LatinX Voices

3Extra! Extra! Bold, Vibrant, and Punchy

Hispanic Newspapers in the U.S. Since World War II, From Print to the Digital Age

Rick Brunson, M.A.

Associate Instructor of Journalism,University of Central Florida

Twenty-one-year-old Roland Manteiga was working at his father’s newspaper, La Gaceta, in Tampa, Florida, on December 7, 1941, the day Japanese forces bombarded the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii almost 5,000 miles away—plunging America into World War II. A second-generation Cuban-American, Manteiga had worked at the Spanish-language daily newspaper since he was ten, delivering its punchy style of journalism to the streets and homes of the Latino enclaves of West Tampa and Ybor City. Ink, politics, and a passion for the printed word ...