Welcome to La Cucaracha News website. It took 48 years to get here, but better late than never.
If you are already familiar with La Cucaracha independent Chicano newspaper, this website will be like finding an old friend. If you are new to La Cucaracha, give us a good read and let us know what you think.
La Cucaracha first published in May 1976 and ceased publishing in December 1983. In the struggle to survive, La Cucaracha went from a monthly to a biweekly to a weekly and then reverted to a monthly during that seven-year period.
In its heyday, La Cucaracha strived to be the best example of Chicano journalism. We were loosely associated with the Chicano Press Association and shared stories and photos with dozens of other independent newspapers.
The founders of La Cucaracha met at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the 1970s. They included Juan and Deborah Espinosa, David Martinez and Pablo Mora. At CU, they started and published El Diario de la Gente serving the UMAS — United Mexican-American Students — community.
In Pueblo, the staff rapidly expanded to include many of the local Chicano/a leaders of including Rita J. Martinez, Jose Esteban Ortega, Celestino “Toby” Madrid, Freddy “Freak” Trujillo, Juan and Dario Madrid, Dora Esquibel, Leo Lucero, Deborah Martinez Martinez, Ph.D, Abran Sandoval, Lola Gutierrez, Cynthia and Margarito Fuentes, Maria Vega and many more.
La Cucaracha staff helped Ray Otero and Shirley Romero Otero publish Tierra y Libertad in San Luis, and Ya Basta in Grand Junction.
In those early days, the pages of La Cucaracha were filled with reports about the key issues of the day: The struggle to regain land rights guaranteed by Sangre de Cristo Mexican Land Grant; Kiko Martinez’s fight for freedom; the district attorney’s attack on the Pueblo Neighborhood Health Centers; the ongoing fight to document and expose police brutality; support for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers Union; the Puerto Rican fight for independence; the American Indian Movement’s takeover at Wounded Knee; and a continuous line of stories about Chicano history, culture, art, music and food.
By 1988, Mora had moved on to The Denver Post and I was hired by The Pueblo Chieftain. A decade later, Mora moved to The Chieftain and he and I are now retired from that daily newspaper. While working as reporters and editors for the daily newspapers, we continued to follow many of the same stories we covered while at La Cucaracha.
Two decades after the last La Cucaracha was published, came a renewed interest in all things related to the Chicano Movement. The Chicano Movement in Colorado archives was established at the Colorado State University Pueblo in 2004. In the intervening years, every known edition of that series of Cucs has been digitized and is archived online at Historic Colorado Newspapers website.
A traveling exhibit of La Cucaracha was produced by the CSUP library in 2019 and is available for public events, schools or other public venues. The Archives website https://www.csupueblo.edu/archives-and-special-collections/la-cucaracha.html, contains a variety of Cucaracha-related materials including interviews with former staff, photographs, and a brief history of the organization.
In 2014, the former La Cucaracha staffers were asked to publish a collector’s edition of La Cucaracha for the commemoration of the deaths of Los Seis de Boulder — six Chicano/a activists who died in two car bombings 48-hours apart in Boulder in 1974. It was the beginning of several special editions of La Cucaracha.
Eventually the printed program for the Cinco de Mayo Celebrations in Pueblo — 54 continuous years in 2024 — was printed under La Cucaracha’s banner.
In 2022, we announced that La Cucaracha was coming back on a regular basis as a quarterly publication. Under an agreement with El Movimiento Sigue — a nonprofit community organization — we revived the Cuc.
Just as we completed the first year as a quarterly in August 2023, we were told The Pueblo Chieftain press that had been printing our paper was closing. La Cucaracha was one of 80 publications left without a printer, and Pueblo and much of Colorado was left without many of those news sources.
Kudos to all the other publications, who found printers in Denver, Kansas and Santa Fe, N.M., for hanging in there.
You are reading this because La Cucaracha decided to create La Cucaracha News on-line (lacucarachanews.com). We lament the loss of the tangible printed newspaper but see great potential to reach a wider audience in the cyber world.
For the benefit of those who never saw a printed edition of La Cucaracha, we began building this website by posting some of the best articles and photographs from the past 12 months. Beginning in this month, more stories will be added as they develop until we have a weekly flow of new articles.
In addition to news and feature stories, we plan to offer advertising services to the generous advertisers who have supported La Cucaracha in print. Eventually, we plan to expand into video reports, podcasts and other formats. It will depend on recruiting and training additional staff.
When we first started La Cucaracha, we adopted a slogan we saw on a newspaper in Mexico, “Soy del pueblo, del pueblo soy, donde me lleva el Pueblo, voy.” That loosely translates to: “I am of the people, of the people I am, wherever the people take me, I go.” The dicho is still relevant. The direction that La Cucaracha News goes in is dependent of where our “people,” or audience, take us.
We are always looking for writers, photographers, graphic artists and cartoonists, ad sales people and computer geeks. Or, if you have a business or organization and are interested in advertising, contact us at: lacucaracha@emspueblo.org.
This is exciting. I know it will find its way to those whom need it. Enjoy, a priceless vault of information. Que Viva
This is exciting. I know it will find its way to those whom need it. Enjoy, a priceless vault of information. Que Viva