“I would be understating what ‘La Jornada’ means to Mexico”

A little over 40 years ago “there was more journalism, so to speak, because in addition to the major newspapers, there were others like The Figaro, World Cinema, The Roundabout, the second of Applause, the Latest News, he Extra. Today it is a mess, everyone is a news and non-news broadcaster; they are elsewhere. Given this panorama, how important it is that there is The Day, because it gives readers their place.”

This is the opinion of Mr. Ernesto Cortés Nolasco, who at 81 years of age maintains a custom that he started four decades ago: going very early to the newspaper stand near his house to get the day’s copy of the newspaper. are Day.

He is now retired from a paper company and has free time to chat every morning with Angelica, the lady who runs the store, because she is also an avid reader, day laborer and She knows, she knows. Just by looking at the front pages of the newspapers she identifies what each medium represents and what interests it defends. This also confirms that the people are wise and the fools are those who do not consider these people at their level because they are not of noble birth, and I am not talking about the intellectual, but about the level of the pipe and glove, which is presumed by those who say, for example, that it does not matter if the population does not understand their analysis, because they are right and that is it. It is not like that. The people read, they are informed..

More than a great reader, Mr. Ernesto explains that throughout his life he has liked to know a little more about what is happening in the world, “because that way we have the opportunity to talk with other people, either to share mutual interests or, as the President says, to know what to answer to our adversaries. Well, sometimes I don’t even answer them because they are so, so stubborn, and I clarify that I am not a follower of López Obrador, because when he was 7 years old I was already shouting: ‘Cuba yes, Yankees no!’”

A resident of Coapa, in the south of Mexico City, he says that he was fortunate enough to start working as a messenger when he was 17 or 18 years old, at the Prensa Latina news agency (founded in 1959, after the triumph of the Cuban revolution). The headquarters in Mexico were located on the second floor of 40 and 42 Atenas Street, in the Juárez neighborhood.

“Working in a media outlet, where there is information, is very good, whether you are on the side of liberation or the opposition. In my case, at Prensa Latina I liked that they treated me as a person, as an equal even though I was a young man. There I met the maestro Mario Gill, Gabriel García Márquez, but, above all, that place made me gradually take off the veil, I learned to clarify.

“In 1968, for example, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, instead of receiving the young people of the Strike Committee, as was his responsibility due to his position as great President, received the bullfighter Manolo Martínez, and that was the note that the newspapers highlighted.

“The next day, October 2, my Prensa Latina employee credential saved me from a beating. We left work at 11 at night, and I was walking home in the Prohogar neighborhood. I was walking down the median strip and three or four police officers ran up to me. They grabbed every young man they saw and beat him before putting him in a car. julia. When they stopped me, they asked me why I was out on the street at that time. I told them I was leaving work and showed them my ID. They immediately let me go.

At that time I also realized that it is true how the cartoonists portray the grenadiers with their baton: as gorillas, they do not exaggerate.

Since it came into my hands, I have not put it down.

Among his memories of youth, Don Ernesto remembers the 80s: “I met the newspaper The Popular, which was in Basilio Badillo; The Day, on Insurgentes Avenue downtown; the Onemoreone, and in 1984 The Day. I don’t know exactly when a copy came into my hands, but ever since then, I have not stopped reading it. We all immediately knew that it was a newspaper conceived by great men and women, intellectuals and journalists of good stock, who knew what was happening in the country, and who knew (and know) what they write about. The founders were masters; unfortunately, many have left.

40 inks and 40 years of @LaJornada

The Oaxacan painter #AmadorMontes made 40 drawings to commemorate the 40 years of #LaJornadathus continuing the tradition of Francisco Toledo and Rufino Tamayo. pic.twitter.com/bBVEUtom7u

— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) September 19, 2024

“You have a great library in your newspaper’s archives to go back to your teachers, do not forget them, and also take a look at your own writings. Because the journalist is the historian of the future, the one who documents history every day in any country, and the only thing that I ask of you as a reader is to tell the truth, not to beat around the bush, not to change the context of the real news, take a picture of what is really happening.

“I would be falling short when talking about what it means The Day for Mexico, but we readers know that it is a newspaper that has principles.”

Nowadays, Don Ernesto only buys The Day, It’s the best seller, I check it every day.but first she takes a look at the other newspapers and discusses them with her friend, and “together we laugh at how biased some are, because the lady has a head. That is why I think that AMLO has made a great fight to inform with his morning show; it is The Day on television. He has left a great path for Claudia Sheinbaum, with fewer stones, because the rich are still rich and very rich, and they will not give up their battle to return to power.”

To conclude, our dear reader sends a special congratulations to Carmen Lira Saade, director of this newspaper, on the occasion of her 40th anniversary. The Day On September 19, “because he has been able to take the reins of the great newspaper very well, which still maintains a lot of neatness in the news, which is not easy, because surely many times more than one has approached him to propose: ‘here you have 100 million pesos, I will buy the newspaper from you’. I also congratulate all the day laborers and may there be more years to come, not of his newspaper, but of ours Day”.