Pues aquí estamos, at the end of the 2024 year. ¿Qué te puedo decir? It has been a wild ride! For us here at La Voz Newspapers, 2025 will mark our 20 year of publishing a community based news newspaper. For those of you who may be wondering, what is a community based newspaper? Basically it a journalistic approach that tries to cover stories in the Latino community that might not make it into to main-stream media por muchas razones. What we do is pick up these stories and secure advertising from commercials entities that ends up paying for the production costs. Does this business model work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Stated differently, some months are good and some months are not. But for the past 20 years we have committed. Como dice el vato en Suits,. “Don’t go to trial if you are not going to win!”
Emma Tenayuca.
Let’s take a look inside this issue of La Voz. We thought it would be good to remember Emma Tenayuca, the fiery activist from the 1930s who helped lead the Pecan strikes in San Antonio. I did not know her story until much later in life. In fact, I did get to sit next to her at a luncheon Jose Angle Gutierrez organized in the late 1980s in San Antonio. She was very frail by then but she was not a quitter! You will find a short story on her life on Page 5.
On Page 6 through 8 you will find an interview we did with Lorenzo Cano. Lorenzo is originally from Corpus Christi, Texas but made his mark at the University of Houston as the Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies. Lorenzo contact with thousands of students over a 35 year period helped produce a number of state legislators, local elected officials and attorneys. He is someone who has
helped a lot of people over the years. Recently he was honored with an “Homenaje” in Mexico City.
The other story we want to call to your attention is about the new museum in Crystal City, Texas. One can say a lot of things about Cristal and they have. Yes, it was the birthplace of La Raza Unida Party and when it stood up to Lo Vaca Gathering Company (Lo Voca supplied the natural gas) and refused to go along with a rate increase, the company shut off the gas. The surrounding communities were also subject to the
rate increase but let Crystal City fight alone. Today, there is a new museum that commemorates the many battles that community has fought over the years.
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Copyright 2024 by Alfredo Santos. To read the full issue of this month’s La Voz visit: