BORN: 1886, IN MARIN, NUEVO LEÓN, MEXICO
DIED: SEPTEMBER 21, 1953, IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Through brambles, briars, and baking desert heat, twenty-two-year-old Ignacio E. Lozano escaped from Mexico with his family to El Norte, the United States. With a few bags of pan dulce, sundry takings, and the clothes he was wearing, he survived the harsh journey from his small pueblo in Nuevo León, with his widowed mother, Alicia, and five sisters. They arrived in San Antonio, Texas, a city right on the border with Mexico in 1908.
Two years later the Mexican Revolution exploded in full force with a call to depose the president, who was trying to modernize Mexico and form closer ties to the rich country to the north, and was taking land away from small farmers and causing terrible hardship.
Along with other refugees fleeing injustice into Texas, young Ignacio wondered about his village, friends, and family. So he opened his own bookstore and met other exiles. With Adolfo D. Salinas, a publisher, Ignacio worked on two Spanish-language periodicals, and then another paper, El Imparcial de Texas. Ignacio became an editor and a journalist—a man interested in reporting on a country falling apart, his country. His countrymen were Spanish-speaking people, and they needed to read a newspaper in their own language.
After learning the publishing trade from these early efforts, Ignacio decided in 1913 that it was time to launch his own independent newspaper—La Prensa. Rather than print the usual local fare, he took courageous steps as a young journalist. He published weekly articles on battles and changes in Mexico—the new leaders, the return of the land to the poor, riots. Two years later, La Prensa was a daily, printing reports on the lives of political refugees, those in flight from Mexico to the United States, as well as events in Mexico, too.
Even though the Mexican revolution was over by the 1920s, Lozano’s paper was passionate about the issues of justice, land reform, and equality for people in Mexico. Ignacio wanted the truth to be told, he wanted an informed and honest voice to be heard across Texas and Mexico. And because of his coverage on such issues, La Prensa was censored more than once in Mexico. That did not stop him. He hired serious thinkers and writers. He employed direct correspondents in Paris, Mexico City, and Washington. His family had suffered in Mexico and crossing the border. Others were still suffering. Reporting on this could make it possible for difficult topics to be talked about in schools, bus stations, and kitchens.
As his publishing business grew in San Antonio, Ignacio noticed that similar migrations of Mexicanos had flowed across Mexico to California, and many had settled in Los Angeles. After shipping his newspaper to that southern California city by train, and having it read days late, he decided it was time to inaugurate a new Spanish-language paper in Los Angeles. News has to be new!
Ignacio chose a newsworthy day: on the celebration of Mexican Independence Day, September 16, in 1926, Ignacio E. Lozano established La Opinión in the heart of Los Angeles, next to City Hall. His wife, Alicia, also from Nuevo León, whom he had married in 1921, took charge of La Prensa in San Antonio, while Ignacio managed the daily operations of La Opinión.
His son, Ignacio Jr., remembers how every evening after dinner, Ignacio Sr. took him to the final print of the next day’s issue. There, he reminded Ignacio Jr. how to steady the grippers onto the paper, check the boilerplate, and let the rollers of the printing press rumble out the paper’s name in capital letters—LA OPINIÓN. He was establishing a newspaper dynasty. His son took over the publishing of the paper upon his death.
In 1928, the Congress of the Latin Press recognized Lozano Sr.’s powerful journalism against political corruption. In 1953, shortly before he died, he was lauded by the leadership of San Antonio, Texas, for his civic accomplishments—on the fortieth anniversary of his first paper, La Prensa.
Today, his grandchildren manage La Opinión, still the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States.