The Palacio Barolo, Avenida de Mayo, Buenos Aires

THE PROSPECT WAS horrifying. The year was 1919, and Europe had only just brought to an end an orgy of self-destruction lasting several years. The negotiations to conclude a peace treaty at Versailles were ongoing, but from abroad it looked as if the continent had descended into a trend of violence, decline, and destruction. That year, Luis Barolo, an Italian textiles manufacturer who had immigrated to Argentina, commissioned his fellow-countryman Mario Palanti to design a fascinating and mysterious structure as a monument to “the Latin Genius” Dante Alighieri — a repository in the New World for the poet’s legacy as the continent that gave him birth slid into oblivion. (more…)

Looking down the Avenida de Mayo towards the Argentine Congress in the 1910s.

This news photo showing a protest (what else?) of bus drivers on the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires gives a good view of the capital’s city hall. The municipal headquarters is located between the Plaza de Mayo and the former home of the newspaper La Prensa; the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace (officially called Government House, Casa del Gobierno) can be seen in the distance at the end of the square.

I’ve long thought they should reduce the auto space by two lanes, one on each side, and double the width of the sidewalks — but that would probably make the bus drivers even more irate.

TIME magazine, 26 October 1942

In the ornate Paz family crypt in Buenos Aires’ comfortable La Recoleta cemetery, honors came thick last week to the late José Clemente Paz, founder of Argentina’s La Prensa. The Argentine Government issued a special commemorative postage stamp. Nationwide collections were taken to erect a monument. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a laudatory cable, as did many another foreign notable. It was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Argentina’s most famous journalist.

Although Don José has been dead for 30 years, the newspaper he founded 73 years ago has not changed much. La Prensa is THE Argentine newspaper, is one of the world’s ten greatest papers.

Polish, Curiosity, Comics.

A cross between the London Times and James Gordon Bennett’s old New York Herald, La Prensa is unlike any other newspaper anywhere. In its fine old building the rooms are lofty and spiced with the odor of wax polish, long accumulated. Liveried flunkies pass memoranda and letters from floor to floor on an old pulley and string contraption. But high-speed hydraulic tubes whip copy one mile from the editorial room to one of the world’s most modern printing plants—more than adequate to turn out La Prensa’s 280,000 daily, 430,000 Sunday copies.

Argentines are minutely curious about the world. Although newsprint (from the U.S.) is scarce, La Prensa usually carries 32 columns of foreign news—more than any other paper in the world. Four years ago most was European—today New York or Washington has as many datelines as London.

La Prensa’s front page is solid (save for a small box for important headlines) with classified ads. So, usually, are the following six pages—one reason the paper nets a million dollars or more annually. Lately La Prensa has made some concessions to modernity: it now carries two comic strips, occasional news pictures.

Deliveries, Duels, Discussions.

La Prensa will not deliver the paper to a politician’s office; he must have it sent to his home. It will not call for advertising copy. No local staffman has ever had a byline.

South American journalism is more hazardous than the North American brand. La Prensa’s publisher and principal owner, Ezequiel Pedro Paz, Don José’s son, has twice been challenged to a duel. Because he is a crack pistol shot, neither duel was fought. Now over 70, Don Ezequiel shows up at the paper punctually at 5 p.m. for the daily editorial conference with Editor-in-Chief Dr. Rodolfo N. Luque. Present also is his nephew and heir-apparent, handsome Alberto Gainza (“Tito”) Paz, 43, father of eight and ex-Argentine open golf champion. Significantly, La Prensa’s owner-publishers visit their editor-in-chief and not vice versa.

La Prensa’s foreign affairs editorials often wield great influence, but have not budged the isolationism of President Ramón Castillo. The paper has supported Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, pumped for the United Nations, denounced the totalitarians. But it speaks softly. When Argentina’s President Castillo gagged the press with a decree forbidding editorial discussions of foreign events, admirers of Don José recalled how he once suspended publication in protest at another Argentine President’s like decree. If old Don José were now alive, declared they, he would again have stopped La Prensa’s presses rather than submit to Castillo’s regulations. — TIME, Oct. 26, 1942

TIME magazine, 16 July 1934

Prensa Presses

On the roof of the imposing La Prensa building in Buenos Aires’ wide Avenida de Mayo is a large siren. Its piercing screech, audible for miles, heralds the break of hot news. Long ago a city ordinance was passed forbidding use of the siren and the publishers rarely sound it nowadays. But when some world-shaking event takes place, La Prensa’s horn shrills and a Prensa office boy trots downtown to pay the fine before its echo has died away.

Last week the fingers of La Prensa’s acting publisher, Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz, itched to push the siren button. There was much to celebrate. Not only was it Nueve de Julio, Argentina’s Independence Day, but potent old La Prensa was formally inaugurating a new $3,000,000 printing plant, finest in South America. Its holiday edition ran to 725,000 copies— 150,000 more than its previous record.

The plant is housed in a new building a half mile from the main office, in the rent-cheap industrial district. It is linked to the editorial rooms by pneumatic tubes. The installation includes a 21-unit Hoe press similar to that of the New York World-Telegram. The press is driven by 56 motors, is fed by 63 rolls of newsprint and two six-ton tanks of ink. A normal edition of 250,000 copies (400,000 Sunday) is spewed out in considerably less than an hour. Since Buenos Aires is so far from the Canadian pulp market, La Prensa keeps on hand up to 7,500 tons of newsprint, enough to supply its needs for three months or, in emergency, to produce a smaller paper for a year.

Completion of the new plant marked the almost complete retirement of La Prensa’s publisher and principal owner, Don Ezequiel P. Paz. Son of the late Dr. José C. Paz, who turned out the first copy of La Prensa 65 years ago on a tiny hand press, Don Ezequiel started to work around the shop as a youngster in 1896, took full charge while still a young man. He devoted his life completely to his newspaper, spent nearly all his waking hours in his incredibly ornate office, denied himself to practically all callers except his editors. Past 60, of nervous temperament, he lives nearly half the year at his French estate near Biarritz. On his transatlantic trips he customarily takes a large party of relatives, and for the sake of his diet, a cow. The cow makes the round trip but must be sacrificed in sight of her native land because of Argentina’s rigid quarantine against all imported cattle. Don Ezequiel sailed for Biarritz last month, regarding the new plant as perhaps the last important milestone in his publishing career. Childless, he turned his responsibilities over to his nephew, youthful Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz, whom he carefully tutored as he himself had been trained by Founder José. So puny in boyhood that he was not expected to live. Dr. Gainza made of himself one of the foremost amateur athletes in Buenos Aires.

Beyond dispute La Prensa is the leading newspaper in South America, is read throughout the continent. Sternly independent, it truckles to no political party, even refuses to accept political advertising on the ground that if any politician is really as good as he claims, he is legitimate news and will be reported accordingly.

To U. S. newsreaders, a typical copy of La Prensa is a curious sight. Prime headlines are massed in a six-column box on the front page, which is otherwise filled with classified advertisements. The “classifieds” run through the next six pages and supply the wherewithal for Publisher Paz’s proud boast that La Prensa is independent of large commercial advertisers. The news pages begin with a lengthy, learned article which most readers skip, but which is supposed to wield strong influence in high places. The news columns proper are top-heavy with foreign news. Probably no other newspaper in the world spends so much money on cable tolls—a fact partly due to Argentina’s cosmopolitan population. La Prensa demands important political speeches in full. It “discovered” Albert Einstein for the world press by first requesting United Press to interview him on his theory of relativity 15 years ago. After La Prensa printed it, U. P. decided to try Einstein on its U. S. clients. La Prensa gives any amount of space to amateur sports, demands play-by-play coverage on important chess matches, but refused Argentina’s Prizefighter Luis Firpo more than the barest mention even at the height of his popularity. It prints voluminous market news, lottery drawings, crossword puzzles, no comics except on Sunday. Its newsphotos are rare and inferior. On Sunday it offers rotogravure in color.

Employing no advertising salesmen, La Prensa never solicited an advertisement. Until a few years ago it would not permit advertisers to use large display type. It rejected a substantial Wrigley campaign because it hesitated to introduce the gum-chewing habit to Argentina. It saw no sense in a Quaker Oats breakfast food advertising program because Argentinians do not eat breakfast. However, La Prensa does print many an advertisement of doctors specializing in venereal diseases. La Prensa is one of the wealthiest newspapers in the world. The Paz family took from it enough to live in ease, plowed back huge sums for improvements and. notably, social services. One of the oldest services is a general delivery postal service, begun after the great immigration of the 1860’s when the Argentine post office proved hopelessly inadequate. To this day a letter addressed care of La Prensa will reach any Argentinian of known residence. Also La Prensa maintains free medical and surgical clinics for the poor, free legal service, and a free three-year music school. Its building houses banquet rooms, lecture halls, library, gymnasium.

The Paz family likes to regard La Prensa as Argentina’s property, themselves as hired managers. — TIME, July 16, 1934

CUSACK’S NOTE: La Prensa was confiscated by Peron’s dictatorship and its assets given to the Peronist CGT trade union. The family’s assets were restituted in 1988 and the newspaper refounded, but its readers had by then moved elsewhere and the La Prensa continues to this day in a much reduced form; its old headquarters on the Avenida de Mayo is now the Casa de la Cultura. The conservative La Nacion is now the only broadsheet in Argentina.

The La Prensa building, formerly home to the newspaper of that name, now the Casa de Cultura.

The subte entrance in front of the edificio La Prensa.

Looking down the Avenida toward the Palacio del Congreso.

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