Kanellos, Nicolás. "A Brief History of Hispanic Periodicals in the United States." Hispanic Periodicals in the United States: Origins to 1960 A Brief History and Comprehensive Bibliography. Eds. Nicolas Kanellos and Helvetia Martell, Arte Público Press, 2000, pp. 3-136.
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The Spanish introduced the first printing press into the Americas in 1533, just fourteen years after having landed in what is now Mexico. It is remarkable that this introduction took place only forty-seven years after Columbus’s first voyage to this hemisphere and just seventy-nine years after the invention of movable type. “It is surprising to find that in less than one hundred years such excellent printing was done in Mexico,” stated one noted historian of printing. [1]
The tradition of the book, literacy and printing flourished in New Spain early on in colonial days. By the mid-sixteenth century, seven printers were operating in Mexico City, issuing everything from contracts and religious books to public notices and literary works. Among the first books printed were catechisms, religious works, grammars of the indigenous languages, dictionaries and some technical and scientific volumes. It was in Mexico City that the first news sheets (hojas volantes) and the first newspapers in the Americas were published. As early as 1541, a news sheet was issued, reporting on the devastation caused by an earthquake in Guatemala. [2]
The first periodical was the Mercurio Volante, founded in 1693 by the famous mathematician, scientist and humanist of the University of Mexico, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, more than a decade before the Boston News-Letter of 1704. [3] On January 1, 1722, La Gaceta de México (The Mexico Gazette), the first true newspaper appeared; shortly thereafter, others appeared in Guatemala, Lima, Buenos Aires and elsewhere. [4] Journalism in the Americas thus began in Mexico, when it was joined politically to the area from South Carolina south to the Florida peninsula and west to the California coast as part of the Spanish Empire.
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Not until the late eighteenth century was a Spanish government press in operation in Louisiana, about the same time that Spanish-language documents and books began to be printed in Philadelphia and New York. The first Spanish-language newspapers in the United States were published in 1808 and 1809 in New Orleans: El Misisipí and El Mensagero Luisianés, respectively. The first newspapers published in what may be considered the Southwest were La Gaceta de Texas (The Texas Gazette) and El Mexicano, both published in Nacogdoches, Texas, but they were actually printed in Natchitoches, Louisiana, in 1813 (Gutiérrez, 37). These were followed by the first Spanish-language newspaper in Florida, El Telégrafo de las Floridas (1817); the first in the Northeast, El Habanero (1824); and numerous others in Louisiana, Texas and the Northeast (see the Chronical Index). However, the first presses were not introduced into California and New Mexico until 1834, during the period of Mexican national rule. Despite the late start in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, however, Spanish-language newspapers were in full bloom in the Southwest by the 1870s and continued to flourish in the Northeast. From that time to the present, the Spanish-language newspaper has been a mainstay in Hispanic communities throughout the United States, preserving and advancing Hispanic culture and maintaining its relationship with the larger Spanish-speaking world.
Throughout the last two centuries, Hispanic communities from coast to coast have supported newspapers of varying sizes and missions, from the eight-page weekly printed in Spanish or bilingually to the highly entrepreneurial large-city daily published completely in Spanish. The periodicals have run the gamut from religious bulletins to international trade and scientific journals, as both the domestic and the international Hispanic readership have always been important targets for United States business and intellectual interests.
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Notes
[1] See Henry Horgan, “The Oldest American Book,” introduction to The Doctrina Breve New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1928) and Carlos E. Castañeda, “The Beginning of Printing in America” (Austin: University of Texas Latin American García Library).
[2] The first hoja volante was published by printer Juan Pablos in 1541: Relación del espantable terremoto que ahora nuevamente ha acontecido en las Indias en una ciudad llama- da Guatemala... For a facsimile of this news sheet, reporting on an earthquake in Guatemala, see Rafael Carrasco Puente, La prensa en México: Datos históricos (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1962), p. 19.
[3]See Félix Gutiérrez, “Spanish-Language Media in America: Background, Resources, History,” Journalism History 4:2 (Summer, 1977), p. 37.
[4] For a facsimile of the front page of this newspaper, see Rafael Carrasco Puente, La prensa en México, p. 31. Before La gaceta de México appeared there were various other “gazettes” that appeared, in 1666, 1667, 1668, 1671, 1673 and 1682, but they all lacked periodicity. The first regular periodical documented is truly La gaceta de México (Carrasco Puente, p. 35).