A good newspaper, the writer Arthur Miller once said, is a nation talking to itself. And it is true that each one writes about when, where and how the fair went. Ours was very peculiar and the origin of Mexican journalism unique like no other.
The news began to spread in the 16th century, when the famous criers shouted it at the top of their lungs through the streets of the capital of New Spain, accommodated in public squares or in crowded places such as markets. No bundles of papers or corner stalls.
It was not until May 1539, when, at the request of Archbishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the Italian printer Juan Pablos came to reside in New Spain, that Mexico learned of the possibilities of printing. Gradually, printing workshops were installed and, little by little, the news aloud was replaced by ink and paper. Flyers began to circulate, the first information medium, antecedent of newspapers. One of the oldest that was known carried an international note: the warning of an earthquake in Guatemala, a devastating event that occurred in November 1541, and that we Mexicans read until May of the following year, horrified as if it were a last misfortune. time. Its long title literally said: “Relationship of the frightening earthquake that has now occurred again in the Yndias in a city called Guatimala. It is a thing of great admiration and a great example for all of us to make amends for our sins and to be prepared for when God is called upon to call us.”
After that, the fact sheets began to circulate in our country. One of the favorites was called El Mercurio Volante, edited by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, the highly enlightened and favorite friend of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, with news of a historical and scientific nature, festivals, remedies and various announcements. A medium where it was possible to find from opinion columns, essays, poetry and topics from astronomy to the cultivation of carrots. Thus, little by little, the practice of journalism began to be considered necessary, the pen, finally, was revealed as a more effective weapon than bullets, and the printing press as an essential tool to fight (against opinions, ideologies or opponents of each stage).
It was just in 1810 –with a journalistic opportunity– when El Desperdorador Americano appeared, founded by the priest Miguel Hidalgo. It was neither manifest, loa, edict or justification, only the beginning of political journalism in Mexico. True inspiration for the later newspapers, where it was soon very evident that with the stones that the press threw, monuments could be erected or mausoleums destroyed.
The confrontations for political power would be the most aired topics in the press throughout the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, and the ideological contests would take place in two parallel scenarios, totally different, but equally important: the battlefields and the pages of the newspapers. In the electoral contest of 1867, for example, where for the first time the three most important figures in Mexican political life at the time competed for the presidency: Benito Juárez, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and Porfirio Díaz, newspapers played a very important role. The radicalization of the positions between Lerdo and Díaz and their respective followers divided the press into two totally polarized groups. Publications such as El Tecolote, La Ley del Embudo or La Carabina de Ambrosio defended Lerdo’s cause, while others such as El Ahuizote, El Cascabel or El Padre Cobos, tried to take care of Díaz’s campaign. Don Porfirio would not take long to ascend to the presidency of the Republic and to relate to the press in the most classic way of a dictator: sending enemy journalists to jail, closing newspapers and inventing his own, threatening and throwing a line to write about the Porfirian peace and progress.
The last weeks of May 1911 were the hardest for the capital’s newspapers. Sitting in their seats, working in their offices, enjoying their parties, living in their spacious houses, the wealthiest class, the closest to the government, the one that had trusted that the armed uprising would disappear in a heartbeat, began to read in the newspapers said something else: that Madero had convinced the population with his promises of another flourishing destiny. The press reported, at dawn on a sunny morning in May, several rioters outside the National Palace calling for the president’s resignation with increasingly louder voices. The next day, May 25, it was learned that Porfirio Díaz had signed his resignation and would leave for Veracruz to take a ship that would take him far away. And that news about the empty chair in which Don Porfirio had sat for the last 30 years was the most read of the week.
Everything is very different today, you might think, dear reader, but in reality nothing has changed. The letters and the voices, today the screens, all digital platforms or ink pages continue to report and report the same. Waiting to proclaim and give the note of another chair that has been the same for many Mays.