El Fronterizo Archive

In 1877, Carlos Tully of Tully, Ochoa & Company founded two newspapers in Tucson, Arizona: the Daily Bulletin and the Spanish-language Las Dos repúblicas.  The Bulletin's masthead was soon changed to the Arizona Star, and Tully's close ally, Louis Hughes, who would serve as governor of Arizona in 1893, joined him in running the newly re-titled publication. The Repúblicas, which shared a handpress with the Star, only remained in publication until 1879. However, it had become clear that there was a market for Spanish-language newspapers in Tucson.

Filling this demand was El Fronterizo, established in 1878 by Carlos Ygnacio Velasco. The Spanish-language weekly was associated with the Star's rival, the Arizona Citizen. Under Velasco's editorial reign, the Republican El Fronterizo promoted pride in Hispanic culture. Velasco, along with Pedro C. Pellon and Mariano G. Samaniego, would in 1894 go on to found La Alianza Hispano-Americana (The Hispanic American Alliance), a mutual aid society and political organization which soon spread throughout the Southwest.

Velasco took an anti-assimilationist stance for the Hispanic population in Arizona and to have actively campaigned for repatriation to Mexico. Along with Carlos Tully, Velasco also advocated the deportation of the Chinese, who had arrived in Tucson in such large numbers to build the railroad.

While other Arizona Spanish-language papers were short lived and often had indifferent success, El Fronterizo remained in circulation for 36 years. Together with the Citizen, the daily Tucson Star, and the weekly Tucson Star, El Fronterizo enjoyed a large circulation in Tucson. In Those Old Yellow Dog Days: Frontier Journalism in Arizona, 1859-1912, author William H. Lyon claims that El Fronterizo was the most successful Spanish-language newspaper in Arizona.

Digitization of El Fronterizo for NDNP was made possible through a joint effort between Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records and University of Arizona. The hard copy of newspaper was provided courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society.