La Prensa San Diego will start its 34th year of publication in 2010. As we look back over the years, we have much to be thankful for. While this year so far has been a mixed bag of good and bad, there is still much to be thankful for.
When La Prensa San Diego was started in 1976 it was a vision of political empowerment, about self determination, about community involvement. It was a belief in the Hispanic community and of the future for this community. La Prensa was a bilingual newspaper from the start, reaching the broadest audience possible, to speak not only with the Hispanic community but also with the monolingual, English only, community and decision makers in City Hall.
La Prensa San Diego was not started as journalistic endeavor, but as an endeavor to bring about change. The newspaper reflected the people that put together this newspaper, community members who were working with the paper because they believed in the community and of the need for a voice within the community. In 1976 there was no Chicano/Hispano newspaper in San Diego serving this community; in fact, there were only a handful of bilingual Chicano/Hispanic papers in the whole of the United States.
Much like today, in the ‘70s and early ‘80s there were not many advertising dollars for publications such as La Prensa. It was a gigantic struggle to survive. It took everything we had to stay in print every week, without missing a publication date. It took personal sacrifice to keep going; it took a vision, a goal, to stay motivated and work for something bigger than all of us. That vision, that goal, and those sacrifices were made by the publisher Daniel L. Muñoz.
La Prensa San Diego would not have survived without Daniel L. Muñoz’s drive, his determination, his vision. Survival of this paper was paramount. It was not for personal glory, it wasn’t for financial gain, but for the community and Chicano/Hispanic self-determination that this paper survived.
This year, Mr. Muñoz passed away. For that we are deeply saddened. Yet at the same time we are thankful that he was here for us as a father, a husband, and thankful that he had a vision, a dream for the community and what it meant to be a Chicano, a Hispanic.
Much has changed for the better in the Hispanic community over the past 34 years and for that we are thankful. We look forward to the next 34 years and for things to continue to improve for Hispanics.
We are also thankful for our friends and readers throughout the year who have given us the moral and financial support to continue on. Our focus this year has been to survive these difficult times as we look forward to better days in 2010. Without our friends, the difficult task of survival would have been that much harder. So we cannot say Thank You to those friends enough times.
From La Prensa San Diego to you, our readers, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.