Félix Gutiérrez, professor of journalism at USC Annenberg. (photo by Hillel Aron)

Hear Gutiérrez discuss Latino press:

Félix Gutiérrez, professor of journalism at USC Annenberg, recently
curated and exhibit titled Voices for Justice: 200 Years of Latino
Newspapers in the United States. Neon Tommy's Hillel Aron spoke to Gutiérrez about
the exibit, the history and future of Latino press and how he is the "product of Latino journalism."

Neon Tommy: What inspired you to begin this project?

It had been 200 years since the first Latino Newspaper was founded in New Orleans in 1808. And we got together 3 years ago and said we ought to do something to commemorate this. It's not so much the history of Latino newspapers, it's the history of Latinos in this country as told by newspapers.

Can you explain the title?

We didn't want an exhibit that was just this paper, this person, that would be boring. So we looked for a theme. And we saw that all the newspapers spoke out for justice, in a society that promises justice but does not always deliver.

The exhibit mentions the first Latino printing press. When was that?

There was a printing press in Mexico in 1535, which was more than 100 years before the first printing press in the English colonies. The first printed journalism was in 1541 in Mexico City, a news booklet about an earthquake and storm in Guatemala. And that's 149 years before the first newspaper in the English-speaking colonies. Culture did not come west in a covered wagon, there was culture and literacy, people writing things and putting out newspapers long before the Yankees even thought about coming out here.

What can we learn from Latino newspaper coverage of the US-Mexico war?

The theme of this exhibit is that you really don't understand American history until you go beyond one source. And what the Latino press has done is report the views and news and it reflects the interests and facts that relate to our community. After the war, they see, in 1848, the promises of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, of equal rights and respecting land grants. And they say, the newspapers, the war is over, this "liberty and justice for all," democracy, everyone's created equal, maybe it's not gonna be so bad. They find out afterwards, the people came here with a conqueror's mentality.

How should we view the seemingly liberal thinkers like Walt Whitman in all of this?

You have to see everybody in the light of their times. Walt Whitman, who later in life spoke out about the Latinos in the southwest being a "rising tide," but in 1846 we have a quote from him when he was writing for the Brooklyn Eagle saying, "What has miserable, inefficient Mexico, with her burlesque of Democracy have to do with peopling the New World with a new race? Be it ours to achieve that mission!" You see it reflecting that view of, these people don't deserve the land they're on.

I noticed a Félix Gutiérrez in the exhibit, is that your father?

I'm a product of Latino journalism. My father in 1938 was in what was then Pasadena Junior College, and started a publication called The Mexican Voice, which was a youth inspirational educational magazine, basically encouraging people to get ahead and do something with their lives, to break out of the barrios. My mother was involved in a similar organization in Arizona, at what was then called Arizona Teachers College at Tempe. And so she started sending articles to the magazine in Arizona. And love happens in journalism. So they fell in love and got married, and in 1942 I was born. So if it hadn't been for Latino journalism, I wouldn't be alive.

How has Latino news changed in recent years?
 
We've gotten coverage but we haven't gotten recognition. We're still on a one-way street. I think that the media need to reflect that it's not an us-them situation, and just as we need to learn about Anglos, they also have to learn to adapt to our ways. And you don't see that in the media yet. The other thing is there's more population numbers, which has made us more of a marketing force. Advertisers want to reach us as consumers. But it's one thing to tap you as a market, it's another thing to tap you as a political power. We saw some of this in the 2006 spring marches for immigration reform, but we still haven't felt the real impact. I think that the true leadership in the Latino community in the future will come from people who feel that they don't have to lose who they were to become who they want to be. In my generation, there was nothing Mexican that was ever gonna help you, if you were becoming American. As a journalism student, I was never told that the fact that I had some acquaintance with another language, that I'd gone to Mexico, that I'd come from a part of town that did not get good coverage, would ever be valued in journalism. It was: can you escape that? What we need now is for media to say 'you are who you are, and bring who you are to where we are,' and that'll make us a better news publication for everybody.

You received a Lifetime Achievement award a couple years ago from the National Association of Minority Media Executives. I thought that lifetime achievement awards were for retirees.

I flunked retirement. I retired in 2001 from a senior vice-residency at the Newseum and Freedom Forum. And then USC believes in recycling, it's a very green campus. So I came back. When you retire, people think you're hanging it up. I'm very honored by the recognition that I got for helping integrate newsrooms, but I was a small part of a very large movement. And I'm not ready to declare the end of my lifetime achievements. Although others might.