Until EL PUERTO c
ame along, there were scant news of everyday life in South Texas. “We were getting everything in bits and pieces,” said Cipriano A. Cardenas, a University of Texas-Texas Southmost College assistant professor in Modern Languages.
By JUAN MONTOYA
Relatives of the man who pioneered Spanish-language journalism in Brownsville say he deserves to have a school named in his memory because of the contributions he made to local history.
His remaining daughters – all teachers – say they will continue to push for a school named after their father after their request to name the new high school was passed over by Brownsville Independent School District baord members last year.
El Puerto’s founder and editor Gilberto A. Cerda died in 1975 after 21 years of reporting day-to-day life among Mexican-Americans in Brownsville.
“My dad was a self-educated man who emphasized the value of education,” said Esther Cerda Castañeda, a school teacher in the BISD. “He was very strict with us when we were growing up.”
Sister Maria E. Garza, also an elementary school teacher in Brownsville, said the entire family worked alongside her dad to deliver the weekly newspaper.
“We knew that when Saturday came around we would be delivering the newspaper,” she laughed. “There was no getting out of it.”
Cerda’s contribution to understanding the life of local people is of utmost importance, according to local researchers. Until El Puerto came along, there were scant news of everyday life in South Texas.
“We were getting everything in bits and pieces,” said Cipriano A. Cardenas, a University of Texas-Texas Southmost College assistant professor in Modern Languages. “Until recently, we didn’t know a lot about the history of Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, and Brownsville in particular.”
That changed in 1975, when the University of Texas, realizing the valuable asset these publications were to historians and scholars alike, purchased and catalogued 21 years of editions of founded in Brownsville in January 1954.
As Cardenas wrote in his study titled “Hispanic Journalism in Brownsville, Texas,”: “This weekly paper, founded in 1954...is the only complete record of Hispanic journalism available to scholars and the general public that chronicles the Mexican-American experience in Brownsville.”
By the time it ceased publication in 1975, El Puerto was the lone Spanish-language newspaper being published in the Rio Grande Valley.
According to his own account that Cerda wrote in the 15th Anniversary edition in 1969, six prominent Mexican-American community leaders approached him to start a weekly newspaper.
Cerda had been an apprentice at the English-language Brownsville Herald at 12, and worked at the daily for the next 32 years.
“(They wanted) to publish a weekly paper to defend the rights of the Latinos in this area, that at that the time were not as respected in this region,” he wrote.
The start of the newspaper was inauspicious. Cerda described it in his own words.
“The print shop where the newspaper was born was rickety and the p
ress was quite small, measuring 12 by 18 (feet) and without resources,” Cerda wrote. “Things being like that, your servant and (colleague) Leon Ledezma agreed to work together and we published the first edition...January 30, 1954.”
Now his descendants want to petition the school board to honor the work of their father and say they will begin the process to convince the members to name a school after him. Toward that end, they say they will gather information on his life to make their case.
“My dad really valued education and we think it would be fitting that we had a school bearing his name,” said Castañeda.
ame along, there were scant news of everyday life in South Texas. “We were getting everything in bits and pieces,” said Cipriano A. Cardenas, a University of Texas-Texas Southmost College assistant professor in Modern Languages.By JUAN MONTOYA
Relatives of the man who pioneered Spanish-language journalism in Brownsville say he deserves to have a school named in his memory because of the contributions he made to local history.
His remaining daughters – all teachers – say they will continue to push for a school named after their father after their request to name the new high school was passed over by Brownsville Independent School District baord members last year.
El Puerto’s founder and editor Gilberto A. Cerda died in 1975 after 21 years of reporting day-to-day life among Mexican-Americans in Brownsville.
“My dad was a self-educated man who emphasized the value of education,” said Esther Cerda Castañeda, a school teacher in the BISD. “He was very strict with us when we were growing up.”
Sister Maria E. Garza, also an elementary school teacher in Brownsville, said the entire family worked alongside her dad to deliver the weekly newspaper.
“We knew that when Saturday came around we would be delivering the newspaper,” she laughed. “There was no getting out of it.”
Cerda’s contribution to understanding the life of local people is of utmost importance, according to local researchers. Until El Puerto came along, there were scant news of everyday life in South Texas.
“We were getting everything in bits and pieces,” said Cipriano A. Cardenas, a University of Texas-Texas Southmost College assistant professor in Modern Languages. “Until recently, we didn’t know a lot about the history of Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, and Brownsville in particular.”
That changed in 1975, when the University of Texas, realizing the valuable asset these publications were to historians and scholars alike, purchased and catalogued 21 years of editions of founded in Brownsville in January 1954.
As Cardenas wrote in his study titled “Hispanic Journalism in Brownsville, Texas,”: “This weekly paper, founded in 1954...is the only complete record of Hispanic journalism available to scholars and the general public that chronicles the Mexican-American experience in Brownsville.”
By the time it ceased publication in 1975, El Puerto was the lone Spanish-language newspaper being published in the Rio Grande Valley.
According to his own account that Cerda wrote in the 15th Anniversary edition in 1969, six prominent Mexican-American community leaders approached him to start a weekly newspaper.
Cerda had been an apprentice at the English-language Brownsville Herald at 12, and worked at the daily for the next 32 years.
“(They wanted) to publish a weekly paper to defend the rights of the Latinos in this area, that at that the time were not as respected in this region,” he wrote.
The start of the newspaper was inauspicious. Cerda described it in his own words.
“The print shop where the newspaper was born was rickety and the p
ress was quite small, measuring 12 by 18 (feet) and without resources,” Cerda wrote. “Things being like that, your servant and (colleague) Leon Ledezma agreed to work together and we published the first edition...January 30, 1954.”Now his descendants want to petition the school board to honor the work of their father and say they will begin the process to convince the members to name a school after him. Toward that end, they say they will gather information on his life to make their case.
“My dad really valued education and we think it would be fitting that we had a school bearing his name,” said Castañeda.
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